Aldo Leopold

Aldo Leopold was a famous American environmentalist and ecologist. He is known as the founder of wildlife management and his book "A Sand County Almanac" is one of the most famous environmental books. He graduated from Yale in 1909 and worked in the forest service after graduation. He proposed the first national wilderness in the forest system, the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico. He then went on to become a professor and the University of Wisconsin where he taught wildlife management.

Leopold had a very holistic view of the environment. He was very observant of how nature worked together as a whole. He viewed wildlife management as a way to keep the biodiversity that mother nature intended, rather than using it as a tool to provide game to hunters. He rejected the utilitarianism ideas of Pinchot and Roosevelt.

Leopold was especially famous for his land ethic which states "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." Things that do not promote the natural beauty and stability of the environment should be reconsidered.

My first introduction to Aldo Leopold came in a former professors class when he read an excerpt from Aldo Leopolds book A Sand County Almanac. He read a particularly memorable excerpt from the chapter thinking like a mountain. In this section, Leopold described how him and his group shot at a pack of wolves, because they didnt want to miss the opportunity to bring home the kill. When Leopold approached the old wolf they had shot and killed, he wrote 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. There was something about this passage that made think and ponder the deeper things that are invisible to us in our everyday routines.