Wildlife Politics
- My new book is titled " Industry First: The Attack on Conservation by Trump’s Interior." It’s a detailed study of Trump’s Interior’s destructive actions against conservation sacrificed in every case where there was a choice between protecting wildlife and industry profits. It has in depth coverage of their tactics to weaken both the Nat. Environmental Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. It demonstrates how Trump’s Interior was able to ignore or subvert all of the traditional protections against illegal and unethical actions such as ethical rules and staff, inspector generals, the Government Accountability Office, Congressional oversight, and legislative acts (e.g., FOIA and the Hatch Act) without incurring any penalties for their misdeeds. It demonstrates how Trump’s Interior misused and abused public comments and mechanisms involved in environmental impact reviews. It details how Trump’s Interior made illegal use of NPS resources for his campaign. It explores the crisis in funding for conservation due to their exclusive focus on trophy hunting as a source of revenues. It concludes that wildlife conservation needs a total rethinking that does not constrain itself to incrementalism and rearguard actions that characterized the Obama and Clinton Interior Department actions. The book fully documents all of its points and has 45 pages of references in addition to its 155 pages of text. It’s available as a Kindle E-book or paperback at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TYY51KR?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860
Here is the Table of Contents:
Contents
Preface. 1
Chapter 1: Evolution of the Interior Department 2
Why Department of Interior?. 6
Trump’s Disastrous Interior Secretaries: Ryan Zinke and David Bernhardt 8
Chapter 2: Energy Mania and the Unwise Use of Natural Resources. 10
Zinke’s Horrendous Start: Energy Dominance and the Unbalanced Use of Natural Resources. 10
Trump’s Interior and Industry: Nothing Else Matters. 12
Compensatory Mitigation under Trump: Do Not Worry About Destroying Habitat 17
Industry Lobbyist Bernhardt takes over. 18
How important does the General Public View Conservation and Wildlife Protection?. 27
Nothing Too Big or Small for Industry, Only Crumbs for the Public. 28
Diverting Funds from Conservation to Protect the Border. 29
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Under Trump: Dedicated to Sacrificing its Wildlife Mission to Industry. 30
Trump’s Great Outdoors Act: Only Fear Can Overcome Industry First Principle. 34
Chapter 3: Only “Nature” Concern is Trophy Hunting. 37
Chapter 4: Politics and Charismatic Wildlife Species: Love, Hate, and Passion. 45
Wild Horses: Even Trump’s Industry-Dominated Interior Cannot Kill 47
Chapter 5: Trump’s Interior Department’s Ethical Cesspool 50
Chapter 6: Trump’s Interior versus Accountability. 60
Daniel Jorjani: Lawyer and a Fountain of Lies. 62
Inspector Generals: No Help for Accountability and the Perversion of FOIA in Trump’s Interior. 66
Federal Judges Only Effective Response to Trump Attack on Conservation. 68
Chapter 7: Trump’s Interior’s Attempts to Undermine The NEPA.. 75
Trump CEQ’s Response to Comments: No Science Necessary!. 79
Chapter 8: Trump’s Interior: Lousy Administrators! 86
BLM’s Backwards Move West 93
Trump’s Interior Pandering to Public Range Ranchers: Welfare Recipients that Dominate Public Lands Policy 101
Chapter 9: Federalism Under Trump: Let States Do What They Want! 103
The Republican Nightmare Vision for Federalism.. 106
Chapter 10: Endangered Species Become More Endangered Under Trump’s Interior 110
Trump’s Interior Team: They Hate the ESA.. 112
Trump’s Team “Updates” The ESA.. 116
How to Undermine The ESA: Redefine Critical Habitat 120
The Real Benefits and Costs of the Endangered Species Act and other Environmental Regulations. 123
Chapter 11: Trump Interior’s Abuse of Science. 129
Chapter 12: Industry Interest Groups’ Takeover of Trump’s Interior 135
Chapter 13: Trump’s Interior versus the Future. 141
Conservation Funding for the Future. 143
Chapter 14: Conclusion: Needed: A Department of Interior that is Ethical and Treasures Conservation. 146
References 156 - The journal Biological Conservation (Vol. 224, 2018, 47-49) published a review of my Wildlife Politics book by Professor David Johns that concludes 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."
- The Quarterly Review of Biology Vol. 19 (2019) published following review of the book:
"This is an incredibly well-researched overview and
survey of the factors, issues, and considerations that
are relevant to conservation of biological diversity in
the United States and around the world. This book
would be an excellent reference and starting point
for students, policy practitioners, and wildlife managers
who want to gain a greater appreciation for the
complexities of wildlife politics." - The Journal of Wildlife Management, Vol. 82, Issue 2, p. 502: described the book as follows: Wildlife Politics explores a series of themes on political action that include the cyclic pattern of priorities in public policy, economic or market influences, governmental procedures, and the characteristics of private stakeholder groups. Rocheleau provides numerous compelling examples with a variety of evidence from press articles and scholarly publications. Wildlife biologists and managers should find the reviews a useful source of new perspectives and novel sources.
- Bruce Rocheleau brucerocheleau@gmail.com
