‘Privilege of a Lifetime’: Cam Sholly Looks Back on Eight Years as Head of Yellowstone

After eight years at the helm of Yellowstone National Park, Cam Sholly is leaving his post. 

As Yellowstone’s superintendent, Sholly helmed the park’s efforts as it contended with the COVID-19 pandemic, record-setting visitation, a 500-year flood and escalating tensions with the state of Montana over bison management. 

Sholly, a third-generation National Park Service employee who graduated from Gardiner High School, returned to Yellowstone as superintendent in 2018 after decades in the agency. He expanded the transfer of Yellowstone bison to tribes, oversaw hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure investment, spearheaded efforts to expand and improve employee housing, and emphasized deepening engagement with Native American tribes whose connections to the region long predate the park service.

He also presided over hundreds of staff members, nearly 5 million annual visitors and a land mass larger than the state of Delaware. His tenure was characterized by both cooperation and conflict with Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. His positions on wildlife management, specifically bison, were especially contentious as Montana officials feared more Yellowstone bison could expand the risk of transmitting brucellosis to cattle in the state.

Through it all, Sholly emphasized partnerships and transparency — while understanding that Yellowstone issues can go far beyond the park’s boundaries. He’ll stay in his role through the end of September.

As he prepares for a next chapter outside the National Park Service, Yellowstone’s 17th permanent superintendent will lean on his park experience in his new role as Chief Operating Officer at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Mountain Journal sat down with Sholly to discuss his tenure and the challenges that could face America’s first national park in his wake.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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Mountain Journal: Cam, you spent part of your childhood in Gardiner, Montana. And you first worked in the park back in 1990. How has your time as superintendent informed your relationship with this place?

Cam Sholly: You learn quickly that your biggest fear is not screwing things up. It’s an enormous responsibility on behalf of the American people. This place is very important to me, just like it is to the American people.

To be able to come back here as superintendent and be here for eight years through some pretty incredible chapters, whether it’s COVID-19 or the floods or record visitation or hydrothermal explosions at Biscuit Basin — it’s a cliché of ‘leave things better when you leave than when you arrived,’ but I think that’s true. It’ll always be a really important part of my life and I’m looking forward to the next chapter.

MoJo: Are there intimate or personal moments that stand out to you from your time at Yellowstone?

C.S.: I graduated from Gardiner High School and so did my son. He went to Montana State University, and I had some really enjoyable times with both my wife and son in the park, especially in the backcountry. 

My son is a Marine Corps officer now, and he was home for leave two weeks ago. We hiked Electric Peak in a day. It reminded me that I’m 56 and he’s 24. And it’s really cool to see him enjoy the park and have as much love for this place as the next generation. I see this play out across the board here with people that come here as kids, and then through life bring their kids and even grandkids here. It’s a special thing about Yellowstone and many national parks across the country.

I was able to get back into the Thorofare multiple times as superintendent, and I’ve been able to get a couple hundred miles in the backcountry every year. There’s nothing like it. It’s pretty special. I’m definitely going to miss it. 

MoJo: Hiking Electric in a day is no trivial feat, even when you’re young. 

There have been so many developments, even so much drama during your time here: COVID-19, the floods, bison, record visitation. People are perennially mad about wolves as they cross state lines. As you reflect on all of these challenges in the park, what do you think are the biggest challenges ahead in your absence?

C.S.: First and foremost: housing. We want the best of the best coming to Yellowstone to work, and the best of the best aren’t going to come and live in 1960s and ‘70s trailers. Housing is not a unique issue to Yellowstone, but it’s definitely been an inhibitor from us recruiting and retaining some of the best talent. I think we’re on a really good track there, though. We’ve invested well over $100 million to improve employee housing and we have additional funding coming in. We also just got a $40-plus million donation two years ago, which is really helping us put in new housing to compensate for the loss of rentals in the gateway communities.

A big challenge here is infrastructure as a whole. It’s not glamorous per se to replace water systems and wastewater systems and bridges. But a big part of our mission is protecting this place and also providing for its enjoyment. You need good infrastructure to do that. We treated 300 million gallons of drinking water last year for visitors. You can’t screw that up. We’re set up to be able to invest probably around a quarter-billion dollars in new water and wastewater systems right now. This is really going to set this park up for the future as far as providing safe drinking water and having safe wastewater systems. If they fail, the consequences are big. During the flood in 2022, we had 200,000 gallons of sewage flowing into the Gardner River for the first few days. We don’t want that to happen in the future. 

We invested somewhere around $700-$750 million into infrastructure projects in the last 7-and-a-half years that are either completed or are going to be complete here soon. We’ve got another $700-$800 million in the queue over the next 5-7 years, including rebuilding this new road between here and Gardiner that was washed out from the floods. Our partners are second to none. We’ve had great support out of Washington [D.C.] all along, and whoever comes in after me will have a lot to work with to continue to improve this great place.

MoJo: Yellowstone hit nearly 5 million visitors for the first time in 2021. This July’s numbers show us being on track for the third busiest year on record. Visitation growth is showing few signs of slowing down, and that has an impact on the resource, too. This seems like it could present additional challenges of its own. 

C.S.: I think context is important here. The park is 2.2 million acres. There’s less than 2,000 acres of pavement, and most people never get more than a half-mile away from their car. The media will regularly show a traffic jam in Hayden Valley during the bison rut or a grizzly bear jam and paint that as what the entire park looks like. The reality is different. In the front country, where our visitation is increasing, that can be true. But our backcountry visitation has actually plateaued and even dropped over the last several years. So the majority of this park never sees a visitor. That’s a fact. 

We have an issue in certain parts of the park at certain times of the year. There’s no question. The people that are upset the most at the traffic are the locals, the employees and the people who have seen the sights here before. But it’s not the visitors’ fault that the Park Service didn’t build shoulders on the roads. A lot of our infrastructure wasn’t built for this kind of visitation. So, somebody comes from across the world and they see a grizzly for the first time and there’s no pullout, they’re going to stop their car. They’re not going to pass up that moment. 

The reality is that every one of those cars is putting $2,000 into local economies. You can’t have it both ways. We’ve got to figure this out as we move through time. We’re working on microgeographic solutions for managing visitation. We’ve done that very aggressively. We’re also doing a lot of resource monitoring: What are true actual impacts of increased visitation? The reality is people parking alongside the road on a dirt shoulder is not really a resource impact. 

The other thing is almost all of that road corridor is already disturbed. I’m not dismissing people parking off-road or anything like that, but relative to the scale of the park, it’s a pretty microscopic percentage. Even those two individuals walking off the boardwalk at Grand Prismatic — I am not condoning that whatsoever — but most of our visitors behave very well and follow the rules, while some of them don’t. But because two people walked off the boardwalk at Grand Prismatic doesn’t mean that it’s in jeopardy or there’s some massive resource impact that’s unrecoverable.

We’ve got to manage those things and there’s no question that it becomes more challenging the higher the visitation is. But we do also have a very terrific team of people that are out there doing just that. We’re doing a really good job of that balance.

I think some of the other challenges that we have looking ahead are invasive species, especially on the aquatic side. We have more than 220 non-native species in the park. We’re not going to eradicate all of them but how do we successfully address the ones that have the highest negative impacts on native species and have the highest potential for proliferation? That’s really important. These things don’t know boundaries. And so we’re working hard with the national forests and with the states to try to figure out joint strategies on how we can address that very big challenge that’s coming toward us.

MoJo: Policy aside, you’ve spent a lot of time in the backcountry of the park and you’ve also seen historic events like the flood. What specific moments do you think you’ll carry with you when you look back?

C.S.: The flood is the signature thing. You go to bed at night and have a very different viewpoint when you wake up in the morning.

MoJo: Tell me about how that played out at the time.

C.S.: We had more snow in April and May of 2022 than we did in January, February and March combined. Then a huge rain event comes and melts 3-4 inches of snow and you get a one-in-500-year flood. 

I think the secret to that, as far as us not losing lives or sustaining serious injury, was that our road crews and law enforcement were called out in the early hours of the morning for mudslides before other cars were on the road. They recognized that the water levels were so high in the Lamar River, they were unlike anything they’d ever seen. So they closed the roads. Had they not proactively closed those road corridors, there’s no question we would have lost many lives and definitely would have sustained injuries.

There were probably 15,000 people in the park overnight. Gardiner and Cooke City and even here in Mammoth were cut off. They were essentially islands. We made the decision to close the park and basically evacuate it. It’s a big decision to shut down Yellowstone National Park in the middle of June, one of the busiest times of the year. But it’s one of the best decisions that we made. It let us reset and gauge where the biggest part of the damage had occurred.

We were able to fix the South Loop in eight days and get 93 percent of the park reopened in 20 days. That was a massive team effort, both here in Yellowstone and with our partners. Governor Gianforte, Governor Gordon and all the members of Congress and the federal administration, were very, very supportive throughout and really helped us through a very, very tough time. That road you drove up on was built in four months. Ultimately, we were able to salvage a lot of that summer despite a massive natural disaster. 

I think it built incredible trust with the communities because we were communicating with them regularly every day, sometimes multiple times per day, on what our decision processes were. 

MoJo: We’ve talked about some of your accomplishments here. You’ve also started a new chapter when it comes to bison management in the park. When it comes especially to wildlife-management decisions, what are you most proud of that you’ve been able to accomplish?

C.S.: We sit in three states, five counties. In terms of visitors, we’re inching closer to that 5 million mark. The No. 1 thing people want to see when they come to Yellowstone is bison. It’s not Old Faithful. It is not bears, not wolves — bison is the number one thing. 

One hundred years ago, there were 23 bison left in this park. We basically decimated all the predators in this park. We have a very balanced ecosystem right now. Fifty-five years ago, we were feeding grizzly bears out of garbage dumps so visitors could see them. We’ve slowly put the pieces back together of this ecosystem. When Yellowstone was created in 1872, there was no concept of national parks. And the fact that this incredible 2.2 million acre piece of America was set aside based on Thomas Moran paintings and expedition reports is a pretty incredible part of the history of this country. It’s one of the reasons why we have one of greatest national park systems in the world. Nationally, we’ve got some incredible places, incredible stories, and this is the cornerstone of that system.

There’s a lot of opinions out there on how we should be doing things and the decisions we make in Yellowstone affect what happens outside the park. So it’s important that we have good relationships, good communication and understand that there’s not going to be 100 percent agreement on every single thing that we do. There’s gonna be issues that we’re diverging on and you hope that through strong relationships and communication you can kind of find a balance in some of these areas that people care deeply about. 

What we try to do is understand what people’s perspectives are, understand what is best for the resource and for the wildlife in this park, understand that we’ve got three states that we work with also, and these animals don’t know boundaries. So we gotta work together to try to balance out those different opinions about how we manage wildlife. 

If you take bison and brucellosis, that’s a significant issue of concern to the state of Montana. And so that would not be good for us to disregard that. And we’re not. Whoever comes in after [me] will continue to work with these states and these counties and these different groups to try to find that balance and continue to ensure that our wildlife stays really strong for the future.

MoJo: When your successor arrives, what do you want that person to not lose sight of in terms of how this place is operating?

C.S.: Whoever comes in is going to be very impressed with our team. When I got here in 2018, we created priorities we call “focus on the core.” That means support the workforce, strengthen the Yellowstone ecosystem, create a 21st century world-class visitor experience, invest in infrastructure, and build partnerships and coalitions. Every superintendent makes tweaks and that’s their prerogative. So my successor should take a breath and look at what’s happened and the progress that’s been made. But at a foundational level, continue to make progress in those really important areas. 

I will also say the American taxpayers can be really proud of this team. Whether it’s the folks out cleaning bathrooms right now, or the law enforcement team, or dispatchers or people in the entrance stations or in the visitor centers. You can’t have the success that we’ve had without a fantastic team — and fantastic support from Washington. I mean, Secretary Burgum’s been very, very supportive of us. I’ve been here through four secretaries now, and we’ve had very, very good support all the way through. And I think it’s reflected in what we’ve accomplished and all the things that we’ve gone through together.

MoJo: As an observer, it seems to me a few other things stand out about your leadership style: You maintained strong connections with the community, and were easy to access, and you talked to people. You also stood up for what you thought was the right thing to do, often against leadership of the surrounding states. Am I right to perceive it that way?

C.S.: I wouldn’t necessarily perceive it that way. I have had very good relationships with all three states, with the counties, the commissions, community leadership, the delegations. If you take Montana for instance, the governor was right there at my side when the flood happened. I think there’s a little too much emphasis on disagreements. We work in complicated environments. I think Governor Gianforte is doing some fantastic things for the state of Montana. He’s been very supportive of me on a lot of things. Yeah, OK, we disagree on some things in regards to bison, but it’s not like we’re taking on the state or anything like that. 

It’s more like, OK, we disagree on this issue. What can we do to figure out what the solution is going to be over the long term? The same thing is true of Mark Gordon of Wyoming and Brad Little of Idaho and every member of Congress. Governor Gianforte wants to see — and so does Mark Gordon, so does Brad Little, so does every member of Congress — continued protection of this place. There’s positive economic benefits. You think about Yellowstone and Grand Teton, a billion-and-a-half [dollars] per year spent in local economies within 50 miles of the parks. These parks are economic engines and so wherever we can synchronize and find common ground, that’s what we need to try to do. 

And just like I would say the states need to understand some of the viewpoints that we might have, I have to understand what some of their viewpoints are, too. One thing I’ve learned in this job is there’s always this wide spectrum of opinions. Where things get done is kind of in this middle ground.

MoJo: I didn’t mean to frame that relationship as purely adversarial, I just meant that you’re willing to speak about disagreements or be open about disagreements and find solutions.

C.S.: I think it’s important that governors or the public, private citizens or ranchers, guides or you name it, speak their mind about what we’re doing and how we should be doing it. I appreciate that and I don’t disregard anything. I look at my job as being: how can I take a lot of very good information and valid opinions, but many times opinions that are not totally informed with everything that needs to be considered in a decision. And that can be where the challenge is. You gotta make decisions in this job. Anybody that’s been in any type of senior-level position, especially if political or higher profile can tell you — there’s never going to be everybody that likes you or agrees with what you’re doing. I’ve always said, if we make a decision, people may not agree with it, but they’ll know what the decision was, why we made it and how we made it. We strive for that.

When you do that over time, even the people that disagree with it — if you have trust and good relationships built, they’re OK with that. I think that’s really important for whoever is in this job: you need to be able to for example, “Yes, protect the park, defend the park.” At the same time, understand the world doesn’t revolve around this place only and there are other really important factors that need to be considered. And if you start making all these decisions in a vacuum purely through the lens of Yellowstone, it’ll be a problem for you. 

MoJo: What other achievements that we haven’t talked about during your tenure are you particularly proud of?

C.S.: There’s just so much. We had the near-mass shooting at Canyon on July 4, 2024. A ranger was shot and they killed the subject. But had the rangers not done what they did, the subject would have killed a lot of visitors that morning. There were hydrothermal explosions at Biscuit Basin, fires in Gardiner, not to mention wildland fires. It’s probably not one single thing to put your finger on. It’s kind of a collection of different events and things that happened that I think we responded to really well, given the complexities of many of those things.

It’s been the privilege of a lifetime. It’s hard to believe. It has been eight years this fall and in some ways it feels like I just got here and in some ways it feels like I’ve been here forever. But I am proud about the things that we’ve accomplished. Not everybody sees everything that we’re doing. And what I’m most proud about is whoever comes in after is going to inherit a team that’s really second to none.

Nick Mott is a Western Environmental Reporting Collaborative reporter for Mountain Journal and High Country News. He is a multimedia journalist based in Livingston, Montana, who focuses on the environment, wildlife, climate and public lands.