About Jim

Jim Barborak is Co-Director of the Center for Protected Area Management and Training at Colorado State University. His B.S. and M.S. in natural resources are from Ohio State University. His specialties include protected areas and corridor planning and management, wildlife management, conservation finance, policy and governance, capacity building, and ecotourism. Since he began his international career as a Peace Corps volunteer with the Honduran Wildlife Department, he has worked in over 25 countries throughout the Americas for CI, WCS, IUCN, WWF, CATIE, the Costa Rican Park Service, on USAID funded programs, on joint initiatives with USFS and USNPS and as a consultant to the World Bank, IDB, UNDP, UNESCO, FAO and other entities. His academic experience includes work in undergraduate and grad programs at Idaho, Tulane, CATIE, the UN University for Peace, INCAE Business School, and CSU. He has long been interested in public-private partnerships for protected area management, most recently advising WWF Brazil and the Forest Foundation of Sao Paolo on development of concessions policy for Brazilian state and federal parks and working on a USAID project in Mozambique to design concessions policies for their protected area system. He is an active member of the World Commission on Protected Areas and serves on several of its specialist groups, including those on World Heritage, Tourism, and Capacity Building. He is a native English speaker, totally fluent in Spanish, and speaks conversational Portuguese.

CV

Interests

  • protected area planning
  • protected area management
  • sustainable tourism
  • wildlife conservation
  • connectivity conservation
  • buffer zone management
  • World Heritage
  • conservation finance
  • Latin America
  • capacity building
  • training
  • ecotourism
  • interpretation

Education

M.S., Regional Resource Planning and Development - The Ohio State University
Columbus, OH, 1976

B.S., Wildlife Management - The Ohio State University
Columbus, OH, 1975

Certifications

  • NAI Certified Interpretive Host and Trainer by NAI, 2016
  • CPR/AED/First Aid by , 2014

Memberships

  • World Commission on Protected Areas
  • Tropical Science Center
  • National Association for Interpretation
  • Society for Conservation Biology
  • George Wright Society

Web Links

CPAM Website