Bruce A. Rocheleau

I am Professor Emeritus at Northern Illinois University. I previously published a book titled Wildlife Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2017) that examined the challenges of wildlife conservation throughout the world. My new book, Industry First: The Attack on Conservation by Trump’s Interior Department details how the Trump Administration’s Interior Department chose industry over conservation in every single decision they made, sacrificing public lands, monuments, oceans, endangered species, to industries that their politically appointed lobbyist administrators had worked for prior to joining the Trump Administration. It details how Trump’s Interior appointees ran roughshod over all protections against illegal and unethical actions. Their “so-called” ethics staff approved every misdeed by bigwigs. It shows how Inspector Generals, the GAO, Congressional Committees, and legislation such as the Hatch Act all failed to stop their unethical and illegal actions. It demonstrates how they ignored and/or manipulated public comments, the NEPA process, and undermined crucial wildlife protections such as the Migratory Bird Treaty despite poorly written and flawed administration. Their leaders such as Sec. Bernhardt were lousy administrators taking wasteful actions for no good reason other than they provided profits to their industry pals. The book provides detailed (45 pages) references to back up every single assertion. A key purpose of this book is to provide accountability to Trump’s Interior Department who got away with all of their misdeeds without penalty during their time in office. You can view my website which has a blog with over 1400 items on wildlife politics and conservation issues at wildlifepolitics.org including those discusse in this book.

A review of my 2017 Wildlife Politics book (Cambridge University Press) in Biological Conservation (2018, v224, 47-49) concluded as follows: "Eminently readable and thoroughly referenced, Wildlife Politics fills a great void in the literature. It will make an excellent primary text in classes on conservation politics and an excellent supplementary text in survey courses on conservation, which usually give short shrift to politics and thus leave students unprepared."