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A teal displayed on a small conference table in John Rogner’s office distracted me when he asked me if I was ready for retirement.
“I’m relieved by this decision,” he said. “I grieve more for her dog. We have laid her to rest and retrieved her ashes. Her wife and I will figure out where to scatter her ashes.” .”
It’s Terra, a 14-year-old English setter.
John Rogner and his English setter, Terra, passed away just days before John Rogner retired as IDNR’s deputy director.
At the Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ Region 2 office in Bartlett, we discussed a wide range of public positions with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and IDNR that ended Sunday.
“I’ve been thinking about quitting for a year now,” Rogner, 69, said.
When Gov. Pritzker did not bring back IDNR Secretary Colleen Callahan, Rogner stayed on to help with the transition to Natalie Phelps Finney.
Now is the time.
“A year ago we bought a log cabin south of Dixon,” he said. “A lot of restoration needs to be done. It becomes a small part of our outdoors. . . . Before I knew it I was in the office dreaming about that cabin.”
Born in Saginaw, Michigan, Rogner moved to Belvidere when he was 5 years old and then to Decatur for his final two years of high school.
He earned a bachelor of science degree and a master’s degree in biology from Northern Illinois and then went to work in government.
I know that Rogner has been mentioned at least twice as IDNR director.
“Those are political jobs, and I’m not really a political animal,” he said. “I can get involved in politics if I want, but what excites me is land and water.”
During graduate school, he spent two summers serving as a youth conservation unit crew leader at the Mississippi Palisades SP of the former Illinois Department of Conservation.
After graduate school, I worked for the USACE for eight years, initially as a biologist.
“But I was a regulator,” he said. “I was immediately thrown into negotiating situations, where there’s a lot of money at stake and you can tell a lot about people.”
He became branch chief.
Next was FWS, where he oversaw the Barrington office on endangered species, habitat restoration, and more.
On April 24, 2006, Michael Redner (right) and John Rogner of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service use GPS to mark the location of a Massasauga rattlesnake (it’s there, very well). Camouflaged. Photo by Jim Frost Sun-Times).
His “most gratifying” time with FWS was in its early years, when he served as president of Chicago Wilderness for 10 years.
“We had a good, dedicated group,” he said. “It has changed the culture of how we interact with agencies. [non-profits] We worked together. Before that they were competing, but then they began to cooperate. ”
Chicago Wilderness is now part of hundreds of organizations covering southeastern Wisconsin, northeastern Illinois, northwestern Indiana and southwestern Michigan.
John Rogner, field supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Chicago field office, holds up a jar containing specimens collected from the Wolf Lake waters during a bioblitz Friday afternoon…John Sole/ sun times
Moving between agencies, Mr. Rogner spent four years as IDNR’s assistant director under Governor Pat Quinn and Director Mark Miller. Rogner returned to FWS and led the creation of two national wildlife refuges, but he retired in 2019.
He then returned as an assistant director on IDNR, playing Michael Jordan.
When asked about his most memorable time at IDNR, he said, “Some things come to mind right away.”
In 2009, Rogner led a multi-agency project to fish for rotenone along a six-mile stretch from the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to the Lockport Locks and Dam to combat invasive carp reaching Lake Michigan. was.
It produced one bighead, an invasive carp.
“What we saw were really a lot of channel catfish,” he said. “We had to do that to calm other states. We ultimately demonstrated that the threat was not an immediate danger.
“That stands out.”
On December 2, 2009, agents pour the fish poison rotenone into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal near Lockport. This is the prime setting for mass fish kills to prevent Asian carp from entering Lake Michigan. …Rich Hine/Sun-Times
It’s still frustrating to me even though the fish have been restocked and revived.
“It was a tense, intense five days,” he said. “But our team was an example of cooperation. It made us proud to be able to do it. We did it. What if we messed up Lockport’s potassium? Can you imagine?”
Potassium neutralizes the effects of rotenone and prevents the killing from spreading beyond the intended range.
“I hope I never have to go through that again,” Rogner said.
He believes the most difficult environmental/conservation issues in the Chicago area are the threat of urban development and water management issues.
He also worries that people, especially those living in urban areas, have fewer opportunities to interact with wildlife and are becoming cut off from the natural world.
At the state-wide level, there are concerns about “agricultural intensification.”
“We have to think about how to help private land,” he says.
Illinois’ public land shortage isn’t changing anytime soon.
That’s why he believes access and habitat programs like IRAP and CREP are so important.
“We could use more federal support,” Rogner acknowledged. More and more landowners, especially farmers, are trying to keep their land secure. We should pay them to produce wild animals. This requires policy will and support. I think private landowners will cooperate if we make that part of the deal. ”
John Rogner sits in his office during his final days as deputy director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, just before Christmas.
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