Her fellowship will initiate a collaborative process to make adaptive decisions about managing the 15,500 acre Central Plains Experimental Range at the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in Nunn, Colorado.  Emily hopes that this project will serve as a proving ground for rangeland management innovation and adaptation in Northern Colorado. The project will convene diverse local stakeholders to design a large-scale, adaptive grazing management experiment that ARS staff will carry out. Specifically, this fellowship will support implementation and evaluation of the first collaborative workshop in September 2012 in which stakeholders will identify the major components of the adaptive management plan: desired production and conservation outcomes, management strategies, and monitoring and evaluation criteria.

Erica studied the effects of rural, or “exurban” residential development on wildlife habitat use and movement patterns and creatively reported on the results in partnership with exurban landowners. She investigated mammalian presence along a housing density gradient in a mix of public and private lands in Northern Colorado using remotely-triggered cameras and track analysis. Erica presented the results of her study and engage the community through an art exhibit consisting of a collection of photographs taken by the wildlife cameras and short narratives by the landowners about living in rural areas and their encounters with wildlife.

In his project, Kilti nan Pyebwa (The Culture of Trees), he interviewed locals in two regions of Haiti and compare how different Haitian communities understand and use trees, and how these cultural understandings affect forest restoration efforts. In order to promote collaboration and cultural understanding in reforestation efforts, John developed a summary report, including land ownership maps and original graphics of human environmental interactions, and return to Haiti to present his findings to the locals and development agencies in these regions. John also collaborated with CCC Fellow, Sebastian Africano, on the Trees, Water & People project.

Collaborative Landscape Forest Restoration Projects (CLFRPs) expedite and improve land restoration projects by increasing understanding of ecological and social objectives and by reducing the amount of time and energy spent contesting/defending proposed management action. Federally-funded CLFRPs in Colorado are required to collectively monitor progress towards landscape-scale forest restoration goals. However, no methods have been developed to effectively evaluate these long-term projects. Kristen will work with the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute (CFRI), the Wilderness Society and the Colorado CLFRPs to develop robust methods for evaluating landscape restoration projects.

He will be working in Ethiopia mapping and modeling ecosystem services important to the Oromo people in the Bale Mountains region, exploring the relationships between species diversity and the sustainable production of these services. The goal is to integrate traditional ecological knowledge and scientific knowledge through collaboration to foster adaptive collaborative governance and create modeling scenarios that facilitate sustainable management and effective conservation practices. The method and approaches of the Ethiopia project will be replicated with research conducted with a Native American tribe in the western United States.

Theresa will meet with conservation practitioners from some of the 100+ groups and agencies involved in trans-boundary, international conservation of the 18-million acre Crown of the Continent ecosystem, one of the world’s most intact forested landscapes covering portions of Montana, British Columbia and Alberta, Canada. She will participate in the Crown Roundtable’s annual conference, gleaning insight from government agencies, non-governmental organizations, tribal groups, and private individuals with the ultimate aim of understanding how collaborative forest conservation can function at the international level and strengthen this large-scale experiment in networked governance. A portion of her fellowship will sponsor the 3rd annual Crown Roundtable conference, creating a valuable linkage with the CCC.

Tungalag’s project supported the outreach objectives of the Mongolian Rangelands and Resilience (MOR2) project through two outreach activities. The first was to create a nation-wide radio program targeted to the learning needs of herders and the second is to increase capacity among young Mongolian researchers to access and analyze MOR2 data. The radio program communicated MOR2 research results about the effects of collaborative management practices on formally organized community groups and their livelihoods, social relations, and pasture conditions leading to greater resilience to climate change.

Her project is part of The Mongolian Rangelands and Resilience Project (MOR2), a collaborative research partnership involving a diverse group of interdisciplinary researchers, practitioners, herders, and policymakers. MOR2’s main goal is to investigate the resilience of rangelands and herders to climate change across Mongolia. Khishig’s project aims to co-create knowledge with policy officials, local teachers and herders concerning local rangeland conditions, and address interdisciplinary data sharing needs with Mongolian partners. Khishig’s fellowship team will partner with local teachers and soum (village) officials in writing and archiving their own stories and local knowledge about their rangeland conditions and local adaptive strategies that both local government and herders employ in the face of social-ecological changes. In addition, she intends to meet the project team needs for interdisciplinary data sharing and collaboration by designing and implementing training workshops for proposal writing, research design, and data analysis for Mongolian researchers.

Kim teaches in the Sustainability Studies B.A. Program at Colorado Mountain College and she is on the board of directors of the Vail Leadership Institute and Energy Smart Colorado. She was the first Colorado Program Director for the National Forest Foundation, served as the Director of the Graduate Program at Teton Science Schools, and worked on the faculty of Environmental Studies for the M.A. Program at Prescott College. For her Fellowship project Kim conducted interviews about leadership in collaborative conservation and created a website to share stories and resources.

Marie will be creating a plan of action and a process to revitalize and sustain her community (Hozho). The process of the Navajo planning practice is based upon and symbolically embedded within the landscape where they have lived for many generations. Their practice is based on a Law of the Land known as Dinetah. This landscape-law is the foundational source of Dineh thought and philosophy; this knowledge is articulated through storytelling and ceremonial songs. By reinstating the principles of traditional Navajo planning, Marie hopes to help her community heal from the ongoing traumas of mining, water diversion and pollution, and relocation that they continue to experience each day at Black Mesa.

Some indigenous peoples, such as the Oglala Lakota, surmise that the practice of natural resource ‘management’ creates an unequal power dynamic among plants and animals. Thus, a relationship based on ‘stewardship’, or the mutual coexistence of humans and animals, is a more preferable approach and will result in more sustainable environments, economies, and communities.  Sherman developed a new model called the Indigenous Stewardship Model, which promotes this mutual coexistence and is consistent with Lakota cultural norms.  Richard, and graduate student Michael Brydge, will work in tandem with tribal and non-tribal entities, Lakota elders, and Lakota youth to assure the generational momentum of the Indigenous Stewardship Model and community development, and strengthen both human and natural communities by enhancing natural resource stewardship on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Sebastian is working with TWP partners in Haiti to help Haitian farmers to develop more sustainable sources of income by adding diverse, agro-­‐forestry plantations to their current farming practices.  This will reduce their reliance on charcoal production and restore forest cover on Haitian landscapes.  This proof of concept project will set the stage for a model that can be widely replicated for the purpose of recovering and rehabilitating Haiti’s natural resources while developing sustainable livelihoods for rural smallholders throughout the country.