CNHP Staff Teach CSU Graduate Students Field Biology Skills

This week CNHP staff members, along with CSU professor Tara Teel, spent a day in the field with graduate students from the Conservation Leadership Through Learning Program. The CLTL is an innovative graduate program that teaches students how to confront conservation challenges and sustainability from a variety of perspectives. This year’s student cohorts are wrapping up their second semester at CSU, and will spend the last two semesters of their graduate work in either Belize or Africa.

Conservation Leadership Through Learning graduate students learn how to sample vegetation plots at Coyote Ridge Natural Area, Fort Collins.

Close-up of greater short-horned lizard at Coyote Ridge Natural Area.

CNHP staff members Pam Smith and Susan Panjabi, along with Director Dave Anderson and City of Fort Collins Natural Areas Department Botanist, taught CLTL students basic field biology skills at Pine Ridge and Coyote Ridge Natural Areas in Fort Collins. These included how to use a GPS to navigate to points, how to set up and survey different types of transects to study plants and animals. The students will use these field skills to design similar studies in Belize and Africa.

A CLTL graduate student holds a greater short-horned lizard.