Fellows

Summary of the first cohort of CCC Fellows:

The purpose of the CCC Fellows Program is to strengthen engagement among students, faculty, conservation practitioners and other stakeholders by promoting collaborative research, education and action on critical issues concerning conservation and livelihoods on local landscapes around the globe. The CCC Fellows are part of the new Collaborative Conservation Learning Network where principles and practice of collaborative conservation are developed, exchanged, tested and adapted.

In February, 2009, the Center for Collaborative Conservation awarded 17 fellowships which form the first cohort of CCC Fellows.  These fellows include 11 graduate students, 3 faculty members and 3 conservation practitioners (undergraduates will work with some of these fellows this year).  The Fellows are from 5 nations around the globe (and working in 3 more) and represent 6 departments and 3 colleges at Colorado State University, and 3 NGO’s doing conservation work in Colorado, South Dakota and Africa.  They are working on problems as diverse as marine conservation in the Philippines, to pasture management in Mongolia, to elephant-people conflicts in Tanzania.  In Colorado, four fellows are working on better understanding how collaboratives work and how they can work better through using both market and non-market-based incentives for conservation. 

The following are descriptions of each of the new CCC Fellows:

Arren Mendezona Allegretti

Arren is an MSc student in the Department of the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University working with Dr. Stu Cottrell. Her thesis and fellowship involves understanding and targeting links between local perceptions of coastal resource management and the social success of Marine Protected Areas in the southern Cebu, Philippines. The fellowship will allow Arren to engage fully with her Philippine partners in completing this thesis. Arren also intends to display her study results on the existing online Marine Protected Area database that is accessible to local and international coastal resource managers and the general public.

Batkhishig Baival

Batkhishig is a PhD student in the Department of Forest, Rangeland and Watershed Stewardship at Colorado State University working with Dr. Maria Fernandez-Gimenez. For her PhD work, Batkhishig is focusing on understanding the relationship between community-based rangeland management (CBRM) and the social-ecological resilience of rural Mongolian communities. Her fellowship will allow her to organize and facilitate several workshops with Mongolian herders, policy makers and NGO representatives to discuss the results of her research, as well as widen the discussion to other issues in rangeland conservation and livelihoods. The products of her fellowship will be an additional thesis chapter on this collaborative process, as well as some lay-person communications (like policy briefs for local government or local newspaper articles) describing the outcomes of her research. 

Adam Beh

Adam is a PhD student in the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University whose research is focused on exploring the proper learning environments that need to be cultivated in order to develop a conservation education curriculum in northern Kenya. Over the last four years, he has been working with his advisor, Dr. Brett Bruyere, on identifying the challenges and opportunities for the creation of such a curriculum. Adam will be employing a photovoice approach, allowing Kenyan park rangers, teachers and students the opportunity to document their understanding of conservation through discussion and storytelling of their own photographs. A local photography exhibit will also be co-created so that the Kenyan partners involved in the project may showcase their own stories to the world.

Ashley Cobb

Ashley is an MSc student in the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University, working with Dr. Jes Thompson. Her thesis will evaluate the collaborative process of scenario planning as applied to climate change management initiatives in the National Park Service and other land management agencies. For her fellowship, Ashley will facilitate a mini-scenario planning training session for the members of the collaborative to help them better understand the collaborative process and begin to conceptualize an innovative way to collaborate and manage uncertainty. Ashley will also produce a thesis chapter about the process of scenario planning and how this process compares to other multi-agency collaborative processes.

Esther Duke

Esther is an MSc student in the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University, working with Dr. Josh Goldstein. Her thesis project will use collaborative processes to engage government, non-profit, and coffee-producing community groups in understanding and using ecosystem-service mapping and valuation techniques to support conservation and livelihoods in a transboundary area between Costa Rica and Panama (adjacent to Amistad Biosphere Binational World Heritage Site / La Amistad International Park). Esther’s project will explore the opportunities and challenges for steering ecosystem-service payment schemes to benefit the poor through a carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation scheme based on agroforestry practices.  Her project will generate a separate project report for the community partners and the creation of interactive digital maps that are useful to these partners.

Josh Goldstein

Josh is an assistant professor in the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University whose research and teaching focus on ecosystem services and conservation finance. For his fellowship, Josh is working with ranchers and other stakeholders in northern Colorado to explore ways to develop business models that align conservation and economic incentives for working ranches and the communities that they are a part of. To reach out to a diverse audience, Josh will create deliverables that span research publications, community outreach, and a teaching case study for students at Colorado State University. Josh is joined on this fellowship by Heather Knight (TNC-Colorado) and John Fusaro (USDA NRCS) who both have extensive experience working with partners in the study region.

Ed Iron Cloud

Ed is a board member and bison caretaker of the Knife Chief Buffalo Nation Project at the Pine Ridge Reservation in Porcupine, South Dakota. This project is a community-based initiative whose mission is to strengthen the connection between the Lakota people and the buffalo. Ed also was recently elected to the South Dakota State Legislature. For his fellowship, Ed will work with a collaborative team to produce a video about the role of the buffalo in Lakota conservationism which will help to strengthen collaborative relationships among reservation youth, educational institutions, and other community-based initiatives on the reservation. The focus of this video will be to promote the Lakota belief and concept that the buffalo are relatives and their importance to the spiritual and cultural survival of the Lakota people.

Jeff Jones

Jeff is the Executive Director and founder of The Conservation Cooperative, a Colorado Non Profit Corporation. Jeff has over 25 years of experience working on social justice and land conservation issues.  For his fellowship, Jeff will develop and complete a short course on Private Land Conservation Law through the Center for Collaborative Conservation's Collaborative Conservation Learning Network. The four-day course will focus on conservation legal issues on private lands, including land use regulations, private property law, water and oil, gas and mineral law, and conservation easement transactions. Jeff is also working with the Wyoming Stockgrowers Agricultural Land Trust on conservation agreements with ranchers in Wyoming and land stewardship of properties where they hold a conservation easement.

Sarah Maisonneuve

Sarah is a PhD student in the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology at Colorado State University, working with Dr. Mike Coughenour, studying the conflict between humans and elephants outside Ruaha National Park, Tanzania. The aims of her research are to characterize and distinguish between the areas where elephants leave protected area to raid farms, and those where they do not, to determine whether their movements may be predicted by landscape quality, proximity to the protected area, or proximity to known corridors. This fellowship will allow her to share her research findings with local Tanzanians who are most affected by this conflict; she will produce films, radio programs, and written reports in both Kiswahili and English, which include general information about elephants, a description of the research project and its main conclusions, and methods to mitigate human-elephant conflict in the area.

Heather Messick

Heather is an MSc student in the Department of Forest, Range and Watershed Stewardship at Colorado State University. Heather will work with Dr. Roy Roath to develop a long-term conservation management plan for the Visintainer Ranch, in Northwest Colorado. The Visintainer Ranch is a third generation ranch that has an impeccable history of land stewardship. The ranch is comprised of 50,000 acres of private land legacy with an additional 75,000 acres of public land permits. The goal of the plan is to ensure that the Visintainer Ranch is maintained as a working ranch operation that supports the production of livestock, wildlife and other land-based amenities into the foreseeable future.

David Ole Nkedianye

David is a founding Director of the Reto O Reto Foundation in Kitengela, Kenya, which aims to link research with local pastoral livelihoods and conservation. David is also a PhD candidate at the Centre for Environmental Change and Sustainability at the University of Edinburgh linked with the International Livestock Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya. He is studying drought mitigation and adaptation strategies among the Maasai pastoralists in East Africa. For his fellowship, David will facilitate linkages among Maasai communities and conservation organizations, with a goal of enhancing mutual participation in conservation, and in so doing exploring innovative and sustainable ways of generating revenue for local households while conserving the environment. He will write a case study report and a working paper at the end of his fellowship.

Patti Biddle Orth

Patti is a PhD student in the Department of Forest, Range and Watershed Stewardship at Colorado State University, working with Dr. Tony Cheng. Her dissertation will evaluate the success of several conservation collaboratives in the American West. For her fellowship Patti will work collaboratively with conservation practitioners to develop a set of criteria and indicators that can be used to evaluate the progress/success of collaboratives. In addition to a dissertation chapter and a refereed journal article, Patti will develop a brochure that can be used by practitioners as part of her fellowship.

Liba Pejchar

Liba is an assistant professor in the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology whose research focuses on “win-win” opportunities for biodiversity and livelihoods on private land in Hawaii and Colorado. For her fellowship, Liba will work with public and private landowners in Hawaii to understand the seed dispersal services that native birds provide and their role in restoring understory fruiting plants for conservation and Hawaiian cultural practices. Her project will involve partnering with conservation and cultural practitioners to explore the opportunity of reintroducing native fruit-eating birds as a cost-effective alternative to conventional restoration.

Joana Roque de Pinho                                                                                                                                                 
Joana Roque de Pinho is a PhD student in the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology at Colorado State University, working with Dr. Kathy Galvin.  Her PhD research explores the coexistence of Kenyan Maasai pastoralists and wildlife from cultural, cognitive and economic perspectives.  During her fellowship, Joana will return to her field site in the Amboseli ecosystem to 1) share her PhD research results with the three communities she worked with; 2) carry out a participatory photography exercise through which local participants will express how they perceive their coexistence with wildlife, as well as a community workshop to share these findings with policy-makers; and 3) explore how Christianity locally shapes attitudes towards the natural environment and the possibility to involve local Christian pastors as partners in collaborative conservation. The fellowship products will include an exhibit of the photographs and associated stories, and a film that will document the steps of this collaborative process.

Aleta Rudeen

Aleta is an MSc candidate in the Department of Forest, Rangeland and Watershed Stewardship working with Dr. Maria Fernandez-Gimenez.  Her research focuses on the roles of communication, conflict and science in natural resource collaboration using a two-phase approach.  She will use the CCC fellowship to communicate results from her first phase of research on an inactive collaborative group and to implement Phase Two of her research integrating data and local knowledge in State-and Transition Models through participatory workshops.  Aleta will write at least two peer-reviewed journal articles and incorporate all phases of research into her final thesis.

Heidi Steltzer

Heidi is a research scientist in the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University, whose research is assessing the biological consequences of earlier snowmelt from desert dust deposition in alpine landscapes. For her fellowship, Heidi will collaborate with the Mountain Studies Institute (MSI), Silverton, CO to create visualizations of the seasonality of Rocky Mountain alpine landscapes in the year 2020, if desert dust deposition remains high. These visualizations will take several forms, including photos, a slide show and a film, and will fulfill a stakeholder recommendation on an approach to communicate scientific results to stakeholders from a stakeholder-scientist conference on climate change in the San Juan Mountains that was hosted by MSI.

April Wackerman

April is an MSc student in the Department of Construction Management at Colorado State University, working with Dr. Brian Dunbar. Her thesis involves exploring how to shift individuals’ mental paradigms about how construction is conducted. Her research is based on the understanding that the design and construction industry needs to engage in a new conversation and a new approach in order to reverse the damage done by major resource consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from buildings. For her fellowship, and in collaboration with the Institute for the Built Environment at CSU, April will apply her results to further develop a process guide, called LENSES (Living Environments in Natural, Social, and Economic Systems) that will be used by design and construction professionals to foster a living systems approach to buildings.