Emerging issue forums
Emerging Issue Forums are a chance to get ahead of an emerging natural resource issue in Wyoming. "Emerging" can include issues that we've never encountered before, issues about which we've learned something new that changes the way we think about, or issues in which there is renewed interested in engaging. Held annually in late April, the forums bring together stakeholders and decision-makers to jump-start collaboration, providing space for the crosspollination of ideas and solutions. Contact Emerging Issues Initiative coordinator Birch Malotky at bmalotky@uwyo.edu to learn more.
Collaboration symposia
The Collaboration Symposia are run in conjunction with the Collaboration Program in Natural Resources (CPNR). Held annual in early to mid-April, the symposia bring together collaboration practitioners to connect, learn, and identify opportunities to work together, and to discuss a timely and relevant issue in the world of natural resource collaboration in the West.
Past events
View agendas, slides, reports, and more from past forums and workshops.
This forum explored the role of state trust lands in Wyoming's present and future. Over two days, participants built a shared understanding of state trust land's unique responsibility to benefit public institutions and considered the potential of new and emerging uses to provide additional revenue streams while generating value for Wyoming's citizens.
The 2025 Collaboration Symposium brought together friends and alumni from the Collaboration Program in Natural Resources in a day-long exploration of natural resource and environmental leadership in a moment of uncertainty, rapid change, and increased polarization. Attendees connected with colleagues, mentors, and peers while taking time to cultivate some individual and collective skills and frameworks and learning about examples where people were able to connect across big divides to solve hard problems.
The 2024 Collaboration Symposium explored the many shades and shapes that natural resource collaboration takes in the real world, created space to learn from each other’s successes and failures, and was a fond farewell to Ruckelshaus legend Steve Smutko, who retired in May.
On April 26-27, 2023 the Ruckelshaus Institute, the Wyoming Outdoor Recreation, Tourism, and Hospitality (WORTH) Initiative, and the Wyoming Outdoor Recreation Office convened stakeholders, managers, policy-makers, and interest groups in Laramie, WY for a forum exploring how Wyoming communities can balance the benefits and impact of growing outdoor recreation and tourism—economically, culturally, and environmentally.
The key takeaway was that there is broad, measured support for outdoor recreation development in Wyoming; people are excited about what they have, but concerned about what it might become. Complexity, collaboration, and community also arose as major themes of the forum discussions.
The 2023 Collaboration Symposium explored possibilities and challenges of collaborative approaches to solving water challenges in various sectors and at various scales, while providing an opportunity for collaborative practitioners and professionals to connect, learn, and identify opportunities to work together. Topics included Tribal water rights, Colorado River Compact negotiations, climate impacts, the water-energy nexus, and watershed collaboratives.
View the full agenda with speaker bios
View a webinar by Anne MacKinnon on the fundamentals of water in Wyoming
In the fall of 2020, the Mullen Fire burned more than 170,000 acres in and around the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest just west of Laramie, Wyoming. In addition, it consumed 63 structures, around half of which were homes, and forced the communities of Albany, Keystone, Lake Creek, Miller Lake, Fox Park, and Foxborough to evacuate. Those living in Laramie at the time might recall the yellowed skies, the advisories to stay inside, and the ash falling from the sky. It was shared experience, one that made the idea of living with wildfire very real. For some, it may have been the first time climate change felt personal.
Two years later, Mullen Days used art, science, and other ways of knowing to create a community-centered space to process, grieve, learn, and re-imagine what living with fire means. The event included a film, interactive booths, a panel, a storytelling event, and a hike through the burn.
View the event page and make your own "Wildflowers of the Burn" zine
This symposium celebrating Yellowstone's sesquicentennial featured prominent figures from the National Park Service and elsewhere within the Department of the Interior—including Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly—as well as from numerous Yellowstone-associated Native American tribes. They were joined by a host of academics, scholars, scientists, and other participants.
The historic event explored the goals, successes, and shortcomings of the park over the past 150 years, and looked to the future to examine key issues it now faces. Keynote speakers and panels discussed wide-ranging topics, including tribal connections to Yellowstone, federal-tribal co-management, art and social engagement, wildlife management across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, unprecedented visitation and economic development within the tourism and recreation sector, and large-landscape conservation.
For the 2022 Collaboration Symposium, Tribes, agencies, companies, and NGO's came together to empower, educate, uplift, and bridge cultural and institutional gaps to achieve a better understanding around how we manage our shared lands and resources. Together, they explored the connections between cultures and people, between legal systems and human relationships, and between treaties and creative solutions.
On the birthday of our founding board chairman, the Ruckelshaus Institute held a small gathering in the back garden of our building to dedicate a Douglas fir, his favorite tree, to Bill Ruckelshaus. In addition to our faculty and staff, several people who were instrumental to launching the Ruckelshaus Institute and who worked closely with Bill in Wyoming and beyond shared their thoughts and remembrances, including this contribution from Michael Kern, Director of the William D. Ruckelshaus Center at the University of Washington and Washington State University.
Other special guests included Harold Bergman, Director of the Ruckelshaus Institute and Haub School of ENR, 1998-2008; Ann Boelter, Ruckelshaus Institute Research Scientist, 1995-2008; John Ehrmann, Senior Partner at the Meridian Institute; William Gern, Director of the Institute for Environment and Natural Resources, 1995-1998; Diana Hulme, Assistant Director of the Ruckelshaus Institute, 2001-2010; and Rich Innes, Senior Fellow at Meridian Institute.
Ruckelshaus Day is a chance to both remember the founding of our institute and our original purpose and ambitions, as well as look to the future and consider how we can apply Bill’s experience, foresight, and ideals to the challenges we and our students will face in the coming years and decades.
Learn more about Bill Ruckelshaus and the founding of the institute
The 2020 Collaboration Symposium brought together collaborative leaders and practitioners for shared learning, networking, and expanding collaborative capacity in Wyoming and the West. Topics included the Cody Regional Cutthroat Trout Collaborative, lessons from the Wyoming Public Lands Initiative, water policy and management in Wyoming, and a mini workshop on conflict resolution and transformation.
Since the enactment of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1973, wildlife conservation has evolved to include more robust science, greater public involvement, and expanding partnerships. However, the ways state and federal managers work together hasn't evolved at the same pace. A more proactive approach to encourage, promote, and assist states in implementing conservation is overdue.
In May 2019, the University of Wyoming's Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources and College of Law, along with Texas A&M University's Natural Resources Institute and School of Law, convened a workshop that brought together 22 federal ESA and state wildlife conservation experts to re-imagine the state-federal relationship and discuss opportunities for states to engage more meaningfully in species conservation efforts.
An incredible discussion transpired. The participants challenged existing norms of species conservation and developed innovative ideas, resulting in a series of agreements in principle that state and federal agencies can collaboratively take to improve species conservation on the ground.
View the workshop page, a summary of agreements in principle, and a full report
Two days of thoughtful discussion—convened by the Ruckelshaus Institute and the Center for Energy, Economics, and Public Policy—addressed opportunities, challenges, and tradeoffs around wind energy development in Wyoming. Wyoming Treasurer Mark Gordon kicked off the conference and President of Rocky Mountain Power, Cindy Crane, gave a keynote lunch presentation. Panel discussions and other presentations explored state, national, and global energy trends; wind energy technology and an evolving western energy grid; impacts and opportunities of wind development for Wyoming and its communities; perspectives from wind developers; values, viewsheds, and western identity; environmental trade-offs, including impacts to wildlife, regulatory structures, planning and siting, and opportunities for public involvement.
Co-hosted by the Ruckelshaus Institute and the Wyoming Migration Initiative, this emerging issue forum addressed the science, policy, and people involved in conserving big game migrations. As animals like mule deer, pronghorn, and elk migrate between distant seasonal ranges, they traverse myriad jurisdictions and land ownership types, requiring managers to coordinate their efforts amid a diverse regulatory and policy landscape. The result is tremendous complexity, but also an opportunity to learn and collaborate.
The forum opened with the science of long-distance big game migrations, from a global to local perspective, then moved to the intersection of people, policy, and wildlife migration. Through interactive panel discussions with outfitters, landowners, non-profits, state and federal agency leaders, and others, presenters and audience members identified critical opportunities and gaps in public policy and private initiatives to further the management and conservation of big game migration in the West.
This 2014 Collaboration Symposium began with a one-day, interactive workshop in which participants learned how to organize collaborative processes that are decision-focused and engage the public in meaningful ways. Concepts and skill development centered on planning and organizing collaborative, community processes around contentious natural resource issues. The second day featured keynote speakers and concurrent sessions on the theme of place-based collaboration, with an emphasis on using collaboration to address natural resource challenges related to forests, wildlife, and oil-and-gas development.
The second UW Sustainability Summit highlighted the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified buildings on campus. The event kicked off with a panel of speakers discussing the successes and challenges of building "green" at 7200 ft, and presentations from the architects of UW's five LEED-certified buildings. Following the speakers, participants toured the Visual Arts Building, Bim Kendall House, Berry Biodiversity Conservation Center, and College of Business and enjoyed a four-course dinner of locally-sourced foods. Architects and UW representatives were on hand to explain the sustainable design features of each building.
The Ruckelshaus Institute and Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest hosted a series of speaker presentations and open houses about ways that forests in southeast Wyoming and northern Colorado were responding to the bark beetle outbreak. Each open house began with presentations from regional experts on forest ecology, the bark beetle outbreak, and management responses. Following the presentations, the public was able to speak individually with forest managers and ask questions about tools being applied to help accelerate forest restoration and other management decisions.
Watch a series of 10 short films that also investigate the story of bark beetles and western forests
This symposium brought together professionals interested in participating in or leading natural resource, collaborative efforts in Wyoming. They discussed lessons learned from past and present collaborative efforts, identified barriers and opportunities, and explored the needs to facilitate future efforts. Furthermore, participants met other individuals interested in collaborative problem solving in natural resource management. This was the first of regular forums that the Ruckelshaus Institute has hosted to enhance collaborative capacity in Wyoming.
Hosted by the Ruckelshaus Institute, The Stroock Forum on Wyoming Lands and People, and The Nature Conservancy, this emerging issue forum examined new, creative ways to fund conservation, including tools like conservation credits, mitigation banking, payment for ecosystem services, markets, and more. The forum began by building an informational foundation about a range of conservation finance tools, both established and emerging. Speakers shared real-world applications, success stories, and challenges using various conservation finance models in government and the private sector to inspire further practice of conservation finance in Wyoming. Finally, participants toured a proposed mitigation bank on the Pathfinder Ranch near Alcova.
The Ruckelshaus Institute presented a roundtable between Alan K. Simpson, William D. Ruckelshaus, and John F. Turner. In a conversation moderated by Wyoming Governor Michael J. Sullivan, these acclaimed natural resource leaders and collaborators spoke about the value of collaboration in natural resource management.
This forum, co-convened by the University of Wyoming's Ruckelshaus Institute and School of Energy Resources, responded to the significant increase at that time in hydraulic fracturing to recover oil and gas resources from unconventional geological formations. This increase spurred growth in domestic energy production and has also generated public concern about the potential of environmental impacts of the practice.
The forum aimed to answer the following key questions 1) What is hydraulic fracturing? 2) Why and where is it used in Wyoming oil and gas development? and 3) What are the potential environmental impacts associated with its use? The goal was to provide objective information to the public, media, and policymakers about the use of hydraulic fracturing in petroleum and natural gas development in Wyoming.
This workshop invited forest managers, scientists, and stakeholders to evaluate the current status of forests impacted by bark beetles and to discuss management approaches and policy implications. The bark beetle outbreak involved multiple species of bark beetles and tree hosts, and impacted millions of acres of forests in the Intermountain West. It also created then-unprecedented forest conditions that were likely outside the forestry experience of many resource managers and scientists. The workshop sought to understand if existing management approaches would be appropriate and effective in post-disturbance forests and what future forest conditions might be, as well as identify high-priority management areas.
View an annotated bibliography for natural resource managers
View a workshop report with key management and research ideas
Hosted by the University of Wyoming's Ruckelshaus Institute and School of Energy Resources, the conference featured presentation from industry professionals, researchers, and other stakeholders on the issue of coalbed methane and produced water. In particular, it looked at the potential impacts of produced water on water quality, regulatory frameworks, and, management options, in Wyoming and as far away as Australia.
