The College of Natural Resources

University of Idaho’s College of Natural Resources (CNR) is consistently ranked in the top 10 natural resources colleges by USA Today. It is one of the longest-standing disciplines at the University of Idaho (UIdaho), as it was founded in 1909 as the College of Forestry. CNR offers over $400k in college-level scholarships per year, and it currently has the largest natural resources graduate program in the U.S. UIdaho was the first institution in the U.S. to have a bachelor's degree in Fire Science and it is still the only institution to house a wildfire combustion laboratory. 

CNR is known for its hands-on programs and many opportunities for undergraduate and graduate research. Experiential learning is a priority for CNR, which results in students getting out and into the subjects they’re studying through field courses, community projects, research, and lab experiences. Every CNR student has the option to conduct research and participate in internships. No other natural resources college has the range of research and learning environments found at the University of Idaho, including 10,000+ acres of Experimental Forests, the McCall Field Campus in the Idaho Rockies, Taylor Wilderness Research Station in the largest wilderness area in the lower 48, the 17-acre Center for Forest Nursery and Seedling Research and Pitkin commercial nursery facility, and 10,000+ acres of working rangelands at Rinker Rock Creek Ranch in southern Idaho. There are also many cutting-edge facilities, such as the iFire combustion laboratory, U of I Drone Laboratory, Hagerman Fish Culture Experiment Station in southern Idaho, Bouse Water Center and Reveley Geospatial Laboratory for Environmental Dynamics. 

Degrees offered in CNR are listed below. 

Department of Fish and Wildlife Sciences: 

• Fishery Resources

• Wildlife Resources

• Conservation Biology

Department of Forest, Rangeland and Fire Sciences: 

• Fire Ecology & Management

• Forest & Sustainable Products

• Forestry

• Ecology & Ecosystem Science

• Rangeland Ecology & Management

Department of Natural Resources and Society: 

• Natural Resources Enterprise Management

• Environmental Science

Information for this blog post was procured from the College of Natural Resources webage: https://www.uidaho.edu/cnr

Written by: Kayla Hickey-Smith