"LEOPOLD," CONTINUED

ALDO LEOPOLD AS A YOUNG FORESTRY SUPERVISOR IN THE GILA NATIONAL FOREST,
EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY

THE CENTRAL WISCONSIN "SHACK" WHERE LEOPOLD DID MUCH OF HIS WRITING...

...THE UNIQUE BENCH THAT HE DESIGNED

Wednesday, 8;30 AM.  15 degrees F, wind SSW, mostly calm with light to moderate gusts.  The sky has a high overcast and it has begun to snow very lightly.  The humidity is 82%, and the barometer continues to fall, now at 30.26".
   Aldo Leopold is recognized as "the father of scientific game management," but his influence throughout the broad fields of conservation and ecology are legendary.  I was early on influenced personally and professionally by his life and writings.  His basic message was that Western man needed to develop a "conservation ethic," on a plane with human moral ethics, and that is indeed happening, much to his credit.
   Most readers will find his initially published works not only inspiring but also highly literary.  He is an outdoor writer par excellance, and worth reading for that alone, and most will wish to stop there.  I read "Leopold" to gain insight into his management and research styles, since this work publishes for the first time many of his administrative and scientific papers and arguments a well as a host of personal correspondence.  I found that he was not only an inspiring literary writer but a persuasive and highly logical technical writer; professional skills in scare supply in today's world of instant tweeting, twittering and posting sans deeper consideration.
   Aldo Leopold honed his writing skills from a very early age, corresponding with mother and father, siblings and friends in a most enjoyable prose.  He was a born writer.  He was also a very practical and persuasive professional, who seemingly always  attempted to accomplish the politically and socially possible as well as the professionally and scientifically correct.
   The technical and scientific world is so changed today from what it was at his untimely death in 1948 that one must wonder what he would think of it all now, particularly in the environmental arena.  Would he still be a beacon of scientific reason, or would he take sides in the issues of the day that are so charged with political correctness and opposing theories?  Would he still pursue the attainable, rather than the ultimate?  Would he be pleased with the influence he has had and the progress that has been made? Or, would he be forced to take sides in the uncompromising, winner-take-all environmental wars that rage today?
   I have been in Aldo Leopold's camp for over a half a century now, and if in retrospect I see any fault with his philosophies it is this:  The world and its physical environment is always changing, and whether we like it or not, we do not live in a static environment.  We cannot wish the land and what lives and grows on it back to the conditions of centuries past.  We must meet the challenges we face with real science, with the highest aesthetic response, and with the confidence that mankind can be not just the problem, but also the solution to  the environmental challenges of the 21st. Century.
   Thank you, Professor Leopold. May your wisdom and humanity continue to guide us to a better environmental and human future.