Pat Gonzales-Rogers
Pat Gonzales-Rogers
A former director and current consultant for the Bears Ears Coalition, Gonzales-Rogers has brought his deep experience on these issues to the Yale School of the Environment. This spring he is teaching a tribal resources and sovereignty clinic hosted by the Yale Center for Environmental Justice (YCEJ), which is open to students from YSE, Yale Law School, Yale School of Management, and Yale Divinity School. As part of his work at Yale, he will be bringing together tribal leaders, policy makers, and conservation NGOs in partnership with The Forest Dialogue to develop a white paper on best practices of co-management of lands at a conference this spring..
Gonzales-Rogers, who previously served as senior policy advisor and regional chief of congressional and legislative affairs for the Department of the Interior and assistant general counsel for the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee, was recently named to the America the Beautiful steering committee, which is overseeing $91 million in grants to support landscape-scale conservation projects. At least 14 tribal nations have received grants thus far. In a recent conversation with YSE News, Gonzales-Rogers discussed the historic challenges tribal nations have faced in managing lands and how they can be overcome, as well as his advice to students planning careers in conservation.