Aldo Leopold

Rand Aldo Leopold was born in Burlington, Iowa, on January 11, 1887. His father, Carl Leopold, was a businessman who made walnut desks; and his mother, born Clara Starker, was Carl's first cousin. Charles Starker, father of Clara and uncle of Carl, was a German immigrant, educated in engineering and architecture. Rand Aldo was named for two of Carl's business partners—C. W. Rand and Aldo Sommers—although the "Rand" was eventually dropped. The Leopold family included younger siblings Mary Luize, Carl Starker, and Frederic. 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. 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." He attended Prospect Hill Elementary, where he ranked at the top of his class, and then, the overcrowded Burlington High School. Every August, the family vacationed in Michigan at the forested Les Cheneaux Islands in Lake Huron, which the children took to exploring.

In 1900, Gifford Pinchot, who oversaw the newly implemented Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture, donated money to Yale University to begin one of the nation's first forestry schools. Hearing of this development, the teenage Leopold decided on forestry as a vocation. His parents agreed to let him attend The Lawrenceville School, a preparatory college in New Jersey in order to improve his chances of admission to Yale. The Burlington High School principal wrote in a reference letter to the headmaster at Lawrenceville that Leopold was "as earnest a boy as we have in school... painstaking in his work.... Moral character above reproach." He arrived at his new school in January 1904, shortly before he turned seventeen. He was considered an attentive student, although he was again drawn to the outdoors. Lawrenceville was suitably rural, and Leopold spent much time mapping the area and studying its wildlife. Leopold studied at the Lawrenceville School for a year, during which time he was accepted to Yale University. Because the Yale School of Forestry granted only graduate degrees, he first enrolled in Sheffield Scientific School's preparatory forestry courses for his undergraduate studies. While Leopold was able to explore the woods and fields of Lawrenceville daily, sometimes to the detriment of his studying, in Yale he had little opportunity to do so; his studies and social life engagements made his outdoor trips few and far between.

Nature writing:

Leopold's nature writing is notable for its simple directness. His portrayals of various natural environments through which he had moved, or had known for many years, displayed impressive intimacy with what exists and happens in nature. He 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 humans belong. He felt 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.

A Sand County Almanac:

The book was published in 1949, shortly after Leopold's death. One of the well-known quotes from the book which clarifies his land ethic is,

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. 

The concept of a trophic cascade is put forth in the chapter, "Thinking Like a Mountain", wherein Leopold realizes that killing a predator wolf carries serious implications for the rest of the ecosystem — a conclusion that found sympathetic appreciation generations later:

Legacy:

An organization, The Leopold Heritage Group, is "dedicated to promoting the global legacy of Aldo Leopold."

The Aldo Leopold Wilderness was named after him in 1980.

The U.S. Forest Service established the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute at the University of Montana Missoula in 1993. It is "the only Federal research group in the United States dedicated to the development and dissemination of knowledge needed to improve management of wilderness, parks, and similarly protected areas.

The Aldo Leopold Legacy Trail System, a system of 42 state trails in the state of Wisconsin, was created in 2007.

The Aldo Leopold Foundation of Madison, WI was founded in 1982 by Aldo and Estella Leopold's five children as a 501(c)3 not-for-profit conservation organization whose mission is "...to foster the land ethic through the legacy of Aldo Leopold."

A charter school in Silver City, New Mexico was named after Leopold.

He passed away on April 21, 1948.