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Deputy Secretary of the Interior David J. Hayes today announced today the 2012 “Partners in Conservation” Awards to 17 organizations that have achieved exemplary conservation results through public-private cooperation and community engagement. Together, the 17 award recipients represent more than 700 individuals and organizations from across the United States.

University of Colorado's Center for Advanced Decision Support for Water and Environmental Systems, or CADSWES, was a winner of the Partners in Conservation Award as a contributor to the Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study, which was nominated as a model of collaboration for future watershed planning across the country. The seven Colorado River Basin States, the Bureau of Reclamation, and water users worked together to establish a common factual and technical foundation for resolving future water supply and demand imbalances. Reclamation technical staff who spearheaded this study are stationed at CADSWES and utilized some of the CADSWES decision support tools to accomplish the study. Dr. Edith Zagona and Bill Oakley attended the ceremony to accept the award for CADSWES.

"We are delighted to have been a part of this important study - probably the most comprehensive study of its kind to date," said Dr. Edith Zagona, Director of CADSWES. "The years of close collaboration between Reclamation and CADSWES positioned us to be able to provide the software that the Bureau of Reclamation team needed to organize and run the thousands of simulations required for the analysis."

The annual award ceremony is an opportunity for the Interior Department to recognize conservation achievements that include collaborative activity among a diverse range of entities, including federal, state, local and tribal governments, and individuals. 

“The Partners in Conservation Awards offer wonderful examples of how America’s greatest conservation legacies are created when communities from a wide range of backgrounds work together,” said Hayes, who announced the winners at an award ceremony at Interior today. “These awards recognize dedicated citizens from across our nation who collaborate to conserve and restore America’s Great Outdoors, to encourage youth involvement in conservation and to forge solutions to complex natural resource challenges.”