Aldo Leopold By Maurice Lange
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onsidered by many as the father of wildlife management and of the United States’ wilderness system, Aldo Leopold was a conservationist, forester, philosopher, educator, writer, and outdoor enthusiast. How did Nature shape him as a child? Aldo Leopold was born January 17, 1883, in Burlington, Iowa. Young Aldo reveled in being outside, documenting bird sightings, hunting, and woodworking. His sister Mary would later say of her older brother “He was very much an outdoorsman, even in his extreme youth. He was always out climbing around the bluffs, or going down to the river, or going across the river into the woods.” This keen young observer of the natural world would go on to earn a graduate degree in Forestry at Yale University. Aldo Leopold was hired by the US Forest Service and sent to Arizona and New Mexico where he worked from 1909— 1924. Leopold wrote the first comprehensive plan for the Grand Canyon and proposed the Gila Wilderness Area. At first Leopold was assigned to the killing of predatory animals such as bears, wolves and mountain lions as ranchers deplored the loss of their livestock. Leopold later came to see the value in the predator-prey relationship as necessary for a healthy ecology. His conversion was especially poignant one day while wolf-hunting. After shooting a wolf at quite a distance, he went to examine the animal. What he saw would forever change him: “We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes —something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”
he and his beloved wife and children put into practice many of his theories regarding the land and its creatures. He helped landowners rehabilitate fields and streams which suffered from erosion brought on by overplanting and intensive grazing. Leopold was passionate about expanding and protecting wilderness areas and thus founded The Wilderness Society. He regarded the Society as “one of the focal points of a new attitude—an intelligent humility toward man’s place in nature.” Aldo Leopold’s most enduring legacy is his “A Sand County Almanac.” Published in 1949 shortly after his death and notable for its simple directness, this work contained ‘The Land Ethic’ which defined a new relationship between people and nature and set the stage for the modern conservation movement. Leopold understood that ethics directs individuals to cooperate with each other for the mutual benefit of all. One of his philosophical achievements was the idea that this ‘community’ should be enlarged to include non-human elements such as soils, waters, plants, and animals, “or collectively: the land.”
Leopold’s appreciation for animals and their contributions to the good of the whole grew. He developed an ecological ethic that replaced an earlier wilderness ethic that stressed the need for human dominance.
This recognition, according to Leopold, implies that individuals play an important role in protecting and preserving the health of this expanded definition of a community.
Aldo Leopold was transferred to Madison, Wisconsin, where he continued working for the Forest Service and eventually taught at the University of Wisconsin. By the 1930s he was the nation’s foremost authority on wildlife conservation. He purchased 80 rundown acres and there
“A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of land.”
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Earth Saints and Heroes