>> We abuse land
because we regard it
as a commodity belonging to us
When we see land as a communit
to which we belong,
we may begin to use it
with love and respect.
Aldo Leopold.
I do not imply
that this philosophy of land
is always clear to me.
It is rather the end result
of a life journey.
>> Aldo Leopold is considered
the most influential
conservationist
of the 20th century.
His work revolutionized
the ideal of the natural world,
and our understanding of
the ever changing relationship
between people and the earth.
For more than three decades,
I've been on a journey
in search of Leopold
and his legacy in our own time.
As Leopold's biographer, I found
that Leopold connects people and
places across the landscape,
from cities and suburbs,
to farms and forests
and ranches,
to our most remote wild lands.
I've explored the people,
places, and events
that shaped his thinking.
And that led to
his greatest idea,
the Land Ethic.
>> The land ethic is a result
of understanding
the interrelationships
of the natural system.
It's not something that dad
all of a sudden realized.
It took him a lifetime
to understand how interrelated
we are with the natural system.
Never did we have perspective
on this
until we all finally grew up.
>> Here, on a once abandoned
farm in the sand counties
of central Wisconsin,
the Leopold family made their
own connection to the land.
Since the publication
of Leopold's book,
"A Sand County Almanac,"
this place has come to
symbolize the effort to build
a healthier relationship
between people and nature.
And now, all these years later,
you get to see people coming
from all over the world
to visit.
>> For a white pine and a red
birch are crowding each other...
>> That I love all trees,
but I am in love with pines...
>> And become scarcer...
[reading in foreign language]
>> It is an extension
of ethics...
>> It's astonishing to me
and exciting
to see how the shack
has attracted people.
My father would be
absolutely amazed.
>> The amazing thing is after
all these years,
the interest in Leopold
just continues to grow.
Here's this fellow who died
in 1948, 60 years ago,
and yet he is still read
as a contemporary,
because his ideas
are still not only so current,
he's still so far ahead of us.
>> It has taken, you know,
40, 50 or 60 years
for us to catch up
with the very clear meanings
of the words
that he was writing,
in some cases in the late '20s,
certainly through the '30s
and the '40s.
>> What I now refer to
as the holy trinity
are Henry David Thoreau,
John Muir and Aldo Leopold,
as the giants
on whose shoulders we stand.
>> We have lost sight
of so much magic in the land,
spiritual values,
so it is time, certainly,
to construct
or reconstruct an ethic.
>> Even though he used
the language, "Land Ethic,"
he was really talking about
an "Earth Ethic."
That earth ethic
is as relevant today,
more relevant today
than it has ever been before.
>> Leopold was a forester
and a scientist, a teacher,
and a writer.
But above all, he was a careful
and deeply curious observer
of the natural world.
>> Dad took phenological
records.
He was recording the natural
events of the season,
the first blooming of plants,
the arrival of birds,
and so forth.
So, here am I, age 91.
Guess what I am doing?
I'm keeping phenological
records.
I keep track of about 350 items,
which really is one way
of monitoring climate change.
It's a very, very critical time.
Keeping phenological records
is not only a great sport,
but it does give us an idea
of monitoring the changes
in the climate.
>> Leopold did not know
about climate change
or the other pressing
conservation issues we now face
on a global scale.
He did, however, observe
firsthand the fundamental
changes taking place
on the American landscape
during his boyhood
in the late 1800s.
Railroads were opening the West.
The prairies of the Midwest
were being plowed up.
The pine forests of the lake
states were being cutover, with
the timber floated down river
and carried by rail
to build the country.
>> Man always kills
the thing he loves.
And so we the pioneers
have killed our wilderness.
Some say we had to.
Be that as it may, I am glad
I shall never be young
without wild country
to be young in.
>> Leopold was born in 1887,
here along the Mississippi River
in Burlington, Iowa, where
the railroad and the river,
the two great axes of American
development came together.
>> Aldo was raised
in this environment here,
where there was
plenty of opportunity
for wandering around
and experiencing things,
and discovering things.
But that was just half of it.
The other half
was that he had parents
that pushed him out there,
encouraged him to go out there
and use that youthful
imagination.
>> Aldo Leopold's mother, Clara,
encouraged his observational
skills, his writing,
and his aesthetic sense.
She was a great appreciator
of the opera.
It was one of her passions
in life.
And because binoculars
were not so easily available
for bird watching
at that point in history,
Aldo borrowed her opera glasses.
That was his first
set of binoculars.
>> At a very early age,
Aldo was out here in the yard,
monitoring in his journals,
13 different wren nests
in this yard,
which is a remarkable thing
for an 11 year old.
>> He must've really
picked that up from his father,
others in the family.
Aldo's father, Carl,
he was a conservationist
before there was such a thing
as a conservation movement.
Carl loved the outdoors.
He loved to hunt.
He loved to fish.
He loved bringing his children
into contact with that world.
As Aldo grew up
as the oldest son in the family,
Carl was the one who really
taught him that what you do
in the outdoors
reflects your set of ethics,
your sense of responsibility
for the world that you exist in.
It was Carl who helped his son
with this ethic that would grow
over decades into what
we now call the Land Ethic.
So I have not been devoted
to telling of Leopold's story
simply for its own sake.
I have been most interested in
how we can learn from Leopold,
how we can take from his story,
things that are relevant
to the challenges
and opportunities of today.
>> Welcome
toUniversity of the Air.
>> Our guest is Curt Meine.
>> Thank you so much
for having me.
>> When I saw Aldo Leopold's
birth date of 1887,
it came as sort of a shock,
just because he seems
such a modern figure.
Tell us about your sense
of Leopold
and his place in history.
>> The aspect of Leopold that
makes him unique in our history
is how he connects
what's going on now
and into the future with
the deep origins of conservation
and environmental thought.
Now we're moving into
a new phase.
We don't know what this next
maybe post-environmentalism
phase is going to be,
or what it's becoming.
But Leopold is still right there
in the middle.
>> It think Aldo Leopold
is the philosopher
who stands between conservation
and the modern
environmental movement.
>> I think he is perhaps
the fundamental guiding light
in the development
of modern conservation biology.
>> One of the influences for me
of Aldo Leopold is realizing
that I wanted a life
in conservation,
more than I was interested
in a career in conservation.
So the way it looks for me
is living on a piece of land,
and caring for that land
as best that I
and my family can.
>> People who say that they're
students of Leopold,
or disciples of Leopold,
or influenced by Leopold,
maybe it's our responsibility
to look at the whole Leopold.
>> As Leopold was growing up,
the Midwestern landscape
was changing dramatically.
Its prairies
were being plowed under.
Its forests cut, and its rivers
and wetlands transformed
by dams, dikes and dredges.
They lived at a time
when the water fowl
along the Mississippi flyway
were being depleted.
Market hunting
was still an important force.
There was minimal concern
about the decline of wildlife,
such as the bison
and passenger pigeon, which
were headed toward extinction
when Leopold was a boy.
>> For one species to mourn
the death of another
is a new thing under the sun.
>> Aldo Leopold came of age
as the conservation movement
grew to maturity.
Back then, if you were
a young person
interested in conservation,
there was only one profession
you could enter.
And that was forestry.
So, Aldo Leopold was
part of that first generation
of American foresters.
Many trained at Yale
and then went off to work
for the U.S. Forest Service,
going to places that most
of them had never even heard of.
After graduating in 1909,
Leopold's assignment
was to go to the brand new
Apache National Forest
in what was then
not even a state.
It was still
the Arizona Territory.
Well, he takes the railroad
out to the Painted Desert
in northeastern Arizona.
He gets off at Holbrook,
one of the stops along the line,
and looks south across
the vast expanse of the desert.
He could see
a distant line of green
on the horizon.
That was the Apache National
Forest, created just recently
by the signature
of Teddy Roosevelt.
Like other foresters, he
was starting from the beginning,
so he got his proper ranger
outfit, and he did have to
go buy his own horse.
Aldo Leopold's first real job
in the Forest Service
was to go out and measure
the Apache National Forest.
One of the best known passages
of Leopold's writing describes
an event that occurred
at the very start of his career,
when he saw a fierce green fire
in the eyes of a dying wolf.
Yet the full meaning
of that experience eluded him
for many years.
Imagine this.
Aldo is, how old is he?
He's 22.
>> Twenty-two.
>> Twenty-two years old.
Less than two weeks on the job,
his first or second free Sunday,
he comes out here.
Here's where the green fire
started.
It's always struck me
as entirely fitting
that he started his career
in the Forest Service
with a moment that
he didn't even fully understand.
It would take 35 years
for that moment to emerge
in his own writing fully.
>> Only the mountain
has lived long enough
to listen objectively
to the howl of a wolf...
My own conviction
on this score
dates from the day
I saw a wolf die.
We were eating lunch
on the high rim rock,
at the foot of which
a turbulent river
elbowed its way.
We saw what we thought
was a doe fording the torrent
her breast awash
in white water.
When she climbed the bank
toward us,
and shook out her tail,
we realized our error.
It was a wolf.
>> As a young forester, Leopold
was in a precarious position.
He had to enforce new grazing
regulations in communities
that had long had unrestricted
use of the public lands.
Over the next decade,
as Leopold traveled extensively
throughout the Southwest,
he became deeply interested
in the changes that had
taken place in the land,
especially the impact
of severe overgrazing.
>> I mean, we were out here
to conquer this country,
not to make it better.
I knew nothing
about this country,
but I had a large family
and a small ranch.
And it's self-defense.
I had to figure out a way
to grow more grass
for the livestock
and more wildlife habitat
for the wildlife.
I had to figure it out,
so I did.
My wife got a book
about Leopold,
and I began to read about him
and see what he did.
I thought, boy, if I'd
just read this 30 years ago,
I could've saved a lot of time
and effort, because
he already knew all the things
I was learning.
>> Early in his Forest Service
career, Leopold began to see
the important connections
between his work
and the health of the land.
He would write to his
fellow foresters that,
"We are responsible,
not just for this or that
particular resource.
We are responsible
for the well being of the forest
as a whole."
That shift in perspective
would make all the difference.
>> Our job is to sharpen
our tools and make them cut
the right way...
The sole measure of our
success is the effect
which they have on the forest
>> Leopold began to realize
that the forest environment
included soils, waters, plants,
and animals.
They were all
part of the system.
He was one of the first people
to begin to look at the role
of fire to protect
those southwestern watersheds.
>> The fact that I did burning,
and wanted to do more, was
a mystery to all my neighbors.
And because I was the new kid
on the block, they thought
I was just too young and dumb
to know any better.
They were scared I was going to
set their ranch on fire.
My real objective here
would be to get it back to
an open savannah,
like it was in 1850.
I just kept burning, and people
began to see it might work.
>> Leopold's experience
in the ranching communities
in the Southwest really
taught him that you can't solve
any conservation problem
if you don't address
human relationships, as well as
human land relationships.
>> There are two things
that interest me:
the relation of people
to each other,
and the relation of people
to land.
>> He entered a landscape
very different from the Midwest.
There were, of course,
the many Native tribes,
Anglo ranchers from Texas,
and Hispanic families that had
lived there for centuries.
>> Mother came from
a family from Spain
that came over with Cortez,
and came up through Mexico,
and settled in New Mexico,
for bigger sheep ranches.
I've often realized
that mother's family
had a lot to do with
the overgrazing of the West.
And here she married dad,
the forester, and together,
they blended very well.
Mother was teaching school,
and dad was a young forester,
having just graduated from Yale.
>> He was up in the north part
of the state, being very busy
as a forest supervisor.
She was living down in Santa Fe.
So he had to write to her
letters, and he courted her
by mail, basically.
The letters between them
are really quite touching.
It was the basis
for a lifelong partnership.
>> My dear Estella.
This night is so wonderful
that it almost hurts...
I would like to be
out in our canyon...
and see the wild Clematis
in the moonlight.
Wouldn't you?
>> Aldo married into
one of the preeminent
ranching families in the West.
It gave Leopold a very different
appreciation of the cultural
dimensions of conservation.
In the long run, it would feed
his understanding that
conservation is not only about
the land's ecological
relationships,
but also about our own
communities and cultures.
Aldo and Estella would
eventually have five children,
and each one would become
a prominent scientist
and conservationist
in their own right.
The family spent much time
together in the outdoors.
These trips were often motivated
by Aldo's great love of hunting.
As a young forester,
Leopold wanted to increase game
populations, but neither he
nor anyone else understood
the complex relationships
connecting predators, prey,
people, and forests.
Instead, he acted on the simple
premise that fewer predators
meant more game.
>> Leopold actually received
permission from the
Forest Service to travel
throughout the Southwest,
organizing game protective
associations that would
work for game protection.
>> So, he was of his generation
and time.
To kill a predator
was no big deal.
>> I personally believed,
at least in 1914,
when predator control began,
that there could not be
too much horned game, and tha
the extirpation of predators
was a reasonable price to pay
for better big game hunting.
>> Due in part to the
government's campaign against
predators, wolves would
eventually disappear from
the mountains of the Southwest.
>> In those days,
we had never heard
of passing up the chance
to kill a wolf.
In a second, we were
pumping lead into the pack,
but with more excitement
than accuracy.
When our rifles were empty,
the old wolf was down
and a pup
was dragging a leg
into impassable slide rocks.
>> Leopold wrote
"Thinking Like a Mountain"
many years after the
wolf shooting incident occurred.
The essay is, in many ways,
about the ability to change
our ideas.
>> Later in his career,
Leopold began to realize that
deer could be very destructive
to the forest
if their numbers increased.
So Leopold himself recommended
the removal of bounties
on wolves.
One of the most
successful areas in which
he began to pursue his ideas
was the Gila National Forest.
As deer populations increased
there, he began to go
into the Gila with horses
and pack stock
on long hunting trips.
He began to realize that there
was potential for developing
a new kind of recreational
experience in the forests,
what he called
wilderness hunting grounds.
>> Wilderness is the one kind
of playground which mankind
cannot build to order...
I contrived to get
the Gila headwaters
withdrawn as a wilderness area
to be kept as pack country,
free from additional roads,
forever.
>> Roads were spreading
across the country, threatening
the last great wild areas.
So he began working to protect
the larger expanses
of undeveloped land
in the Southwest.
This led to the designation
of the Gila Wilderness Area
on the Gila Forest in 1924.
It was the first federally
designated wilderness area,
40 years before Congress
passed the Wilderness Act.
Leopold championed
our remote wild lands,
but he understood that wildness
can be found anywhere,
even in our largest cities.
>> We're gonna grow
some carrots.
Is everybody ready?
>> Yeah.
>> These seeds are very small.
I want you to put one or two
of those seeds in the holes,
okay?
Yes, in there for me.
This is 3-1/2 acres here.
>> It wasn't always as pretty
as it is now?
>> Oh, no.
Its history was a 35-year-old
illegal dump site.
The community actually
called it Dead Man's Alley,
because a few dead bodies
had been dumped here
in those 35 years.
So, basically, there's so many
things taking place
in a former illegal dump site,
you'll be amazed.
We have a prairie.
We have a wetland.
We have a children's
petting zoo.
We have a Potawatomi
Indian village.
And we've got garden over here
teaching people
how to grow food.
It's amazing what you can do
in these little bitty spaces,
trying to reconnect this
community back to the land.
>> The land ethic, this idea
that we're part of a community
includes the land
and the land includes us.
It doesn't matter where you are.
It doesn't matter if you're
in the most remote wild place
or if you're in the heart
of a big city like Chicago.
It doesn't matter where you are.
>> It doesn't matter.
Nature is here.
It's everywhere to be found.
We've got to really change
the mindset of so many people,
especially in urban environments
that are so disconnected
from the land.
I had the biggest argument
with a student,
who argued with me
where the eggs in our hen house
came from.
I was showing him Henrietta,
our chicken layer,
and he was saying,
she didn't lay that egg.
"That egg came from Jewels."
I said, "You mean the grocery
store?"
He said, "Yeah, that's
where it came from,
the grocery store."
I said, "Where do you think
the grocery store got it from?"
Then he thought about it
and he said, "It came from
the grocery store."
[laughs]
>> There are two
spiritual dangers
in not owning a farm.
One is the danger
of supposing that breakfast
comes from the grocery,
and the other that heat
comes from a furnace.
>> In the late spring of 1924,
Leopold made a major
career move.
He returned
to the upper Midwest,
to Madison, Wisconsin,
where he accepted a new position
as Assistant Director of
the Forest Products Laboratory.
After several years,
Leopold left the Forest Service
to devote himself to his most
compelling interest, wildlife.
For three years, he conducted
unprecedented surveys
of game populations and habitats
across the Midwestern states.
Then, in 1933, he published
the first text in the new field,
"Game Management,"
and became its first professor
at the University of Wisconsin,
where he would help develop
this new idea of ecological
restoration at the Arboretum.
>> It's always amazing to me,
that he could
look into the future
without having a lot
of role models to follow.
He had this vision that
we could rebuild on this site,
prairies, savannahs and forests
that were here, and rebuild them
the way they were
before European settlement.
They went out and foraged
over the landscape and
found small remnant prairies,
collected sods, collected seeds,
collected plants,
and brought them here
and established the species
that used to be there.
>> If a land mechanism
as a whole is good,
then every part is good,
whether we understand it
or not...
To keep every cog and wheel
is the first precaution
of intelligent tinkering.
>> My father was head
of the University of Wisconsin
Arboretum in the '30s.
I think he was enjoying
that process so much that
he decided he wanted to do it
on his own land.
That's when he got
this property.
>> On this sand farm
in Wisconsin, first worn out
and then abandoned by our
bigger and better society,
we try to rebuild,
with shovel and axe,
what we are losing elsewhere.
It is here that we seek,
and still find,
our meat from God.
>> I remember dad at dinner
one evening said that he had
bought some land
up in the sand counties
along the Wisconsin River.
We all had dreams of
a little cabin covered in vines,
where we would sit on the porch
and watch the water.
Not so.
We finally got in
to see this place,
and it was corn stubble
and cockle burrs
as far as you could see.
The old shed that remained
was the old chicken coop.
It was waist deep
in frozen manure.
>> Our first task
was to get rid of the manure
that had accumulated
in this little shed
that was the only building
left standing
after the house burned down.
>> There were no windows.
There was just an opening
for the door.
I say my mother was a saint.
She said,
"Oh, okay, all right..."
But as soon as we started
fixing it up,
we all became addicted.
We just loved it.
>> When my husband
found this little place,
which was a worn out farm,
he decided to buy it
to see what could be done.
>> The shack was as close
to nothing as you could get,
and still it was everything.
It's where we learned to work.
Where we learned to be together,
and to sing, and it just
pulled the family together.
It was seven us, and the dog,
and usually a pet or two.
It was quite a cheerful place.
>> There's one thing
that my husband always said,
and which we kept to,
"Never take anything up there
that isn't absolutely
necessary."
>> We always had the guitar.
There was always a gun,
the picnic basket, the dog.
The essentials.
I think fundamental
to everything was this
absolutely wonderful marriage
between my mother and my father.
>> You haven't any idea how much
pleasure I have gotten
out of going into the country
with my husband.
>> It seemed to me that
that was one of the happiest
marriages I know of.
He'd say, "Your mother and I
are going to the shack
for the weekend.
Anybody want to come?"
And of course,
we all wanted to come.
Now, I look at is as kind of
a metaphor of how one can find
absolute happiness
with the least amount of stuff.
>> Like winds and sunsets,
wild things
were taken for granted
until progress
began to do away with them.
Now we face the question
whether a still
higher standard of living
is worth its costs
in things natural, wild
and free.
>> When Leopold came out to his
shack by the Wisconsin River,
there were no calls
of sandhill cranes.
He had to go deep
into the sand counties,
into the wilderness areas
to find the last few birds
that were left.
He estimated that there were
only about 100 cranes
in Wisconsin.
And the whooping crane
was practically extinct then.
He thought his "Marshland Elegy"
was an elegy
to the sandhill crane
that would soon disappear.
>> When we hear his call,
we hear no mere bird.
We hear the trumpet
in the orchestra
of evolution.
He is the symbol
of our untamable past,
of that incredible sweep
of millennia which underlies
and conditions
the daily affairs of birds
and men.
>> In the midst of the
Depression and the Dust Bowl,
Leopold was rethinking
our very idea of progress,
and how it affects the land.
>> The destruction of soil
is the most fundamental
kind of economic loss which
the human race can suffer.
>> The upper Midwest was
subject to massive soil erosion
and watershed degradation.
So Leopold and a team
of like-minded colleagues
pioneered a radical new approach
to conservation,
working with all the landowners
in a given watershed
to heal the land.
The first time they tried
this was in western Wisconsin,
in a place called Coon Valley.
Here in this little valley,
a revolution in conservation
began.
Hundreds of farmers joined the
effort, working with specialists
in agriculture, soil, water,
wildlife and forestry.
With the newly enrolled
young workers of the Civilian
Conservation Corps, together
they created the very first
watershed scale conservation
project in the nation.
We tend to think of something as
either public or it's private,
and there's no overlap
between them.
>> Leopold started
on the public land,
the national forest lands,
and so on.
But then, he came to realize
the importance after moving
back to the Midwest, that
there really was very little
public land.
In fact, most
of the productive land
from a biological standpoint
is really on private lands
and not on public lands.
So, out of that came the idea
that if we really are going
to protect
and preserve our environment,
we would have to do it
through private land
and private land owners.
>> Conservation
will ultimately
boil down to rewarding
the private landowner who
conserves the public interest
>> So, Leopold came in
with the idea that we ought to
have a beautiful landscape,
not just a utilitarian
landscape.
He wrote back then
about conservation being harmony
between people and land.
And land to him
was more than just soil.
It also includes water,
and wildlife, and plants,
and humans.
Just drive through Coon Valley
today and see the beauty
of the landscape.
Through Leopold's ideas
and many others who began
back in 1933, we've been able
to make that land
much healthier again.
>> In 1935, Leopold's interest
in forestry and wildlife
conservation drew him overseas
for the only time in his life.
On a trip to Germany, he got
a firsthand look at intensive
resource management.
>> We Americans have not yet
experienced a bear-less,
wolf-less, eagle-less,
cat-less woods.
Germany strove for maximum
yields of both timber
and game, and got neither.
>> Leopold's time in the forests
of central Europe taught him
a critical lesson.
Germany had,
over several centuries
developed an artificial,
highly intensive approach
to forest and game management.
But for Leopold,
something crucial was missing.
>> He made a trip in 1935
to Germany, where he describes
the slick, clean forests.
One of the contrasts of that
was his trip in 1936,
and again in 1937,
to the Rio Gavilan region
of northern Mexico,
a region that I have become
familiar with in my own work.
This is a pretty wild,
remote piece of country.
I think it had a profound
influence on Leopold.
>> It was here that
I first clearly realized
that land is an organism,
that all my life I had seen
only sick land,
whereas here was a biota
still in perfect
aboriginal health.
The term
"unspoiled wilderness"
took on a new meaning.
>> We are all Aldo Leopold's
great-grandchildren
intellectually,
and I happen to be personally,
as well.
But he's pointed us
down an important path.
And we'll be going down
that path and finding our way
for some time, I suspect.
That's a good thing.
>> Leopold's travels led him
to realize that wilderness
must be protected,
not just for its recreational
and cultural values, but
also for its scientific value.
In his words, we need wilderness
to serve as a land laboratory,
a place to understand
the land's ecological processes.
During this period,
Leopold joined forces with
other leading conservationists
to form the Wilderness Society,
dedicated to protecting
the wildest portions
of the nation's public lands
from rampant development.
Eventually, the system
of protected wilderness
would embrace
more than 100 million acres
across the country.
>> To those devoid
of imagination
a blank place on the map
is a useless waste;
to others,
the most valuable part.
>> While Leopold fought
to protect the spectacular
public wild lands,
he was equally conscious
of the need to restore wildness
and land health close to home.
>> What more
delightful avocation
than to take a piece of land
and by cautious
experimentation
to prove how it works.
What more substantial service
to conservation
than to practice it
on one's own land?
>> That first year,
we began to plant pines and
to bring it back to what it was
originally.
>> We planted 3,000 a year,
so I think it was approximately
48,000, something like that,
all together.
>> Acts of creation
are ordinarily reserved
for gods and poets,
but humbler folk
may circumvent
this restriction
if they know how.
To plant a pine, for example,
one need be
neither god nor poet;
one need only
own a good shovel.
>> Leopold's thinking
is pertinent everywhere.
It was very modern
with regards of using science
and the new emergent science
of ecology
for making decisions
about managing the landscape.
>> It took ecology
to bring us back to this notion
of communities, of things
being deeply connected.
Leopold was the key translator
of that idea.
>> I think today, Aldo Leopold's
influence and his philosophies
are more apparent,
and more of a guiding factor
in land management agencies
than they've ever been.
>> Our tools are better
than we are.
They suffice
to crack the atom,
to command the tides,
but they do not suffice
for the oldest task
in human history,
to live on a piece of land
without spoiling it.
>> This is an area where wolves
have been reintroduced.
In an ongoing process,
there have been about 100 wolves
reintroduced over the years,
and about 52 at last count,
occupying this country
and the adjacent country
over in New Mexico.
We've got a ways to go
in terms of building
our wolf numbers up to
what we refer to as
ecologically effective
population density.
This population was down to
seven wolves at one time.
Every Mexican wolf
that's alive today in captivity
or the wild can be traced
back to seven animals,
so they were teetering
on the brink of extinction.
It was nearly there.
Starting when the wolves
were taken out of that system,
the aspens, willows and
the cottonwoods just ceased
to reproduce, because the elk
increased in numbers.
That's one of the roles
of wolves in ecosystems, is to
control the elk population.
It's an amazing story
of ecological regeneration.
Wolf recovery, of course,
is an extremely controversial
topic.
So we need to find new ways
to resolve conflict that leave
more wolves on the ground.
So we can get to that objective
and help regenerate ecosystems.
>> Conservation,
without a keen realization
of its vital conflicts,
fails to rate
as authentic human drama.
It falls to the level
of a mere utopian dream.
>> Leopold understood that
these are complicated issues.
He understood that
there were no simple solutions.
He himself contained
so many different dimensions.
He was a hunter.
He was also a protector
of wildlife.
He was a forester
who understood the need
for "wise use" of timber,
and other forest resources.
But he was also
one of the great champions
of preserving wild lands.
All the complex tensions
that were built into
the conservation movement
were there inside Leopold.
>> The amazing thing
is that we could almost be
seeing a wolf here any time,
because they're back.
>> And they are nearby,
aren't they?
>> Yes, they are.
There is a pack
about five miles from here.
That's close in wolf terms.
That means they could be
anywhere near us
at this point in time.
>> We may never know
exactly where the wolf
shooting incident happened,
but we can feel pretty confident
that it was very close
to where we're standing.
For the record, it's almost
exactly 100 years ago to the day
that the incident happened here.
>> That's correct, in September.
>> So he and his ranger,
Mr. Wheatley, are both shooting,
presumably, we don't know which
fatal shots may have been whose.
But the wolves are wounded,
a couple are down.
The ones that are surviving
begin clawing their way back
into the talus slopes,
Leopold comes up to
the mother wolf, and sees
the green fire die right here.
>> 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.
I was young then
and full of trigger-itch;
I thought that because
fewer wolves meant more deer,
that no wolves
would mean hunters' paradise.
But after seeing
the green fire die,
I sensed that neither
the wolf nor the mountain
agreed with such a view.
>> In that one essay,
that one moment
when he saw the green fire,
that was a transformational
moment in his individual life.
It also suggests the
transformational moment in our
movement, if we're willing to
change ourselves.
>> You know, we all have
the essence
of the fierce green fire.
That's again,
our hope, I think.
>> The fierce green fire
Leopold saw in the eyes
of the dying wolf
would come over his lifetime
to signify far more
than one creature's passing
or one person's experience.
Remembering that fateful moment,
Leopold bore witness to the
deep history of the mountain,
the fullness of its community
of life, the complicated
and changing role of people
within it.
For Leopold, the encounter
with the wolf
was an early turning point
on his own trail.
He followed that trail
until it led to the Land Ethic.
Finally, in the summer of 1947,
he sat down to distill
his thoughts.
>> Examine each question
in terms of what is ethically
and aesthetically right,
as well as what is
economically expedient.
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 Land Ethic was
the end result of a long process
of experience and reflection.
In many ways, it was the
culmination of his life journey.
These are Leopold's
field journals.
He began them in 1917, when he
was still in the Forest Service
and living in the Southwest.
These aren't his professional
journals.
These are his more personal
records of his own time
in the outdoors.
And almost any time Leopold
was outside, the next thing
he would do was come home
and write about it.
On any given day, he'd note
the weather, what he saw,
phenology, first and last blooms
of flowers.
This is just two nights before
he would pass away, actually.
In fact, over here we have
things that were on him when
he suffered the heart attack
that killed him
while he was fighting a fire.
This is actually materials
that were in his pocket that
were singed during the fire.
This is actually the final entry
in Aldo Leopold's
field journals.
April 21, 1948.
Bloodroot in Shower Bed,
Closed, 6:00am.
>> My father was at the shack
with mother, always.
My younger sister, Estella,
she was about 15 years old then.
>> So, that week,
we got all packed up,
just mother and dad and I
went up to the shack
to plant pines.
And of course,
that was the very week
when the neighbor's fire
was a calamity for us.
>> The farmer adjacent to us
was burning brush.
The fire got away from him.
So dad and mother and Estella
decided they would go and help
this farmer fight the fire.
Each one went
in a different direction.
All of a sudden,
I guess the fire was out,
but dad was nowhere to be seen.
>> I went out into the marsh.
I saw a man coming down
the hill, coming toward me.
I had this sinking feeling.
He came all the way across the
marsh, and when he got to me,
I said, "Something's wrong."
And he said,
"Yes, your father's sick."
I said, "It's worse than that,
isn't it?"
I just knew.
>> 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...
>> It was fortuitous, indeed,
that the same week
that dad died, he heard from
Oxford University Press that
they would publish his essay.
>> After several rejections,
"A Sand County Almanac"
was finally published.
At first, it sold modestly.
It took decades for it to become
as some would say, "the Bible
of the environmental movement."
It would sell in the millions.
>> His writing was so deep,
and so layered,
that you can find something new
each time you pick it up.
>> Now I read it at least
once a year on my birthday,
just to see what I've learned.
>> Even in Russian, it's,
you feel the poetry.
>> That book is an absolute
masterpiece.
It's so simple,
but that's only the
construction,
because the thinking behind it
is so, so deep.
>> I had the pleasure
of reading this book,
"A Sand County Almanac,"
about 25 years ago.
I'm pleased to be with you
this morning.
Thank you for the honor.
We're going to share the reading
of "February."
If one has cut, split, hauled,
and piled his own good oak, and
let his mind work the while...
>> I remember one day I was at
the shack with Estella Leopold
and her mother on Easter Sunday,
1969.
We heard a sound
that was unlike anything
I had ever heard.
It was an extraordinary thrill.
You know, I had never heard
that sound before in my life.
But somehow, I had heard it
in my imagination, because
Leopold had described it
as this primordial bugling.
The sandhill cranes
had come back
to Aldo Leopold's marsh.
>> Our ability
to perceive quality in nature
begins, as in art,
with the pretty.
It expands
through successive stages
of the beautiful
to values as yet uncaptured
by language.
The quality of cranes
lies, I think,
in this higher gamut,
as yet beyond the reach
of words.
>> Thanks to Leopold, and to
so many who have followed him,
sandhill cranes
have rebounded dramatically.
Although we face daunting
threats to nature's diversity
worldwide, the cranes
demonstrate and symbolize
our ability to work together
for the health of the land
and its creatures.
Leopold's legacy endures,
because he is asking
the fundamental questions of
our relationship to the earth,
to other forms of life,
to the communities
in which we live.
>> There's been a rediscovery
of Leopold's significance
for community-based
conservation.
More than a million
organizations all over the world
are working on some aspect
of conservation and restoration
of the environment.
This, I've come to believe,
is a veritable green fire
of conservation
and ecosystem restoration.
That, I think,
is Aldo Leopold's living legacy.
>> Leopold said that the oldest
task in human history is perhaps
to live on a piece of land
without spoiling it.
Certainly, my generation
is no better
than the one before us.
But I think there's a lot
of hope in the land ethic.
A land ethic
is not meant to be a last word.
It's not meant to be doctoring.
It's really a guiding light
for the way
we can find our way forward.
>> If you read "The Land Ethic,"
you'll see what I like to call
Leopold's most important
sentence.
Toward the end of
"The Land Ethic," he has
a sentence that says,
"Nothing so important
as an ethic is ever written.
It evolves in the minds
of a thinking community."
So here he is, in his essay,
"The Land Ethic," saying
no one writes the land ethic.
I think it's a stroke of genius,
maybe his greatest stroke of
genius, because with that,
he liberates the idea.
He opens it to the larger
thinking community.
Us.
>> I have purposely presented
the land ethic as a product
of social evolution,
because nothing so important
as an ethic is ever written.
It evolves in the minds
of a thinking community.
Aldo Leopold.
>> To learn more about
Aldo Leopold, or to purchase
your own copy ofGreen Fire,
or Leopold's classic,
"A Sand County Almanac,"
please visit:
www.aldoleopold.org
Offer made by the Aldo Leopold
Foundation, Baraboo, Wisconsin.