Aldo
Leopold is considered to be the 'father of wildlife management' and is largely
responsible for the current wilderness system in the United States. He grew up
with a deep love and appreciation of the outdoors and this guided the course of
his life. After graduating from the Yale Forest School in 1909, Aldo Leopold went
to work for the newly created US Forest Service in the Southwest. In 1924, his
proposal to manage New Mexico's Gila National Forest as a wilderness area was
enacted, creating the nation's first official wilderness area. After transferring
to Wisconsin, Leopold wrote the world's first textbook on wildlife management
in 1933, and became the Chair of the nation's first Game Management Department
at the University of Wisconsin, created because of his work. Always one to walk
his ecological talk, Aldo Leopold and his family purchased an old farm outside
Baraboo, Wisconsin in 1935 and began experimenting in restoring the land to its
orginal state, by restoring grassy plains and planting thousands of pine trees.
His documentation of the results revealed groundbreaking insights that would influence
countless future restoration programs. Aldo Leopold's greatest work was A Sand
County Almanac, a collection of essays written to help the mainstream public
understand the delicate balance of humanity's relationship to nature. Unfortunately,
a week after his manuscript was accepted for publication, Aldo Leopold died of
a heart attack after helping a neighbor put out a brush fire. The book would eventually
sell over two million copies and will continue to influence conservationists for
generations to come.
