Center For Protected Area Management and Training



CPAMT News

Top-down, command-control approaches to protected area management are being supplanted around the globe by more participatory processes involving a range of stakeholders in planning and managing parks and reserves. The state park system of Sao Paolo, Brazil, is no exception. The state government is using the upcoming World Cup and Summer Olympics to justify creation of expanded recreational and tourism opportunities in its state protected area system for the benefit of both its 50 million citizens, along with national and international tourists. Rather than use a government run, top-down approach to expanding recreational opportunities in the state park system, Sao Paolo plans on partnering with the private sector, particularly entrepreneurs from local communities around its parks, to manage these services. As part of ongoing work on institutional options for improving protected area management, Jim Barborak, of Colorado State University and the Warner College of Natural Resources, and the Center for Protected Area Management and Training was invited by WWF Brazil and the state government of Sao Paolo in April to a planning workshop on tourism concessions in protected areas in Sao Paolo in April of this year. Barborak presented results of a comparative analysis that presented a comparison of how California, the "Sao Paolo" of U.S. states, manages concessions in its state park system.

George Wallace

Dr. George Wallace was honored by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature with the World Commission on Protected Area's Fred Packard Award. The Packard Award goes to individuals that have made outstanding contributions to protected areas worldwide.

George Wallace has devoted his career to capacity building for protected areas (PA) through his teaching, research, writing, training, graduate students and by personal example. He is a long-standing WCPA member and is currently a Professor for the Center for Protected Area Management and Training at Colorado State University. This Center has improved the capacity of thousands of protected area professionals in the Americas through training courses, technical assistance, materials development and university teaching over a 25-year period. Examples include a well known five week intensive field course for Latin American managers - now in its 20th year - as well as two decades of in-country PA training courses and technical assistance. He has helped establish PA training centers in the US, Brazil and Mexico, as well as developing many new PA courses, degree programs and cooperative studies programs.

George assisted with the development and delivery of capacity-building streams for IUCN World Parks Congresses in Caracas (1992) and Durban (2003). He is one of the founders of the Consortium for International Protected Area Management involving the US Forest Service, the Universities of Idaho, Montana and Colorado State and other partners. His university teaching, research and outreach have produced many committed PA professionals, management innovations, and have heightened awareness about the importance of landscape level conservation planning.

At a personal level he has lead by example, slowly restored a badly degraded farm over 36 years which has won several awards for the mix of agriculture, wetlands, wildlife habitat and education it now provides. George has made an enormous contribution to capacity building for protected areas, both in the Americas and globally.

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