10. Knowing Nature

AL, “The Green Lagoons,” SCA, p. 141.

AL, “The Delta Colorado,” RR, p. 10.

AL, “The Green Lagoons,” SCA, p. 142.

Ibid., p. 146.

AL, “Conservation Esthetic,” SCA, p. 174

Ibid., p. 165.

Ibid., p. 171.

Ibid., p. 172.

Science Service, “Forest Mistakes of Germans Now Being Corrected,” 28 September 1936, interview with AL, LP 10-3, 10.

AL, “Deer and Dauerwald in Germany: I. History,” Journal of Forestry 34, no. 4 (April 1936): 374.

AL, “Naturschutz in Germany,” Bird-Lore 38, no. 2 (March–April 1936): 109.

AL, “Deer and Dauerwald in Germany: II. Ecology and Policy,” Journal of Forestry 34, no. 5 (May 1936): 463.

AL, “Wilderness,” RMG, p. 226.

Ibid., pp. 228, 229.

Ibid., p. 229.

AL, letter to Estella Leopold, 9 October 1935, LP 10-8, 9.

See AL, “Conservation Esthetic,” SCA, p. 168.

AL, “Deer and Dauerwald in Germany: I,” p. 374, and “Deer and Dauerwald in Germany: II,” p. 464. Leopold, though, emphasized the conflict between German forestry and deer management and the “difficulties and delays which impeded [the] realization [of Dauerwald]” (“Deer and Dauerwald in Germany: II,” p. 460). See, too, Leopold’s caption to a photograph of a spruce thicket in Tharandterwald, Saxony: “The Germans talk ‘Dauerwald’ but plant spruce” (dated 29 September 1935, photograph G66, UWDWE). Also see Adalbert Ebner, letter to AL, 31 July 1936, LP 10-3, 10. Ebner noted that the “Dauerwald Idea” predated the “Dauerwald movement” in Germany and that he, as a professional forester, did not “quite agree with this [new official] policy.” The Dauerwald movement’s future beyond the mid-1930s was complicated and compromised as the Nazi movement strongly supported it and then linked it to ardent nationalism. See Rubner, “Sustained-Yield Forestry in Europe,” pp. 173–174. See also C. Meine, “A Lesson in Naturalism,” unpublished manuscript. For other discussions on Aldo Leopold in Germany see S. Flader, “Leopold on Wilderness: Aldo Leopold on Germany’s Landscape,” American Forests (May–June 1991); H.G. Schabel, “Deer and Dauerwald in Germany: Any Progress?”Wildlife Society Bulletin 29 (2001): 888–898; H. G. Schabel and S. L. Palmer, “The Dauerwald: Its Role in the Restoration of Natural Forests,” Journal of Forestry 97 (1999): 20–25; and M. Wolfe and F. C. Berg, “Deer and Forestry in Germany Half a Century after Aldo Leopold,” Journal of Forestry 86, no. 5 (1 May 1988): 25–31.

The Naturschutz movement is considered in detail in T.M. Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).

AL, “Sketches of Land Use in Germany,” address to the Taylor-Hibbard Club, 22 January 1936, p. 2, LP 10-6, 14.

AL, “Wilderness as a Form of Land Use,” RMG, pp. 134–142.

AL, “Wilderness,” SCA, p. 188.

Leopold was one of ten organizing members of the society in October 1934. The members promptly asked him to serve as first president. After a few exchanges, Leopold made clear his reluctance to serve in a letter to Robert Marshall on 3 April 1935, LP 10-2, 9: “Unless you have already taken action, I want to express the opinion that my taking the presidency of the Wilderness Society would simply be an absurdity.” In Leopold’s view, the society needed a president who resided in Washington, DC, where the society’s headquarters were located. Marshall himself was unavailable because of an apparent conflict with his role as head of the Department of Interior’s Office of Indian Affairs. Robert Marshall, letter to AL, 14 March 1935, LP 10-2, 9. Leopold did serve as council member from 1935 on and as vice president from 1945 until his death. AL, letter to A.N. Marquis, 23 May 1947, LP 10-2, 9.

AL, letter to Benton MacKaye, 1 May 1946, LP 10-2, 9: “I am thoroughly convinced of one basic point: that wilderness is merely one manifestation of a change of philosophy of land use.”

AL, “Wilderness as a Form of Land Use,” RMG, p. 142.

AL, “Why the Wilderness Society?” p. 6.

Leopold’s wilderness advocacy is considered in R. F. Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 182–199; M. Oelschlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 205–242; S. L. Flader, “Aldo Leopold and the Wilderness Idea,” Living Wilderness 43, no. 147 (December 1979): pp. 4–8; W. Cronon, “A Voice in the Wilderness,” Wilderness (Winter 1998): 8; and C. W. Allin, “The Leopold Legacy and American Wilderness,” in Aldo Leopold: The Man and His Legacy, edited by T. Tanner (Ankeny, IA: Soil Conservation Society of America, 1987), pp. 25–38. The influence of the “good roads” movement in stimulating the wilderness protection effort, by Leopold and others, is considered in P. S. Sutter, Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002). Leopold’s role in promoting an ecological perspective on wilderness within The Wilderness Society is considered in D. J. Philippon, Conserving Words: How American Nature Writers Shaped the Environmental Movement (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004), pp. 159–218. A brief review of Leopold’s wilderness writings, in the context of his larger conservation thought, is offered in RMG, pp. 24–27. The heightened protection of federal lands, particularly as national parks, inevitably disrupted existing patterns of land use by rural dwellers. This cost—referred to by one historian as the “hidden history” of conservation—is elaborated in K. Jacoby, Crimes against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

AL, “The Wilderness and Its Place in Forest Recreational Policy,” Journal of Forestry 19, no. 7 (November 1921): 718–721; also in RMG, pp. 79–81. See also AL, “Origin and Ideals of Wilderness Areas,” Living Wilderness 5, no. 5 (July 1940): 7. Prominent ecologist G. A. Pearson supportively cited Leopold’s 1921 article in his “Preservation of Natural Areas in the National Forests,” Ecology 3, no. 4 (1922): 286.

AL, “The Wilderness and Its Place in Forest Recreational Policy,” RMG, p. 79. Leopold was not against roads per se, but rather roads in the wrong places. As he explained in his 1925 article “The Pig in the Parlor” (USFS Bulletin 9, no. 23 [8 June 1925]: 1–2, also in RMG, p. 133), the “wilderness area idea” had to do with the distribution of roads: “Roads and wilderness are merely a case of the pig in the parlor. We now recognize that the pig is all right—for bacon, which we all eat. But there no doubt was a time, soon after the discovery that many pigs meant much bacon, when our ancestors assumed that because the pig was so useful an institution he should be welcomed at all times and places. And I suppose that the first ‘enthusiast’ who raised the question of limiting his distribution was construed to be uneconomic, visionary, and anti-pig.” See also Sutter, Driven Wild.

AL, “Flambeau,” SCA, pp. 112–116.

Ibid., p. 113.

Ibid., p. 112.

Ibid., p. 113.

AL, “Wildlife in American Culture,” SCA, p. 178.

AL, “Song of the Gavilan,” SCA, p. 149.

AL, Wildlife in American Culture,” SCA, p. 181.

AL, “Marshland Elegy,” SCA, p. 101. Also see AL, “Conservation Economics,” RMG, p. 196.

Even the road less area of the Superior National Forest and Quetico Provincial Park was already showing signs of overcrowding by recreationists. See H. H. Chapman, letter to William P. Wharton, 25 July 1946, LP 10-2, 9, and Olaus Murie, letter to The Councillors of The Wilderness Society, 31 July 1946, LP 10-12, 9. See also AL, “Discussion on the Park Executive and Landscaper,” unpublished fragment, n.d., UWDWE, vol. 1, p. 131.

See “Thoughts on a Map of Liberia,” unfinished, n.d., UWDWE, vol. 1.

AL, “The Green Lagoons,” SCA, p. 149.

“As a form of land use [wilderness] cannot be a rigid entity of unchanging content, exclusive of all other forms. On the contrary, it must be a flexible thing, accommodating itself to other forms and blending with them in that highly localized give-and-take scheme of land-planning which employs the criterion of ‘highest use.’” AL, “Wilderness as a Form of Land Use,” RMG, pp. 135–136.

In the same talk (pp. 1–4) Leopold also described three categories of outdoor recreational contexts, which varied in terms of their responsiveness to economic forces. There were man-made things, such as roads, trails, and other modern conveniences, which responded automatically to market forces of supply, demand, and advertising. The second category was of “God-made but man-fostered things,” such as “forests, waters, scenery, and wild life.” Both economic and aesthetic demands existed for these things, and they could be produced as crops in response to market forces. The danger of allowing the market alone to govern them was that the unprofitable parts of nature would be sacrificed. Moreover, the man of moderate means could lose access to the profitable parts as prices for them rose. Finally, there was the third category of outdoor things, wilderness most prominently, which were “God-made” and vulnerable to destruction under “any unguided economic system.” Wilderness was “the fundamental recreational resource,” and its preservation was nothing short of a radical act against a merely economic mind-set.

AL, “Wilderness Conservation,” address delivered at the National Conference on Outdoor Recreation, Washington, DC, 20 January 1926, p. 8, LP 10-4, 8. In this address and later, including in a letter to Robert Marshall dated 1 February 1935, LP 10-2, 9, Leopold also countered the idea that only aesthetically pleasing places deserved wilderness protection. “I have only one important suggestion,” Leopold wrote in response to a draft essay by Marshall. “[U]nder ‘Extensive wilderness areas,’ add: ‘marsh or desert.’ We are fighting not only mechanization of country, but the idea that wild landscapes must be ‘pretty’ to have value.”

AL, “Wilderness Conservation,” p. 8.

AL, “Wilderness,” SCA, p. 188.

AL, “Dear Judge Botts,” unpublished, n.d., LP 10-6, 16; AL, “Wherefore Wildlife Ecology?” RMG, p. 336; AL, “Conservation Esthetic,” SCA, pp. 173–175.

By 1940 conversations were under way among the leaders of both the Ecological Society of America and The Wilderness Society to bring their work together. Leopold and The Wilderness Society’s president, Robert Yard, interacted with Victor Shelford from the University of Illinois, first president of the ESA and chairman of the ESA’s Committee for the Study of Plant and Animal Communities and of the Committee on the Preservation of Natural Conditions (AL, letter to Robert Yard, 4 June 1940, LP 10-2, 9). Shelford had been the intellectual leader behind the ESA’s nature sanctuary plans. Shelford, “Nature Sanctuaries.” Direct cooperation between the two organizations did not come to pass. When the ESA was in turmoil over its role in land protection work, however, it turned to Leopold for leadership. The organization elected him vice president in 1946 and president in 1947, even though he had failed to show up at the ESA meetings (see AL, letter to William Dreyer, 11 January 1947, LP 10-2, 2). Leopold continued to stress the importance of cooperation in land protection work. It is likely that he drafted his essay “Wilderness” as his formal talk as outgoing ESA president (see AL, letter to Wallace Grange, 3 January 1948, LP 10-1, 1), and his plan also was to end A Sand County Almanac with the essay, which stressed “the cultural value of wilderness” (see AL, “Great Possessions,” unpublished manuscript, LP 10-6, 16). However, Leopold died before he could deliver the talk, and those helping to see Leopold’s essay book to publication rearranged the order of the writings so that it ended with “The Land Ethic” instead. See J. L. Newton, “Science, Recreation, and Leopold’s Quest for a Durable Scale,” in The Great Wilderness Debate, vol. 2, edited by M. Nelson and J. B. Callicott (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006).

AL, “Resolution,” 1940, LP 10-2, 9.

One of Leopold’s detailed efforts to get private landowners to manage lands in the public interest for timber, wildlife, scientific, and wilderness values was in response to the request of the Huron Mountain Club, which owned a fifteen-thousand-acre tract of near-virgin maple-hemlock forest near Lake Superior: “The size-scale of a wilderness area for scientific study greatly affects its value. A small area may be ‘natural’ in respect of its plants, but wholly unnatural in respect of its mobile animals or water. However, mobile animals greatly affect plant life, so that a small virgin forest may appear to be natural when actually it has been profoundly affected by forces applied to animals, waters, or climate at points far distant.... In general, a small area is valuable for studies of vegetation and soils. Birds, mammals, and waters require larger areas by region of their mobility.” Although many of Leopold’s suggestions were well ahead of the curve, he was not entirely satisfied with his plan. See Flader, Thinking Like a Mountain, pp. 159–163; Meine, Aldo Leopold, pp. 385–386; W. P. Harris, letter to AL, 16 June 1938, and AL, letter to W. P. Harris, 17 June 1938, LP 10-2, 4. See, too, AL, “Report on Huron Mountain Club” (1938), printed by Huron Mountain Club, Michigan; reprinted in Report of Huron Mountain Wildlife Foundation, 1955–1966 (n.p., 1967), pp. 40–57.

AL, “Escudilla,” SCA, pp. 133–137.

See AL, letter to Howard Zahniser (The Wilderness Society), 5 June 1946, LP 10-2, 9: “It is gratifying to me that you are convinced we must broaden our definition of wilderness. I look forward to talking over the question of how to define the broadening.” In the late 1940s, largely by Leopold’s initiative, The Wilderness Society’s objectives were revised to include “the conservation of soil, water, forests, and wildlife, and the conservation of all these resources is essential to the survival of our civilized culture” (The Wilderness Society, “Purpose and Program,” ca. 1947, LP 10-2, 9). Leopold emphasized this wildlife protection role of wilderness in a 1948 letter to Roberts Mann, head of forest preserves in Cook County, Illinois: “[W]ilderness is not only acres, but also organisms. There are processes and laws of the wild to be guarded from extermination as well as wilderness areas.” AL, letter to Roberts Mann, 31 January 1948, LP 10-1, 2.

AL, “Threatened Species,” RMG, p. 233.

AL, “Preserving Wisconsin’s Game Supply, “College of the Air radio broadcast, 17 February 1936. In the 1930s Leopold participated in teaching short courses for farmers on game management techniques, and he addressed speeches to farmers on the University’s College of the Air broadcasts.

AL, “Conservation Esthetic,” SCA, p. 175.

Ibid.

AL, “History of the Riley Game Cooperative, 1931–1939,” FHL, pp. 175–192.

AL, “New Methods for Game Cropping,” College of the Air radio broadcast, 10 February 1936.

AL, “The Farmer as a Conservationist,” FHL, p. 165.

Ibid., p. 169.

Ibid., p. 171.

Ibid., p. 172.

AL, “Illinois Bus Ride,” SCA, pp. 117–119.

Ibid., p. 117. See, too, AL, “What Is a Weed?” FHL, pp. 207–212.

Ibid.

Ibid.

AL, “Cheat Takes Over,” SCA, pp. 154–158.

Ibid., p. 158.

AL, “Economics, Philosophy, and Land,” unfinished, 23 November 1938, p. 6, LP 10-6, 16, and UWDWE, vol. 2, p. 33. Here, too, Leopold was echoing observations from Germany. See AL, “Lecture on Deer and Forestry,” 19 December 1935, LP 10-6, 14. Leopold criticized the average scientific land manager for assuming uncritically that technology would automatically achieve good. For Germans, “the term ‘wood factory’ as applied to a forest, is now a term of opprobrium. With us [Americans] it is still a term of honor. The German now speaks of all conservation not as economic, but as ‘transeconomic’ in motivation. The American still proudly justifies his particular cult in the esperanto of ‘dollars and cents.’ I doubt whether either knows exactly what he means by these terms—I certainly do not. But I can see one thing clearly emerging which is applicable to land-use the world over: the deep interdependence of interests heretofore considered separate. One cannot divorce esthetics from utility, quality from quantity, present from future, either in deciding what is done to or for the soil, or in educating the persons delegated to do it. All land-uses and land-users are interdependent, and the forces which connect them follow channels still largely unknown.”

AL, “Story of the Riley Game Cooperative, 1931–1939,” Journal of Wildlife Management 4, no. 3 (1940): 291. The Riley and Faville Grove cooperatives lasted longer than most. Of some 350 started in the north-central region since 1931, only five survived in 1936. Rileywas kept going largely thanks to Leopold’s efforts; the effort fizzled after his death. See B. Sibernagel and J. Sibernagel, “Tracking Aldo Leopold through Riley’s Farmland,” Wisconsin Magazine of History (Summer 2003): 35–45.

AL, “A Proposed Survey of Land-Use for the ‘Farm Foundation,’” ca. 1934, pp. 2–3, LP 10-2, 4.

Ibid.

Nina Leopold Bradley and Estella Leopold, personal communication, 2004.

AL, letter to Starker Leopold, 21 September 1935, LP 10-8, 9.

AL, “Prairie Birthday,” SCA, pp. 44–50.

AL, letter to Victor Cahalane (president of The Wildlife Society), 5 April 1940, LP 10-2, 9.

AL, “Sky Dance,” SCA, p. 32.

Ibid.

AL, “Farm Phenology—a New Sport,” unfinished, n.d., p. 116, LP 10-6, 16.

AL, “Natural History: The Forgotten Science,” RR, p. 57.

AL, “The Farm Wildlife Program: A Self-Scrutiny,” ca. 1937, p. 7, LP 10-6, 14.

Ibid., p. 161.

Ibid., p. 172.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 174.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 175.

For discussions of the genesis, development, and interpretation of A Sand County Almanac see J. B. Callicott, ed., Companion to “A Sand County Almanac”: Interpretive and Critical Essays (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), and C.D. Meine, “Moving Mountains” and “The Secret Leopold,” in Correction Lines, pp. 148–160, 161–183.

See Meine, Aldo Leopold, pp. 460–461, 485–486, 505, 509–511, 512, 517, 523–526, and J. B. Callicott, ed., Companion to “A Sand County Almanac”: Interpretive and Critical Essays (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987). Friends and family helped see the book through to publication with Oxford, and the book appeared in the fall of 1949.

AL, “January Thaw,” SCA, p. 3. Also see A. Leopold and S. E. Jones, “A Phenological Record for Sauk and Dane Counties, Wisconsin, 1935–1945,” draft dated 5 November 1946, p. 1, LP 10-6, 8.

AL, “Clandeboye,” SCA, p. 158.

AL, “The Geese Return,” SCA, p. 18.

AL, “Illinois Bus Ride,” SCA, pp. 117–119.

AL, “Good Oak,” SCA, p. 6.

AL, “Prairie Birthday,” SCA, pp. 44–50.

AL, “A Mighty Fortress,” SCA, pp. 73–77.

AL, “Clandeboye,” SCA, pp. 158–164.

AL, “Home Range,” SCA, pp. 78–80.

AL, “Sky Dance,” SCA, pp. 30–33.

AL, “65290,” SCA, pp. 87–94.

Albert Hochbaum, letter to AL, 11 March 1944, LP 10-2, 3. Hochbaumalso urged Leopold to reveal that his “way of thinking is not that of an inspired genius, but that of any other ordinary fellow trying to put two and two together. Because you have added up your sums better than most of [us], it is important that you let fall a hint that in the process of reaching the end result of your thinking you have sometimes followed trails like anyone else that lead you up the wrong alleys. That is why I suggested the wolf business.” This note was part of the discussion that led Leopold to write “Thinking Like a Mountain” (SCA, pp. 129–133).

AL, “Thinking Like a Mountain,” SCA, p. 130.

See Flader, Thinking Like a Mountain. Leopold’s understanding of the deer predator-mountain relationships evolved over time. See, too, AL’s “confession,” in his “Foreword,” unpublished revision of 31 July 1947, LP 10-6, 16 (4), and in Callicott, Companion to “A Sand County Almanac,” pp. 281–290.