Aldo Leopold

Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), American naturalist, conservationist, and philosopher of profound importance to the environmental movement. A pioneer in the application of environmental principles to wildlife management, Leopold is best known as the father of the national forest wilderness system and author of A Sand County Almanac (1949)--the bible of environmental activists in the 1960s and 1970s.

Born Rand Aldo Leopold in Burlington, Iowa, Leopold grew up watching the Midwest’s tall grass prairies and white pine forests disappear, which impressed him with the vulnerability of nature. He received an M.S. degree from the Yale University School of Forestry in 1909, then joined the United States Forest Service. Leopold was assigned to the Arizona-New Mexico district where he soon recognized a need for the agency to do more than simply manage timber production. He introduced into the Forest Service a sense of responsibility for the conservation of wildlife, soils, and watersheds in the nation’s forests, and by 1921 was campaigning for the preservation of wildlife habitat on public lands.

After working at the U.S. Forest Service Products Laboratory from 1924 to 1928, Leopold resigned from the agency to devote his time to wildlife research. He conducted extensive field surveys of game populations in the Midwest, and in 1933 published Game Management, a textbook based on his research that set standards for what is now the sophisticated science of wildlife management. He was also appointed professor of wildlife management at the University of Wisconsin in 1933—the first such faculty position in the United States. Leopold remained at the university until his death.

A Sand County Almanac was published posthumously. Based primarily on Leopold’s experiences and observations in Sauk County, Wisconsin, the work popularized his personal land ethic, which holds that each person must become a steward of the land. In it he argued that humans need to integrate themselves into the pyramid of life, rather than attempt to control it, and personal ethics should extend to the natural world. Leopold claimed this is necessary for the healthy existence of both humans and the natural world.