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11 January 1887—21 April 1948

Making Peace with the Land

Aldo Leopold expressed his passionate love for his wife, Estella, whom he married in 1912, in carefully copied lines of poetry in one of his many notebooks. He expressed his passion for a “land ethic” through a compilation of essays, A Sand County Almanac, published in 1949 and dedicated “to my Estella.” It was a literary achievement that led future generations to view land not just as a commodity, but as a gift to be shared with and nurtured by all creation—a gift deserving the same tender affection we feel for a spouse or lover.

Leopold argued that “land” wasn’t merely “soil.” Land was the foundation and source of nutrition for the plants and animals that make up the biotic community. That community’s natural integrity deserved careful guardianship because “man-made changes have effects more comprehensive than intended or foreseen.” So far as Leopold was concerned, the pesticide DDT had as much potential destructive power as the atomic bomb.

“All history,” wrote Leopold, “consists of successive excursions from a single starting point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values.” He believed that the land was both the means and ultimate end in that scale, the lasting gold standard to which history, both human and animal, must always appeal.

Born in the relative wilds of Burlington, Iowa, Leopold spent his youth roaming his own backyard of prairies and woods and developing astute observational skills. An avid reader, he also began cultivating a vivid literary talent. He attended Yale and received a degree in forestry.

Upon graduation, Leopold was assigned to the Arizona territories by the U.S. Forest Service. In 1924, he was reassigned to the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, and he began teaching at the University of Wisconsin in 1928.

After the 1933 publication of his book Game Management, Leopold was appointed the first chair of the University of Wisconsin’s new Department of Game Management. Two years later, he and his family bought and settled into a worn-out farm that became the laboratory for his “land ethic,” whose main principle was “to stop thinking about decent land use as solely an economic problem. 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.”

Leopold died from a heart attack in 1948, two hours after trying to fight a brush fire on a neighbor’s farm. His final moments were spent defending the earth he so loved.