Extension Programs
FER Home : Environmental Impact Assessment : Extension Programs
FER contributes its environmental impact assessment expertise to a number of extension and outreach programs sponsored by NC State University or state agencies. These activities help educate and inform the people of North Carolina — an important responsibility required by the University’s land grant mandate.
Our extension and outreach efforts in environmental impact assessment focus on teaching industry professionals and private citizens:
- How ecosystem structures and processes work;
- How human behavior can affect the environmental, economic and social health of communities;
- The sciences of measuring and monitoring natural resources;
- How to embed these considerations and techniques into their decision making;
- How to understand and comply with various government criteria involving the environment.
This information is disseminated beyond the University to the people and communities of North Carolina through the following extension and outreach programs:
- NC State Wildlife Extension provides citizens with information on wildlife identification, enhancement and damage control plus fisheries and aquatics advice. It also sponsors a variety of environmental education and wildlife protection programs and offers both general information and certification classes in many areas.
- NC State Fishery & Pond Management Extension provides complete information on how to build, stock and maintain healthy ponds plus info on regulations and other resources of interest to pond owners.
- Extension Forestry provides technical assistance, offers educational programs for adults and children, collates and disseminates research results and offers many other useful resources to all North Carolina citizens involved in forestry, including programs centered around wildlife management. Services are provide through N.C.’s 100 County Extension Centers as well as the Cherokee Indian Reservation Center.
- FER’s Forestry & Environmental Outreach Program offers courses, workshops, conferences and seminars involving management issues for forestry and natural resource professionals on both a non-credit and continuing education credit basis. It also educates the general public, professionals, landowners, public and private land managers.
- Project Learning Tree Project (PLT) is an award-winning environmental education program designed for students in pre-kindergarten through grade 12. It offers workshops and in-service programs for teachers, environmental educators and youth leaders and advocates a unique curriculum that uses trees as a “window” to promote an awareness of the world, including natural resource management and the role GIS can play within it.
- International Forestry and Conservation promotes international faculty exchanges, student participation in global research projects and courses in relevant topics. It offers research grants to students, and works with a wide variety of worldwide organizations in pursuing such international research topics as tropical forest conservation and economic development and sustainability for developing countries.
- The Southern Center for Sustainable Forests, a cooperative organization comprised of FER faculty and staff, Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences and the North Carolina Division of Forest Resources. The Southern Center provides leadership for research, education and extension that promotes economically and ecologically sustainable management of forests in the South.
