New Yosemite leader goes back to his roots in valley
YOSEMITE VILLAGE — Taking the top job at Yosemite National Park is a sort of homecoming for Michael Reynolds.
The 54-year-old superintendent, who started two weeks ago and is still waiting for a moving truck to arrive with the family belongings from Washington, D.C., grew up in the glacial valley.
His mother worked for the Park Service, an assistant in the superintendent’s office. His grandfather was a bellman at the Ahwahnee, now known as the Majestic Yosemite Hotel, and his grandmother was a store clerk.
Reynolds lived in a small house at the base of Yosemite Falls, where he remembers learning how to fly-fish and navigate the outdoors.
“I’ve either not really gone far in my life, or it’s full circle, and it’s a pretty cool story,” he joked during an interview last week in his still sparsely
decorated corner office in an old Park Service barracks.
Reynolds’ return to California, however, was not an expected plotline. Just three months ago, the veteran parks employee was head of the National Park Service, overseeing the system’s 417 sites and 20,000 employees, from the National Mall to Yellowstone.
Caught in the Trump administration’s unprecedented staff churn, Reynolds was pushed aside for P. Daniel Smith, who was considered more of an ally to the White House.
The Yosemite reassignment puts Reynolds in a place he knows intimately, though he and others concede the park and its issues have dramatically changed since he spent time here.
Still, given his 31-year career spanning four parks and a decade in the agency’s high offices, Washington officials and his colleagues in California say he’s uniquely qualified to meet such challenges as park overcrowding, complaints of hostile work conditions — particularly for women — and wilderness protection amid the mounting threats of climate change.
“Given all the uncertainty in Washington right now, we didn’t know who was going to be appointed to the job,” said Frank Dean, a former Park Service superintendent who worked with Reynolds and is now president of the Yosemite Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that partners with the park. “Mike’s worked at many levels, and having his insight into how Washington works and how to position the park to get resources or approvals for things. … We’re thrilled to have him.”
Reynolds, who has slightly graying brown hair — but a youthful smile — and a commanding yet easy presence in uniform, has held a litany of jobs with the Park Service, from regional chief to park superintendent to natural resources manager. He returned to Yosemite for a twoyear stint as planning director, starting in February 2003.
Lured to Washington four years ago from a regional park management job in the Midwest, he became an associate director of the agency, running human resources and keeping an office in the giant sevenstory Interior Department headquarters two blocks from the White House.
He, his wife and his two daughters, now 10 and 14, lived in the Washington suburbs.
In January of last year, Reynolds was named acting director of the Park Service after longtime head Jonathan Jarvis, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, stepped down.
“In Washington, I would wake up, grab my coffee and turn on NPR,” Reynolds said, noting his constant rush to get up to speed on every political development. “It was an in tense place. There were a lot of meetings indoors all day.”
Perhaps his most publicized moment in Washington came less than three weeks into his tenure as acting director.
After Trump’s inauguration, the president complained that photos taken of the crowd during his swearing-in ceremonies did not show the record-breaking attendance he alleged. Trump demanded to speak with Reynolds, whose agency had posted the photos, in a phone conversation that neither has spoken about.
“There needed to be some answers,” Reynolds recalled, acknowledging the call and the president’s tense inquiry but declining to elaborate further. “It did surprise me.”
Reynolds remained acting director for another year, until Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke tapped Smith for the job.
Smith’s appointment drew criticism because he had been reprimanded for skirting environmental laws. In 2004, Smith used his influence as an to the parks director to help Daniel Snyder, owner of Washington’s NFL team, log trees near his Maryland home to improve the view.
Reynolds said he understood the administration’s desire to bring in its own team. His shuffle to Yosemite, one of the Park Service’s marquee sites, reflects Zinke’s interest in getting experienced managers into parks, Reynolds said, particularly in the West.
“They were very fair to me,” he said. “Yosemite now has (my) connections.”
The modest, three-bedroom Park Service house that Reynolds and his family intend to occupy in Yosemite Valley, about a quarter mile from his new office, is still being cleaned up. That’s left the four staying in housing for seasonal park employees.
Beyond relocating, Reynolds doesn’t have immediate plans for changes. But he’s already started drawing up a list of park priorities, among them addressing the unrelenting traffic, which can be as thick as big-city congestion in the summer.
Reynolds hopes to improve the flow of cars by shoring up parking lots in Yosemite Valley and along Tioga Road in Tuolumne Meadows and by experimenting with prepaid admission and electronic toll collection at entrances, where traffic often jams.
More significantly, he expects to work with neighboring communities to reduce car trips into the park. He wants to study boosting public transit and shuttles, a proposition that could be broadened to include a network of new lodging and carpooling outside the park.
“You could create an Uber culture in a sense,” Reynolds said.
Another priority for Reynolds is improving employee morale. The park’s work environment has suffered from sometimes hostile leadership, according to a 2017 report by the Interior Department’s inspector general. Yosemite’s previous full-time superintendent, Don Neubacher, resigned two years ago as complaints of dismissive and overly critical managers came to light.
At the time, Reynolds was back in Washington, tasked with improving working conditions nationally on the heels of revelations of widespread sexual harassment at Grand Canyon National Park.
“We got to a point with a 100-year-old agency where we had to admit we had some culture problems,” Reynolds said.
Another challenge for Reynolds will be protecting Yosemite’s one-of-a-kind natural resources, from the much visited Merced River watershed to the Sierra backcountry. He said conducting scientific research at the park and restoring disturbed wildlands will remain at the fore.
One of the debates that has consumed Reynolds came with the opening of a Starbucks in Yosemite Valley.
The corporate chain began brewing coffee last month in a shop that has no sign but serves the usual Frappuccinos and mermaid-print cups. The opening, initiated by the park’s concessions company, came despite a petition that alleged a major label would ruin Yosemite’s rustic aesthetic.
“In all honesty, I’ve heard mostly positive support,” Reynolds said. “On the other hand, I’ve gotten comments about overcommercialization.”
While Reynolds declined to take a side, he empathized with both views: “I know people want good services, but they’re also very protective of their park.”
“Mike’s worked at many levels, and having his insight into how Washington works and how to position the park to get resources or approvals for things. … We’re thrilled to have him.” Frank Dean, president of Yosemite Conservancy and former Park Service superintendent