Environmental Heroes: Aldo Leopold
Scientist, "Father of Wildlife Conservation"
Posted: 25-Apr-2003; Updated: 19-Aug-2003
"Like wind and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them"
"That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics"
-Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
From an early age, Aldo Leopold had a love of wind and sunsets. Born in rural Burlington, Iowa in 1887, Leopold's father would take him hiking and hunting in the marshes of a then-wild state. By the age of eleven, he could identify all of the birds on his parents' property. He pursued his passions further, graduating from Yale University in 1909 with a Masters in Forestry. 
Aldo Leopold
It was through his subsequent work at the United States Forest Service that he began to develop his land ethic, which he described "simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively: the land." He traveled for the Forest Service for 19 years, eventually settling down in Madison, Wisconsin.
Shortly after he was appointed Professor of Game Management in the University of Wisconsin's Agricultural Economics Department, he and his family bought an old, warn-out barn in the sand counties. It was there that he began clarifying and compiling his conservation ideas in essays about land, community and ethics. Best known as the father of modern ecology and land-based conservation and ethics, Leopold's most famous book, A Sand County Almanac, was published a year after his death in 1948. To learn more about Leopold visit these sites: Read about other Environmental Heroes: To return to our Earth Day coverage click here.
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