The third cohort of CCC Fellowships was made up of eighteen fellows who included nine graduate students, five faculty members, and four conservation practitioners. This cohort also represented six departments and two colleges from Colorado State University, three NGOs doing conservation work in Colorado, one NGO in Washington State, and one local rancher.
This cohort focused on problems as diverse as:
- Environmental governability practices of marginalized populations
- Stakeholder perceptions and partnerships between people and national parks
- Home gardens and exchanges promoting food sovereignty
- Culturally relevant knowledge of predicted climate changes
This third cohort focused their work in eight diverse locations that included:
- Colombia
- Panama
- Estonia
- Kenya
- Nicaragua
- Tanzania
- Tibet
- United States
- Colorado, Wyoming, Washington
Learn more about each fellow by clicking on their tab
Clement Lenachuru
About Clement
Clement was a PhD student in CSU’s Department of Forest, Rangeland and Watershed Stewardship advised by Dr. Maria Fernandez-Gimenez.

Project Summary
His project in Marigat district in Kenya will bring together governmental departments, NGOs, county administrative officers, local community-based organizations, and local farmers to restore pastures and farmlands that have been invaded by an exotic weed – prosopis juliflora. He will work closely with collaborative partners and farmers to increase the land’s productivity and suitability for raising livestock and crops to improve food security in this arid part of Kenya, and will build and utilize existing local social networks and climatic knowledge to conserve the environment and its productivity.
Location
Marigat District, Kenya
Emily Eddins
About Emily
Emily received her PhD in the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources with Dr. Stuart Cottrell in 2013.

Project Summary
For her fellowship, she used a sustainable livelihoods framework as a conceptual and interpretive lens to explore a long-term, cross-cultural partnership in volunteer tourism for ecotourism development in rural Achiote, Panama through CSU’s Alternative Break program. She explored the role that volunteer tourism can play in collaborative conservation efforts to promote and enhance collaboration among volunteer tourism stakeholders to better identify, implement, and manage projects that maximize benefits of the daily lives of people in rural host communities and their surrounding ecological systems. Today, she is creating and developing university-community partnerships for service learning as the Assistant Director for Service Learning at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.
Achiote, Panama
Location
Gloria Sumay
About Gloria
Gloria is a master’s student in the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, CSU, working with Dr. Gillian Bowser.

Project Summary
Her project addresses the cross-cultural perspectives of local communities neighboring national parks on migratory animals and park management. Gloria will work with three villages to the east of Tarangire National Park, Tanzania, where there is a long history of conflict between the Park and local communities. She will use household interviews, Photovoice, and GIS to identify and locate conflicts. Through her fellowship she will produce maps and will hold meetings between communities and Park management.
Location
Tanzania
Karie Boone
About Karie
Karie received her Master’s from the Department of Sociology, CSU working with Dr. Pete Taylor.

Project Summary
In collaboration with Nicaraguan community leaders, NGOs and US academics, Karie explored ways in which mutually beneficial relationships across borders may be structured to develop sustainable networks of collaborative conservation. She focused on home gardens to analyze and promote greater food sovereignty while mitigating the impacts of climate change in the Segovias region of Nicaragua. Through case studies of local farms, she will produce a manual for locals to enhance their food security through bio-diverse gardening practices.
Location
Nicaragua
Kate Wilkins
About Kate
Kate received her Master’s working with Dr. Gillian Bowser in the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, CSU.

Project Summary
Her Fellowship project involved using interviews and Photovoice to understand local community attitudes toward Great Sand Dunes National Park of Colorado. Kate will collaborate with Gloria Sumay to compare Crestone’s perceptions of the park with those of communities near Tarangire National Park in Tanzania. Together with their advisor, Faculty Fellow Dr. Gillian Bowser, Kate and Gloria will organize a meeting for Great Sand Dunes participants to share pictures and stories with Park management, and a Photovoice exhibit at CSU.
Location
Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado, USA
Deliverables
National Parks as Neighbors: An oral history of the relationship between communities in the San Luis Valley and Great Sand Dune
Katie Lyon
About Katie
Katie was a PhD student in the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University, working with Dr. Jerry Vaske.

Project Summary
Katie’s research will focus on identifying practical steps for reducing the social and cognitive barriers to implementing firewise defensible space behaviors in Colorado. For her fellowship, Katie will conduct a series of participatory workshops with fire managers and individual and community stakeholders to obtain feedback on communication strategies for promoting firewise behaviors at an individual and neighborhood level.
Location
Colorado, USA
Kelly Hopping
About Kelly
Kelly was a PhD student in the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology and is advised by Dr. Julia Klein.

Project Summary
She will work in a Tibetan pastoralist community, where she will integrate local knowledge about climate change with satellite imagery of vegetation health. With increased understanding of how environmental knowledge is held and shared within the community, she will be able to work with village leaders to spread predictions about climate change and its consequences for this social-ecosystem system more effectively.
Rachel Gibson
About Rachel
Rachel received her Master’s working with Dr. Jennifer Cross in CSU’s Department of Sociology.

Project Summary
She will examine what has motivated Fort Collins residents to get involved in FortZED, a community initiative to reduce city-wide energy use through conservation practices and the use of renewable energy sources. She will also examine the success of strategies aimed at getting people to curb their energy use. Through a collaborative project involving Colorado State University, the CCC, The Atmosphere Conservancy, and other community members, she will be able to examine this very unique community initiative, which will help reduce energy use and provide for a better, more environmentally-friendly future.
Location
Fort Collins, Colorado, USA
Gillian Bowser
About Gillian
Gillian is a research scientist with the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory in the Warner College of Natural Resources at CSU.

Project Summary
By using participant generated imagery, Gillian and a pair of CCC graduate fellows (Kate Wilkins and Gloria Sumay) will explore perceptions of conflict over wildlife, tourism and sustainable development between communities and protected areas for two different national parks: Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado USA and Tarangire National Park, Tanzania. Gillian’s primary role in the joint project will be to engage Park management and community leaders in a conversation exchange about conflict and bridging the community-Park gap, both within and between locations. The project will end with a joint workshop at Tarangire between senior managers and community leaders.
Location
Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado, USA and Tarangire National Park, Tanzania
Jessica Clement
About Jessica
Jessica is a social scientist and forest ecologist who co-directs the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute (CFRI) of the Department of Forest, Rangeland and Watershed Stewardship, CSU.

Project Summary
With Michael Schrotz, the Planning and Lands Staff Officer of Bridger-Teton National Forest (BTNF), Wyoming, and Tony Cheng, the Director of CFRI, Jessica will explore methods to effectively integrate social science to benefit collaborative, large landscape-scale planning and conservation processes. She will describe methods for utilizing various types of social science data to enhance long-term collaborative planning and conservation to benefit cultural, economic and ecological components of landscape conservation on the BTNF.
Location
Bridger-Teton National Forest, Wyoming, USA
Karen Snider
About Karen
Karen is the Director of the Sustainable Development Garden, CSU’s organic student-run garden.

Project Summary
Her fellowship will highlight local resource conservation and individual empowerment through urban community building. Projects such as a tool co-op and lending library, a free store, and a community garden will encourage participants to create more self-reliant and sustainable lifestyles within their city. She will provide a localized model for urban conservation through sustainable community development, as well as document a budding grassroots movement occurring within multiple cities that she will share with the global conservation community via a documentary film on collaborative living in urban spaces.
Location
Fort Collins, Colorado, USA
Marcela Velasco
About Marcela
Marcela is on the faculty of the Department of Political Science, CSU.

Project Summary
She will research the environmental governability practices of marginalized ethnic populations in Colombia, and will encourage training and field exchanges between an indigenous group recovering 1,300 hectares of deforested land in Cristianía (Antioquia) and a riparian Afro-Colombian community trying to protect its river in Anchicayá (Valle). Her fellowship project will support Jenzera, an inter- ethnic and multidisciplinary organization developing training activities aimed at increasing ethno- territorial governance by addressing issues of conflict over land and natural resources.
Location
Colombia
Sarah Reed
About Sarah
Sarah was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, CSU.

Project Summary
She will collaborate with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) to develop a citizen science protocol for monitoring mammal habitat use and movement patterns on private lands. A CSU student research assistant will help test and refine this protocol in a pilot field comparison of snow tracking and remote camera surveys in a local mountain subdivision. The resulting protocol will be leveraged for application to the pilot study area, and WCS conservation priority landscapes in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and Adirondack Park.
Location
United States of America
Stuart Cottrell
About Stuart
Stuart is an associate professor in the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources Department at CSU.

Project Summary
He worked with Vilsandi National Park (VNP) and other protected area stakeholders on Saaremaa Island, Estonia to facilitate development of a collaborative conservation plan coupled with visitor management and sustainable tourism development strategies for VNP to meet criteria to become a European Protected Area Network Park (PAN). The goal of the fellowship was to enhance VNP and stakeholder capacity to manage conservation collaboratively, to enhance sustainable livelihoods among tour operators, and to enhance the wilderness experience of visitors.
Location
Saaremaa Island, Estonia
David Bartecchi
About David
David is the Executive Director of Village Earth, an NGO based in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Project Summary
Through this fellowship, David will research and develop a practical model for supporting local community-based natural resource conservation organizations. The goal is to operationalize many of the key findings in the literature on best practices for supporting local organizational capacity building. The outcome of this fellowship will be a practical and adaptive model for supporting local community-based organizations that could be utilized by the CCC itself or in partnership with Village Earth.
Location
Fort Collins, Colorado, USA
David Jessup
About David
David is co-owner of Sylvan Dale Ranch, a 3500-acre working dude ranch west of Loveland that raises grass-fed beef for local sale.

Project Summary
David’s fellowship will allow him to test two soil restoration strategies, mob grazing and compost tea application, on an irrigated hay field where decades of hay removal has depleted the soil. Working with university and government collaborators, he will measure changes in soil quality indices and analyze the potential value of these improvements for a ranchland ecosystem services market for Colorado and the U.S. West. His report will be applicable to soil restoration, conservation and grazing land management for private and public lands.
Location
Loveland, Colorado, USA
Lindsay Ex
About Lindsay
Lindsay is an Environmental Planner with the City of Fort Collins, Colorado, and is the Research Coordinator for the Conservation Development Global Challenges Research Team (GCRT) at Colorado State University’s School of Global Environmental Sustainability (SoGES).

Project Summary
She will develop an outreach network for conservation development (CD) that will engage practitioners that are already involved in CD and enable communication of the approach across a broader range of stakeholders, including planners, developers, homeowners associations, and advocacy groups such as local land trusts. Through this fellowship, Lindsay and the CD GCRT will pilot a website to serve as the portal for CD practice in Colorado, eventually launching this portal and network to a national level.
Location
Fort Collins, Colorado, USA
Sarah Hamman
About Sarah
Sarah is a restoration ecologist with The Nature Conservancy, Washington, and an alumna of Colorado State University.

Project Summary
She worked with CSU affiliates and multiple stakeholders to launch a Prescribed Fire Council in the state of Washington. The fellowship supported the planning and implementation of a two-day facilitated workshop that brought together diverse participants from government fire management agencies, non-profit conservation organizations and private landowners to address the social and ecological challenges to prescribed burning. The project was to encourage fire suppression organizations to consider more prescribed burning, collaborative wildfire management and building ecosystem resilience to altered fire regimes.