Jim Barborak

Director of the Center for Protected Area Management and Training, CSU

Mr. Jim Barborak is the Director of the Center for Protected Area Management and Training in the Warner College of Natural Resources at Colorado State University. He has his B.S. and M.S. degrees in natural resource management from Ohio State University and is a doctoral candidate at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. His areas of interest and expertise include protected area planning, finance, institutional strengthening, and capacity building, as well as buffer zone and conservation corridor design and management, ecotourism, and wildlife conservation. Jim has worked throughout the western hemisphere in over 20 countries as a conservation trainer, project designer and evaluator, fundraiser, and protected area planner and strategist.

Before joining CSU in 2009, he served four years as the coordinator of the Protected Area and Conservation Corridor Unit for Conservation International’s Mexico and Central America program and, before that, held a similar regional post for many years for the Wildlife Conservation Society. Earlier in his career he was a Peace Corps volunteer with the Honduras wildlife department and held a series of positions with organizations including the Costa Rica National Park Service, the Tropical Agricultural Research and Training Center (CATIE), International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and World Wildlife Federation (WWF).

He has taught at a number of universities, including CATIE, University of Idaho, Tulane University, the University for Peace, and INCAE Business School. He has served as a consultant to the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations Development Programme, UNESCO, and on a number of USAID and Global Environment Facility projects. He is an active member of the World Commission on Protected Areas, the Tropical Science Center, and the Mesoamerican Society for Biology and Conservation. Jim is an avid outdoorsman. His favorite meal is gallo pinto con huevos fritos y tortillas calientes, and he is making a major effort to improve his Portuguese fluency and expand his vegetable garden this year.