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Minor in Recreation Resources and Protected Area Management

This minor provides students with the opportunity to combine visitor management with protected area management. Understanding the need to balance the opportunity for visitor experiences with protecting and stewarding protected areas provides professional insight into planning and managing those areas for limited visitor access. Understanding the motivations, preferences, and behavior of recreational users is necessary to integrate the human dimensions into protected area management with consideration of the social and environmental factors related to such management. Protected area managers need to be able to manage both the resource itself as well as a wide variety of users, such as campers, hikers, bird watchers, boaters, nature photographers and others who enjoy nature-based experiences in extensive protected area environments owned by public agencies, private landowners, or NGOs.

Admission to the minor requires students to have completed a general ecology course (e.g., EFB 320 General Ecology, which is a prerequisite for EFB 416), a cumulative grade point average of 2.750 or better after one semester at ESF (or as a transfer student with same standing), and permission of the Forest & Natural Resources Management chair and undergraduate education coordinator (via petition).

Students from all programs at ESF are eligible for this minor if they have completed a general ecology course and have a cumulative grade point average of 2.750 or better in their major program of study after one semester at ESF (or as a transfer student with same standing). Overlap between the minor and both one required course and one directed elective for a student’s major is permitted; other courses taken for the minor can not overlap with the major. Permission of the Forest & Natural Resources Management Chair and Undergraduate Education Coordinator (via petition) is required.

This interdisciplinary minor requires 15 credits and includes the following courses taught at ESF in the Departments of Forest and Natural Resources Management and Environmental and Forest Biology:

Required Courses (9 credits)

Required independent study or internship (3 credits)

One of the following management/protected area courses (3 credits)