Dominique will provide her Taíno tribal community with a much needed resource by establishing a formal network to support Indigenous scholars, conservation practitioners, and educators currently engaged in projects involving Indigenous science knowledge. In addition to community-based project profiles and contact information, this web-based forum/network will provide a venue for highlighting effective practices and research coming out of this region, connect Indigenous scholars working in the Caribbean for collaborative efforts, and provide a high quality resource database designed specifically for educators and mentors working on community-based Indigenous science projects. Broader influences of this initiative include setting up infrastructure for a sustainable network that bridges emerging professional research and the communities that will be most impacted as well as assessing tools for increasing engagement of underrepresented populations in community-based science education and conservation.

Kenny Cal, Ya’axché Conservation Trust’s Community Outreach and Livelihoods Program Director, will work alongside community farmers engaged in agroforestry and aid in assessing the human impacts of agroforestry. He will collaborate with Lee McLoughlin, Ya’axché’s Protected Areas Program Director on researching the ecological impacts of agroforestry. Sarah McCarthy and Angelia Lane, both graduate students in the Conservation Leadership Through Learning program at CSU, advised by team member Jennifer Solomon, Assistant Professor of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, will collaborate with Ya’axché, carrying out research to understand the impacts of agroforestry in the Qe’qchi community of Indian Creek in the Maya Golden Landscape.

The Maya Golden Landscape, an ecologically important corridor in Southern Belize, is home to over 20 indigenous Qe’qchi Maya farming communities who rely on services provided by these functioning ecosystems. This project will critically analyze two sustainable farming techniques, agroforestry and inga alley cropping, to assess the extent to which they maintain biodiversity and the perceived benefits of agroforestry in the community of Indian Creek.

Cary will identify specific funding, financing, and workforce development opportunities for energy efficiency and renewable energy in rural Colorado communities. Due to lack of awareness and technical capacity, many communities do not take advantage of these opportunities. Rural Colorado communities that have taken advantage of these opportunities, however, have documented financial savings, economic stimulation, and environmental benefits. The Rural Community Energy Assessments project will screen three rural Colorado communities for these opportunities and provide outreach and technical assistance to facilitate implementation of energy efficiency and renewable energy measures. Partnerships with local governments, utilities, chambers of commerce, realtor associations, and others will be formed to accomplish project goals.

Heidi will collaborate with Colorado State University (CSU) faculty, Drs. Sarah Reed and Liba Pejchar on her project. The purpose of the project is to facilitate a workshop that will generate land-use planning tools and deliver these tools to targeted communities in the Northern New York that are poised to protect critical natural resources and support local livelihoods dependent on forestry, agriculture, tourism and recreation. The resulting tools will incorporate design standards for enhancing private lands conservation and sustaining communities for people and wildlife. Project outcomes will be jointly presented to five demonstration communities in New York State and disseminated via the Global Challenges Research Team (GCRT) on Conservation Development. CSU collaborators will contribute to the workshop design and work closely with Heidi on communicating project results more broadly through regional conferences, social media outlets, and local networks the collaborators have collectively established with town and county governments, planners, state agencies, and citizens’ groups across the U.S.

This project seeks to understand the strengths, weaknesses, and possibilities afforded when reclaimed water is used for edible crops for human consumption in Colorado. Reclaimed water is a largely untapped and valuable water resource with the potential to increase access to healthy food, promote water conservation and stewardship, and drive economic development for farmers, urban gardeners and greenhouse growers. Extensive partnerships and community-based participatory research will inform the case studies and the final report resulting from this fellowship.

Their project will work closely with two Native Alaskan youth in Alaska’s Yukon Flats, cataloguing local knowledge and perceptions about environmental changes occurring across the region, important ecosystem services provided by the landscape and threats posed to indigenous life-ways. Through collaboration and shared learning between local communities, wilderness advocates, scientific researchers and land managers, this project ultimately seeks to understand the environmental changes witnessed by Native Alaskans, the challenges they face, and the opportunities that exist to protect the ecological integrity of the Yukon Flats and local subsistence livelihoods. This project also provides a platform for native communities to have their voices heard by land managers and policymakers. Finally, this project will offer technical training and capacity building for participating local youth and provide important findings to be incorporated into a long-term, statewide project proposal.

The goal of Rekha’s research is to help design sustainable strategies for the prevention and mitigation of human wildlife conflict (HWC) in a human dominated conservation landscape. The study site is a globally significant tiger conservation area in northern India known as the Central Terai Landscape (CTL). In this landscape, HWC in the vicinity of protected areas is currently undermining tiger recovery efforts. To achieve the project goal, Rekha will collect and integrate data on the ecological and social dimensions of human wildlife interactions that result in real and perceived conflict in the CTL. The study will be carried out in collaboration with the State Forest Department and WWF, India, both of whom are engaged with long term conservation and conflict mitigation in the landscape. In conjunction with WWF, Rekha will produce a conflict mitigation plan and a conflict risk map for the CTL and also awareness posters for local communities. Besides generating these products, Rekha’s research will also help extend our current understanding of the conservation value of areas that lie beyond protected area boundaries in the CTL.

Michael is collaborating with former Collaborative Conservation Fellow David Jessup of the Sylvan Dale Guest Ranch regarding a 40-year lease situation in which Spring Kite Farm’s vegetable CSA and pasture-based livestock enterprises would be integrated into Sylvan Dale’s intensively-planned grazing system for beef cattle, building fertility through multi-species grazing. The fellowship will assist Michael and the team at Sylvan Dale Guest Ranch as they enter a 1-year “pilot” lease term in 2015 to prepare the vegetable fields and begin a planned renovation of a 10-acre pasture using Michael’s pastured heritage-breed hogs and chickens to disturb the current fescue grass and replace with more productive pasture species.