Emily Barbo

Symposium Speaker: Citlali Cortés Montaño

June 22, 2023

The Salazar Center is proud to announce that Dr. Citlali Cortés Montaño will be joining us Denver, Colorado, for the fifth-annual International Symposium on Conservation Impact.

Citlali has worked in ecology, management, and conservation in México for over 20 years. Since 2015, she has served as the senior sector coordinator for the México office of KfW (the German Development Bank) in biodiversity and forestry. Citlali’s work keeps her connected with community-based conservation and the management of biodiversity and ecosystems.

She has a Ph.D. in Forest Science from Northern Arizona University, and her dissertation focused on old-growth habitats and their relationships to wildfire. Her research has helped to provide a new depiction of fire regimes in the Sky Islands that can help inform fire management, restoration, and regional conservation planning, fostered by local and traditional knowledge and collaboration among landowners and managers.

A major impact of climate change, very evident in recent news, is the increase in the frequency of large fires. In her paper, “Climate Change, Forests and Fire in the Southwestern US and Northern Mexico”, Citlali collaborated with Dr. Don Falk to compare forests and forest management in the Southwest United States and Northwest Mexico.

Additional Research

Contemporary Fire Regimes Provide a Critical Perspective on Restoration Needs in the Mexico-United States Borderlands

Emily Barbo

Symposium Speaker: Shaun O’Rourke

June 21, 2023

The Salazar Center is proud to announce that Shaun O’Rourke will be joining us in Denver, Colorado for the fifth-annual International Symposium on Conservation Impact.

Shaun is a Director on the Water Climate and Finance Team at Quantified Ventures (QV) focused on accelerating nature-based solution projects through innovative funding and financing approaches. He has more than 15 years of climate leadership in the public, private, non-profit, and academic sectors. Prior to joining QV, he was the Managing Director at Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank and was appointed by Governor Raimondo as the state’s first Chief Resilience Officer. In this role, he led the development and implementation of the climate resilience action strategy, Resilient Rhody. The strategy resulted in over $45 million in new, dedicated funding for climate resilience projects during the first four years. Shaun worked closely with Rhode Island’s congressional delegation and state legislature to advocate for priority projects and direct federal funds for clean energy and climate resilience projects.

Additionally, Shaun has served as the National Green Infrastructure Director at The Trust for Public Land and Director of Sustainable Design and faculty member at the Boston Architectural College.

He is passionate about working with municipalities, counties, and states to accelerate implementation of nature-based solutions to solve multiple problems at once. He and his family live in Northern Vermont and in his free time, Shaun can be found playing in the mountains.

The Water and Climate Finance team at QV partners with communities and organizations from all sectors to deliver clean water, climate mitigation, and community resilience solutions to improve the wellbeing of people and planet. They work with their clients to identify and secure capital to catalyze and scale environmental infrastructure and nature-based solution projects.

Emily Barbo

Symposium Speaker: Gwen Bridge

June 20, 2023

The Salazar Center is proud to announce that Gwen Bridge will be joining us in Denver, Colorado for the fifth-annual International Symposium on Conservation Impact.

Gwen is a member of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation and has been working for over 20 years with First Nations, all levels of government, and the private and nonprofit sectors, across North America, developing relationships and strategies that advance reconciliation. She has been negotiating initiatives and advising on strategy and policy that recognize and implement Indigenous Knowledge, such as in the proposed South Okanagan Similkameen National Park Reserve.

Gwen is advising the BC government on how to better consider indigenous knowledge in collaborative land use planning and forestry related climate change considerations. Support to local governments includes developing strategies and principles for becoming “Cities of Reconciliation” and advising on climate change policy and economic development engagement strategies. Indigenous-led conservation focuses recently include the smelqmix Protected Area and caribou habitat conservation advancement in the territory of the Okanagan Nation Alliance. Advancing an understanding of the ecological, economic and equity-based partnership mechanisms to support our collective reconciliation agenda through training is a recent focus. Other clients include First Nations and First Nation organizations, Parks Canada, US National Parks Service, National Geographic Society, other nonprofits, regional and municipal governments including Metro Vancouver, other consulting firms, the University of Washington, Blue Quills University, BC Ministries of: Environment, Indigenous Relationships and Reconciliation, Forests, and Land, Water and Resource Stewardship.

Gwen is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Forestry at UBC. Gwen has a Master of Science in Forest Hydrology from the University of Alberta.