• Climate Adaptation Workshop

    Aligning management interventions with climate change adaptation in western forests.

    October 8-10, 2025 


  • Fellowship Opportunities

    Through partnerships with agencies and organizations, the Center for Public Lands provides fellowships for students in Western’s Environmental Management, Ecology, and Environment & Sustainability programs.

  • Headwaters Conference 2025

    Join us for the 36th annual Headwaters Conference and the tenth anniversary of the Master’s in Environmental Management.

    November 7-8, 2025

  • EMPLOYS Students

    Learn more about the students leading the way in bridging management and ecology in the 2025 EMPLOYS program.

The Center for
Public Lands

Western Colorado University is a community of thoughtful future leaders who have come together from diverse fields to share expertise and collaborate on thorny public lands and natural resources challenges.

Recent Events

We work closest with Western’s MS in Ecology and Master in Environmental Management degrees.

Our goal is to complement student academic requirements by providing structured workforce training and applied project opportunities with a variety of employers such public lands agencies or non-profits.

Western faculty and Center for Public Lands staff have cultivated a network of partners excited to work with students on immersive, applied projects.

Student projects have included working with remote cameras to monitor and study backcountry winter recreation patterns to help the community of Crested Butte better understand recreation use patterns, or monitor invasive species in designated wilderness areas for the U.S. Forest to improving carbon sequestration on private rangelands.