2026 Ecosymposium
Public Lands in Public Hands for the Public Good:
Engaging law, policy, and advocacy to protect our shared natural heritage
Saturday, April 4, 2026, 9 am-3 pm
The Avalon Ballroom, 6185 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder
(Please note the new location!!)
This image— a grandmother teaching her grandson to fish—highlights just a few of the many benefits offered by public lands and waters: opportunities to have fun, gather food, teach and learn, share time with family, relax and reflect in nature. Such opportunities for humans are only possible when public lands sustain and protect healthy ecosystems. While the image invokes nostalgia, it also reminds us that public support for public lands is robust across time and across the political spectrum. In Boulder County, we cherish time in our local forests, riparian areas, grasslands, and our access to many parks and trails. So we often take for granted that public lands are a shared good—a reservoir of natural and cultural bounty held by government for the benefit of current and future generations.
Yet today we face unprecedented challenges to this understanding, as the federal government and its corporate sponsors mount a relentless assault on federal public lands. Recent executive actions have cut funding, fired and demoralized staff, halted agencies’ work to protect and restore resources, selectively repressed facts and narratives integral to our nation’s history, and reduced the decision-making roles of scientific expertise and public input. Nor are state and local lands immune to pressures to sanitize history and roll back conservation protections to favor economic or recreation uses. Conservation advocates are called now to protect public lands from dangers that emanate from within the government itself.
Speakers in this symposium will celebrate our public lands and help us see more clearly the risks and opportunities in this new landscape, so we can think soundly and respond appropriately. They will address questions such as, What are the public interests in public lands? Whose voices count in shaping the fate of our public lands, and how do we ensure that all voices are heard? When the government holds the land and resources, who keeps the government accountable to the people? And when the public interests in public lands are threatened, what can we do? Together we will strengthen our understanding of current issues in policy, law and management of our public lands, learn about efforts to protect what we have, and build our courage and our toolkits for effective public lands advocacy.
Program
9:00 am Introductions and welcome
9:20 am Chris Winter – today’s legal landscape for public lands
10:15 am Coffee break
10:35 am Erin Robertson – poetry from the land
10:45 am JD Tanner – impacts on Front Range public lands
11:05 am Adam Auerbach – impacts on the national parks, RMNP and beyond
11:30 am Discussion with JD Tanner and Adam Auerbach
11:50 pm Lunch
1:00 pm Kathryn Hahne – public support for public lands
1:45 pm Karen Wilde, Brooke Neely – Native American voices on public lands
2:45 pm Closing & evaluations
3:00 pm Adjourn
Speakers
Chris Winter, executive director, Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment, University of Colorado Law School.
Chris is an environmental lawyer with 30 years of experience working to protect public lands across the country. In 2001, he founded a public interest environmental law center in Portland, Oregon, and has litigated dozens of successful cases at all levels of the federal court system. Chris now runs an environmental law research institute at Colorado Law School and supports the next generation of leaders in the field of conservation. Chris is a veteran of many successful conservation campaigns protecting iconic landscapes like Bears Ears National Monument, the Columbia River Gorge, the Arctic Ocean, and the Tongass National Forest.
Erin Robertson, poet, nature writing teacher, and explorer, erinrobertson.org.
Erin Robertson (erinrobertson.org) teaches outdoor nature writing classes in Boulder County (@bocowildwriters) and serves as Writer in Residence for Friends of Coal Creek. Her award-winning poetry has been performed by choirs and published in the North American Review, Cold Mountain Review, Poet Lore, Deep Wild, and elsewhere. She has been an artist in residence with the U.S. Consulate in Kazakhstan, Koyukuk National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, and Boulder County’s Caribou Ranch, and has published two books of poems. Erin studied botany and environmental interpretation at CU Boulder and worked as a conservation biologist in the Rocky Mountain West for 9 years. She lives in Louisville with her remarkable husband, two sons, parakeet, and pup, who teach her about wonder every day.
JD Tanner, Executive Director, NoCo Places, https://www.nocoplaces.com
JD Tanner, EdD, CPRE, serves as the Executive Director for NoCo Places, a part of Colorado’s Regional Partnership Initiative. He coordinates the collaboration of nine public land agencies working to advance conservation and outdoor recreation across Northern Colorado. With 26 years of experience in nonprofit leadership, public engagement, and communications strategy, JD focuses on strengthening interagency coordination, common messaging, data-informed decision-making, and on-the-ground programming. He brings a systems-level perspective to public lands challenges, with experience supporting partnerships that span federal, state, and local jurisdictions. Through his work with NoCo Places, JD maintains close relationships with land managers across the region and tracks emerging policy and management trends affecting public lands.
Adam Auerbach, former ranger at Rocky Mountain National Park; Founder & Principal, Colorado Public Lands Advocacy & Conservation Expertise (CO-PLACE), LLC.
Adam Auerbach is a public lands advocacy leader as a former ranger at Rocky Mountain National Park. Adam believes deeply in the power and promise of public lands and has worked for local, state, and federal public lands agencies in Colorado as well as aligned nonprofits. Today Adam supports clients in advocating for public lands and promoting their stewardship and public enjoyment. Adam is also a pro bono grassroots public lands organizer, media presence, and spokesperson.
Kathryn Hahne, New Bridge Strategy
Kathryn Hahne is a Director at New Bridge Strategy, an opinion research company specializing in public policy and campaign research. She has worked across the U.S. and statewide on political, public affairs, and ballot measure campaigns on tax policy, conservation and land use, education, health care, and more. Kathryn co-directs Colorado College’s long-running State of the Rockies project, a public non-partisan survey, and teaches about survey research and polling for the University of Virginia, her alma mater. She also has an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She lives in Denver where she hikes, skis, and volunteers for Girls on the Run.
Brooke Neely, senior research fellow, Center of the American West; faculty affiliate, Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies, University of Colorado Boulder.
Brooke Neely is a researcher at the Center of the American West and a faculty affiliate at the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies at CU Boulder. Her interdisciplinary research and teaching focuses on public history, community engagement, and belonging in the western United States. She edited and contributed to the book National Parks, Native Sovereignty: Experiments in Collaboration (with Christina Gish Hill and Matthew Hill, U. Oklahoma Press, 2024). Neely holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California Santa Barbara and a B.A. in sociology from Whitman College. She loves chasing her family and dog around the public lands in Boulder County.
Karen Wilde, Muscogee (Creek) & Pawnee, Native American-American Indian Relations Manager, Boulder County.
Karen Wilde has years of experience in Native American/American Indian relations. She served as Tribal Liaison for the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site under the National Park Service (NPS) and as Tribal Relations Specialist for the US Forest Service at Mark Twain National Forest. While at the NPS, she coordinated active engagement with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, both Northern and Southern, and worked on nationwide protections for Sacred Sites. She has held several gubernatorial appointments in Colorado and now works in a newly created Native American relations role in Boulder County. Karen is a first-generation college graduate, holding a paralegal certificate and Master of Jurisprudence in Indian Law. She is a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and a proud citizen of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma.
More to come soon!