(One of the most important Leopold's publications was Game...)
One of the most important Leopold's publications was Game Management (1933). A textbook that revolutionized the field, it described the art of harvesting game species in such a way as to leave their reproductive capacity unimpaired.
(His best-known book A Sand County Almanac published posth...)
His best-known book A Sand County Almanac published posthumously in 1949, the work has been compared to that of Henry David Thoreau and John Muir. It became, in many ways, the bible of the surging environmental movement of the 1960s and early 1970s.
For the Health of the Land: Previously Unpublished Essays And Other Writings
(Aldo Leopold's classic work A Sand County Almanac is wide...)
Aldo Leopold's classic work A Sand County Almanac is widely regarded as one of the most influential conservation books of all time. In it, Leopold sets forth an eloquent plea for the development of a "land ethic" - a belief that humans have a duty to interact with the soils, waters, plants, and animals that collectively comprise "the land" in ways that ensure their well-being and survival.
(The journal entries included here were written in camp du...)
The journal entries included here were written in camp during his many field trips - hunting, fishing, and exploring - and they indicate the source of ideas on land ethics found in his longer essays. They reflect as well two long canoe trips in Canada and a sojourn in Mexico, where Leopold hunted deer with bow and arrow. The essays presented here are culled from the more contemplative notes which were still in manuscript form at the time of Leopold's death in 1948, fighting a brush fire on a neighbor's farm.
Aldo Leopold was an American author, philosopher, scientist, ecologist, forester, conservationist, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is best known for his book A Sand County Almanac (1949), which has sold more than two million copies. He emphasized biodiversity and ecology and was a founder of the science of wildlife management.
Background
Ethnicity:
His parents were second-generation Americans of German descent.
Aldo Leopold was born on January 11, 1887, in Burlington, Iowa, the United States, the eldest of four children of Carl Leopold and Clara (Starker) Leopold. His parents were second-generation Americans of German descent; both grandfathers were graduates of German universities who came to the United States and engaged in business and banking. Leopold's father was the owner and manager of a factory that manufactured office furniture.
Education
Aldo Leopold's first language was German, although he mastered English at an early age. Aldo Leopold's early life was highlighted by the outdoors. Carl would take his children on excursions into the woods and taught his oldest son woodcraft and hunting. Aldo showed an aptitude for observation, spending hours counting and cataloging birds near his home.
After graduating from the Lawrenceville School in 1905, he entered Yale University's Sheffield Scientific School, where he received the Bachelor of Science in 1908 and the following year, the degree of master of forestry from the Yale School of the Environment.
Upon receiving his master’s degree in 1909, Aldo Leopold joined the U.S. Forest Service. He began his Forest Service career as a ranger at the Apache National Forest in what was then Arizona Territory and quickly advanced up the ranks to chief of operations for the Southwestern Region (District 3). During his years in the Southwest (1909-1924), Leopold’s ideas about scientific forestry and game management shifted toward game protection and wilderness preservation as he observed the interdependence of wildlife and wildlands.
In 1911 Aldo Leopold became deputy supervisor of the Carson National Forest in New Mexico and was promoted to supervisor the following year. A near-fatal attack of Bright's disease incapacitated him in 1913, but he recovered to take a lead in starting the game protection movement in the Southwest. In 1917 his efforts were recognized with an appointment as assistant district forester in charge of game, fish, and recreation.
In 1924, shortly before he transferred to the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, Aldo Leopold convinced the Forest Service to designate as wilderness 500,000 acres of New Mexico’s Gila National Forest, the first officially designated wilderness area in the U.S. Forest Service. Between 1924 and 1928, while he was assistant director of the Forest Products Laboratory, he began to attract a wider audience for his essays advocating wilderness preservation and wildlife ecology.
Increasingly dissatisfied with laboratory work, Aldo Leopold left the Forest Service in 1928 to undertake a challenging, multistate game survey for the Sporting Arms and Ammunitions Manufacturers’ Institute. For the next three years, he gathered information about anything related to game management (protective legislation, farming practices, hunting practices, and so forth) in nine states, including Iowa. His 1931 Report on a Game Survey of the North Central States provided solid data for him to formulate a theory of integrated game management.
During 1931-1933, Aldo Leopold wrote Game Management (1933) while he worked on a series of consulting projects, including an update of his 1928 Iowa game survey for the Iowa Fish and Game Commission, the results of which contributed to the Iowa Twenty-five Year Conservation Plan (1933). In 1933 he was appointed to a new position created specifically for him: professor of game management in the Agricultural Economics Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Aldo Leopold joined other leading conservationists in 1935 to form the Wilderness Society. That same year, he purchased a rundown farm on the Wisconsin River near Baraboo and began a long-term ecological restoration project. The entire family contributed to the effort, rebuilding a chicken coop into a cabin, known as The Shack, and spending countless weekends planting trees and restoring prairie areas. The farm gave him time to observe and think about the complex relationships between land and humans and led to his last and most influential work, A Sand County Almanac (1949), which set forth the concept of a "land ethic" that became synonymous with his name.
Leopold's concepts were based on the emerging science of systems ecology; they integrated the most advanced knowledge of population dynamics, food chains, and habitat protection. Leopold's wildlife management ideas, adopted by a succession of his talented Wisconsin students, quickly dominated the profession. Basic to his whole philosophy was his belief that the environment was not a commodity for man to control but rather a community to which he belonged. This idea stimulated the development of his most important concept: the land ethic.
Quotations:
"Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land."
Membership
Aldo Leopold served on the council of the Society of American Foresters (1927 - 1931) and in 1946 was elected a fellow. He was a director of the National Audubon Society and a vice-president of the American Forestry Association. Aldo Leopold helped organize the Wilderness Society in 1935 and served on its council thereafter. He was also an organizer of the Wildlife Society in 1937, serving as its president in 1939, and he was president of the Ecological Society of America in 1947. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him a member of the Special Committee on Wild Life Restoration in 1934. From 1943 until his death Aldo Leopold served as a member of the Wisconsin Conservation Commission.
National Audubon Society
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United States
the Society of American Foresters
American Forestry Association
Wilderness Society
Wildlife Society
Ecological Society of America
Special Committee on Wild Life Restoration
Wisconsin Conservation Commission
Connections
Aldo Leopold married Estella Luna Bergere on October 9, 1912, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They had five children: Aldo Starker, Luna Bergere, Nina, Aldo Carl, and Estella Bergere, four of whom chose careers in environmental science.