BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK — Big Bend National Park Superintendent Anjna O’Connor is retiring after 35 years of federal service and one year in the top office at Panther Junction. Rick Gupman, deputy superintendent, will be serving as acting superintendent until the position is permanently filled, representatives for the park told The Big Bend Sentinel.
O’Connor came to the park with a background serving with the Army Corps of Engineers. It was a relatively unusual path to a position typically served by career naturalists, but she served through a season of change and transition for the the park, leading a staff of nearly 100 through the lead-up to a major construction project in the Chisos Basin and a wave of layoffs ordered by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Getting the opportunity to move back to West Texas with her husband was a welcome shift. “It was just a great opportunity to get back to natural resource management,” she told Marfa Public Radio last year. “More than half my 34-year career with the corps of engineers was spent in a field office working natural resource management, recreation at our lake offices. So, this was a great opportunity to kind of circle back to the beginning of my career and going back to, really, what I love to do.”