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Media Relations

SPEA students take part in nationwide review of state wildlife plans

Capstone classes in the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs are designed to allow students to bring together what they've learned and apply their skills and knowledge to real-world issues and problems.

Students in SPEA Associate Professor Vicky Meretsky's master's-level capstone seminar last fall did that and more. They worked with teams from seven other universities on a study of the implementation of Wildlife Action Plans in all 50 states and six U.S. territories.

"It's been a fun project -- and it's gotten SPEA better visibility," said Meretsky, a conservation biologist whose research interests include rare and endangered species and the study and management of ecosystems in Indiana and the American West.

The 11 students in the IU capstone class worked on nine states in the Midwest region, reviewing their Wildlife Action Plans and interviewing state wildlife managers and representatives of stakeholder groups.

The nationwide project documented the variety of approaches -- some more ambitious and some more effective than others -- that states and regions have taken to developing and implementing wildlife plans. It will result in a report to the National Council for Science and the Environment, which funded the project, and papers for publication in academic journals on environmental policy.

Three students from the IU class, Katarina Topalov, Carissa Ilg and Shanna Scott, will join Meretsky in late January and early February for a conference in Santa Barbara, Calif., at which participants will assess what they learned and plan for publications.

Also involved in the project, called a distributed graduate seminar, were environmental science and policy programs at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Idaho, Duke University, Texas A&M University-Kingsville, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the University of Michigan and Northern Arizona University.

"It was just a really great course," said Ilg, a student from Chicago who will graduate this spring with a Master of Science in Environmental Science degree. "It's not often that such a valuable opportunity presents itself to interact with professionals in the field and with faculty and your peers at other institutions."

Congress mandated the states and territories to develop Wildlife Action Plans that established goals and objectives for protecting wildlife and conserving habitat. The plans were to be completed by 2005. But until the university project, there had been limited follow-up to see how states were going about implementing their plans, Meretsky said.

The effort began in the spring semester of 2007 with a pilot project that involved IU and three other universities. Faculty and some students met in May in Santa Barbara to go over what worked and what didn't and to refine their research methods.

The fall seminar at IU included SPEA students from both the Master of Public Administration and the Master of Science in Environmental Science degree programs. That provided both policy and science perspectives for the analysis of the state plans, Meretsky said. It forced students to "work across lines" and learn from each other.

The IU group worked on Wildlife Action Plans from Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin, with each student having a chance to be involved with plans from at least four states. The SPEA team coordinated its efforts with those of the other universities, communicating by e-mail and conference calls.

While the project provided learning opportunities for students, Meretsky said it will also help state professionals in wildlife and habitat management, such as those in the Wildlife Diversity Section of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. By pointing to the variety of approaches and identifying "best practices," she said, the project will help states improve the implementation of their plans and do a better job of collaborating with stakeholders.

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