NTRES 6350 - Planning for Environmental Conservation and Sustainability

(CU-SBY)

Fall. 3 credits. Student option grading (no audit).

Co-meets with ENVS 4600/NTRES 4600.

T.B. Lauber.

An interactive course designed to provide students with experience applying some of the most important techniques that are used to develop plans to protect and sustain valuable environmental resources, such as species, ecosystems, land, and water. The class focuses on highly charged controversies over conservation, and students learn how planning can help them to identify and address the full range of ecological and social factors that lead to conservation success in these contexts. Students adopt the roles of stakeholders and work on intensive case studies of conservation issues, learning how ecological and social insight are integrated for effective conservation planning. Topics covered in the course include rational planning, adaptive management, stakeholder engagement, and conflict resolution.

Outcome 1: Students will learn to define conservation issues, develop plans (including goals, objectives, strategies, and actions) to address those issues, and identify potential positive and negative consequences of these plans.

Outcome 2: Students will be able to recognize and describe the range of ecological and social factors that influence the success of conservation efforts.

Outcome 3: Students will be able to identify and describe the stages of the planning process and learn how to carry out the activities that occur during these stages.

Outcome 4: For specific current issues in environmental conservation, students will recognize key stakeholder groups and be able to describe: these stakeholders’ interests and concerns, points of contention between different stakeholders, and possible strategies and actions for addressing these points of contention.

Outcome 5: Students will develop their written and oral communication skills.

Outcome 6: Students will develop their abilities to work individually and in groups.

Outcome 7: For graduate credit, students will compare and contrast different approaches to planning for environmental conservation decisions.

Outcome 8: For graduate credit, students will analyze the strengths and weaknesses of common approaches to conflict resolution.