Aldo Leopold

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Aldo Leopold
Aldo Leopold
Born	11 January 1887(1887-01-11) Burlington, Iowa
Died	21 April 1948 (aged 61) Wisconsin
Occupation	author, ecologist, forester, and environmentalist
Nationality	American
Subjects	Conservation, land ethic, land health, ecological conscience
Notable work(s)	A Sand County Almanac
Spouse(s)	Estella Leopold
Children	A. Starker Leopold, Luna B. Leopold, Nina Leopold Bradley, A. Carl Leopold, Estella Leopold

Aldo Leopold (January 11, 1887 – April 21, 1948) was an American ecologist, forester, and environmentalist. He was influential in the development of modern environmental ethics and in the movement for wilderness preservation. Leopold is considered to be the father of wildlife management in the United States and was a life-long fisherman and hunter. Leopold died in 1948 from a heart attack two hours after fighting a brush fire on a neighbor's farm.^[1]

Contents 1 Life and work 1.1 A Sand County Almanac 2 Conservation 3 Digitization 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Life and work

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2009)

Rand Aldo Leopold was born in Burlington, Iowa. He grew up in contact with the outdoors. During his youth, Leopold's family spent summers in Michigan's Les Cheneaux Islands, where today exists an Aldo Leopold Preserve on Marquette Island commemorating his love for the outdoors. Leopold attended the prestigious Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, after which he moved on to the Yale University School of Forestry. He received his Master's degree in Forestry in 1909. Thereafter, his professional life encompassed forestry, ecology and writing.^{[citation needed]}

Leopold served for 18 years in the United States Forest Service, working in the American Southwest (New Mexico and Arizona) until he was transferred in 1924 to the Forest Products Lab in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1928 he left the Forest Service and started doing independent contract work. He mostly did wildlife and game surveys throughout the U.S.^{[citation needed]}

In 1933 he was appointed Professor of Game Management in the Agricultural Economics Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He lived in a modest two-story home close to the campus with his wife and children, and he taught at the university until his death. Today, his home is an official landmark of the city of Madison and is occupied by Elizabeth Loniello. One of his sons, Luna, went on to become a noted hydrologist and geology professor at UC Berkeley. Another son, A. Starker Leopold, was a noted wildlife biologist and also a professor at UC Berkeley.^[2]

An advocate for the preservation of wildlife and wilderness areas, Leopold became a founder of The Wilderness Society in 1935. Named in his honor, the Aldo Leopold Wilderness lies within the boundaries of the Gila National Forest, in New Mexico. Leopold was instrumental in the proposal for Gila to be managed as a wilderness area. As a result, in 1924, Gila National Forest became the first designated wilderness area by the US government.^{[citation needed]}

His nature writing is notable for its simple directness. His portrayals of various natural environments through which he had moved, or had known for many years, displayed impressive intimacy with what exists and happens in nature. Leopold offered frank criticism of the harm he believed was frequently done to natural systems (such as land) out of a sense of a culture or society's sovereign ownership over the land base – eclipsing any sense of a community of life to which humans belong. He felt the security and prosperity resulting from "mechanization" now gives people the time to reflect on the preciousness of nature and to learn more about what happens there. However, he also writes "Theoretically, the mechanization of farming ought to cut the farmer's chains, but whether it really does is debatable." ^[3]

[edit] A Sand County Almanac

The book was published in 1949, shortly after Leopold's death. One of the well-known quotes from the book which clarifies his land ethic is

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." The concept of a trophic cascade is put forth in the chapter Thinking Like a Mountain, wherein Leopold realizes that killing a predator wolf carries serious implications for the rest of the ecosystem.^[4]

[edit] Conservation

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2009)

In "The Land Ethic", a chapter of A Sand County Almanac, Leopold delves into conservation in "The Ecological Conscience" section. He wrote: "Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land." According to him, curriculum-content guidelines in the late 1940s, when he wrote boiled down to: "obey the law, vote right, join some organizations and practice what conservation is profitable on your own land; the government will do the rest."^{[page needed]}

With the hopes of addressing ethical issues as well as educational challenges, Leopold put forward an example in the issue of Wisconsin's southwestern topsoil slipping seaward. In 1933 the public offered assistance to farmers who adopted remedial practices for five years, which was widely accepted. Once the five-year period was completed, the farmers only continued practices that offered economic gain for themselves, disregarding practices which were profitable for the community. In response, the Wisconsin Legislature passed the Soil Conservation District Law in 1937 that allowed farmers to write rules for land use themselves. Even with the additional incentives of free technical service and the availability of specialized machinery for loan, rules that would benefit the community continued to be ignored as no rules were written.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Digitization

Currently the Digital Content Group of University of Wisconsin- Madison is conducting a large-scale digitization of Aldo Leopold's journals and records. They are expected to be made available online late 2009.^[5]

[edit] See also

• Timeline of environmental events
• Land Ethic
• Sand County Foundation
• Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Knight, Richard L. and Suzanne Riedel (ed). 2002. Aldo Leopold and the Ecological Conscience. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195149440.
• Lorbiecki, Marybeth. 1996. Aldo Leopold: A Fierce Green Fire. Helena, Mont.: Falcon Press. ISBN 1560444789.
• McClintock, James I. 1994. Nature's Kindred Spirits. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0299141748.
• Meine, Curt. 1988. Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0299114902.
• Newton, Julianne Lutz. 2006. Aldo Leopold's Odyssey. Washington: Island Press/Shearwater Books. ISBN 9781597260459.

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Aldo Leopold

• Aldo Leopold Foundation
• The Aldo Leopold Archives Digitized archival materials held by the UW-Madison Archives.
• Leopold Conservation Award
• Excerpts from the Works of Aldo Leopold
• Works by or about Aldo Leopold in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

v • d • e The Wilderness Society Wilderness  · Wilderness Act  · National Wilderness Preservation System Founding members Harold C. Anderson  · Harvey Broome  · Bernard Frank  · Aldo Leopold  · Bob Marshall  · Benton MacKaye  · Ernest Oberholtzer  · Robert Sterling Yard Notable members Margaret Murie  · Gaylord Nelson  · Sigurd Olson  · Wallace Stegner  · Howard Zahniser