Leisl Carr Childers is an associate professor in the Department of History at Colorado State University specializing in the American West its environment, particularly with regard to multiple use in public lands history and management.

Her first book, The Size of the Risk: Histories of Multiple Use in the Great Basin (University of Oklahoma Press, 2015), examines the evolution of the multiple use policy in the interior American West and the consequences of creating problematically intersecting public lands uses. The book won the Western Writers of America 2016 Spur Award for Contemporary Nonfiction.

Her current projects include a co-authored history of the USDA Forest Service from 1960 to present and a history of agricultural crisis and extremism in the American West and Midwest beginning with the Sagebrush Rebellion and Farm Crisis. She is part of the leadership team for the Climate Adaptation Partnership, a consortium of faculty working on climate adaptation research.

Much of her teaching and research employs digital history methodologies to make visible the often hidden uses of public lands and their consequences.