Aldo Leopold

Aldo Leopold (January 11, 1887 - April 21, 1948) was a United States ecologist, forester, and environmentalist.

Life and work

Aldo Leopold was born in Burlington, Iowa. He grew up in contact with the outdoors ? the fields, trees, meadows, creeks, and rivers. His writing is notable for its simple directness. His portrayals of various natural environments he had moved through, or had known for many years, displayed impressive intimacy with what exists and happens in nature. He seemed to know a landscape the way an audiophile knows his sound system and music collection, or the way a mother knows the bodies and personalities of her young children.

Related Topics:
Burlington - Iowa

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Leopold attended Yale University School of Forestry. He received his Master's degree in Forestry in 1909. Leopold developed an appreciation for nature in terms of ecology, beauty, and mystery, as well as in terms of a source of resources. Thereafter, his professional life encompassed forestry, ecology, and writing.

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Leopold served for 19 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.

Related Topics:
United States Forest Service - Southwest - Madison - Wisconsin

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In 1933 he was appointed Professor of Game Management in the Agricultural Economics Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He taught there until his death.

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An advocate for the preservation of wildlife and wilderness areas, he became a founder of the Wilderness Society in 1935. Leopold wrote A Sand County Almanac, which has been read by millions and has informed and spurred the environmental movement and a widespread interest in ecology as a science. By the same token, the Wilderness Society and Leopold?s work in it were important precursors to the environmental movement that coalesced around the time of the first Earth Day.

Related Topics:
Environmental movement - Ecology - Earth Day

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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 we humans belong. He felt that 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.

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His popular writing is a combination of natural history, scene painting with words, and philosophy. A Sand County Almanac is perhaps best known for the following quote concerning ecological ethics: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community."

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