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Calendar of Events
Following are events sponsored by the Aldo
Leopold Foundation and by other organizations working to foster
the Land Ethic through the legacy of Aldo Leopold.
The Woodland School
The Shack Seminar Series
Volunteer Training Days
May Events
May 19, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
The Woodland School: Fred Clark and Brad Hutnik
Conducting a Successful Timber Harvest
Woodland owners will work with professional foresters to learn how to plan and execute a successful timber harvest on their property. The classroom session will focus on planning needs, tree selection, the role of silviculture, and marketing and contracting for best results. We will cover the role of different logging equipment and logging operators in accomplishing a succesful timber harvest. The field portion of the class will take participants to several field sites to view harvests before and after. Continued forest management options such as Timber Stand Improvement and reforestation will also be discussed. More information.
May 21, 6:00 pm
Shack Seminar: James Pritchard
Revisiting the Marsh: The Legacy of Paul Errington
Paul Errington was a population ecologist who made major scientific contributions concerning the role of predation in wildlife populations and in the topic of population cycling. Before Aldo Leopold was appointed a professor at Wisconsin, Errington joined the intellectual circle assembling in Wisconsin. Like Leopold, Errington’s thinking about the relationship between nature and humans evolved, and he was an early advocate for the values of North American wetlands. Errington’s work on muskrats in Midwestern marshes occurred in the midst of a changing landscape. Join us as we examine Errington’s important but overlooked contributions to science and to conservation. Free and open to the public.
May 23, 7:00 pm
Jeannine Richards
Climate Change: "A Warning, Also An Opportunity"
Climate change has become a challenge that we must face in this decade. Learn what global warming means for our future, in the Midwest and around the globe. Changes are happening in the natural world that have been triggered by increased levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Many people believe that the Earth is too vast to be harmed by human activity, but many technologies now overwhelm the human scale. They make us more powerful than we ever thought we could be. Unfortunately these powers didn’t automatically come with new levels of foresight and wisdom. To end this crisis, it must become a part of our culture’s political and social consciousness. What wisdom can we extract from Aldo Leopold’s philosophy of a land ethic that can help to guide us into the future as we confront this problem? We will evaluate global warming’s challenges and solutions in the context of Leopold’s thinking and discuss how to frame our questions in the larger context of the relationship between people and land. Free and open to the public.
May 30, 9:00 am
Ashley Stanton
Wisconsin River Floodplain Forest
Ashley Stanton is a graduate student at University of Wisconsin - Madison. She has conducted her thesis research on the floodplain forest ecosystem of the Wisconsin River. Ashley will give her exit seminar on her research at the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center as an effort to share her findings with the Aldo Leopold Foundation stewardship team as they work to manage the floodplain forests of the Leopold Memorial Reserve. Free and open to the public.
The Woodland School
The Woodland School has a number of classes scheduled for this spring. For more information on the Woodland School program, course details, or registration information, please visit www.thewoodlandschool.org.
May 19: Conducting a Successful Timber Harvest, Aldo Leopold Legacy Center, Baraboo, 9:00-5:00
June 2: The Story of the Trees: Using Forest Measurement Skills, Aldo Leopold Legacy Center, Baraboo, 9:00-12:00
The Shack Seminar Series
A tradition begun by Aldo Leopold, the Shack Seminar Series offers an opportunity for discussion of conservation issues with leaders from a variety of disciplines. This year we will host one seminar on the third Monday of every month from May through September. We also have speakers in October and November.
Seminars begin at 6:30 p.m. on Monday evenings outside the Leopold Shack (except where noted), with an optional potluck supper at 6:00. In case of inclement weather, seminars will be moved to the Home Range Hall at the new Aldo Leopold Legacy Center. For more information or directions, contact the Foundation office at (608) 355-0279, ex. 27 or 28.
JUNE 18
William Barillas
Aldo Leopold and the Midwestern Pastoral
The midwestern pastoral is a literary tradition of place and rural experience that celebrates an attachment to land that is mystical as well as practical, based on historical and scientific knowledge as well as personal experience. It is exemplified in the poetry, fiction, and essays of writers who express an informed love of the nature and regional landscapes of the Midwest. In his book The Midwestern Pastoral: Place and Landscape in Literature of the American Heartland, author William Barillas traces the development of the midwestern pastoral through the work of five major authors—Willa Cather, Aldo Leopold, Theodore Roethke, James Wright, and Jim Harrison. For these writers, the aim of writing is not merely intellectual and aesthetic, but democratic and ecological. Join author Barillas as he speaks of Leopold’s literary accomplishment and place in literary history.
JULY 16
Julianne Newton
"Dear Aldo...It ought to make you president":
Leopold's Land Ethic and New Ecological Vision in the Age of Global Climate Change
“It is the finest thing I have ever read, seen or heard on the subject. It ought to make you President,” wrote Jay “Ding” Darling to Aldo Leopold, complimenting him on a 1934 article about the means and ends of conservation. Good land-use, Leopold was coming to understand, would require addressing the question of how a growing population of modern people might live prosperously while at the same time keep the land in good condition. In America’s democracy it would involve protecting the public interest in the public values of private lands; it would require motivating individuals to act not only in their own self-interest, but in the interests of their communities; it would also require some “workable criterion of good versus bad land use.” But, “How to define it?” Leopold challenged, and, “Who to define it?” Out of such questions emerged Leopold’s now-famous land ethic and also, intimately linked with it, his less well-known but central concept--land health. Land health was Leopold’s evolving, positive vision of land use, based on scientific evidence and encompassing a constellation of both economic and non-economic values. Join us as we consider how Leopold’s ideas about land health have become even more urgently relevant to today’s political leaders and all citizens.
AUGUST 20
Tom Gehring
Proactive, Non-Lethal Management of Gray Wolves in the Great Lakes Region
In the last 20 years, farmers have been relegated to a largely passive role in managing livestock damage by wolves. In this seminar, we will discuss new non-lethal management tools currently being tested and developed for reducing wolf-human conflicts such as livestock depredation. These tools offer an opportunity for more proactive management of wolf-human conflict by farmers. Join us as we discuss a history of wolf management as it pertains to tools that are used to reduce livestock losses from wolves and develop the concept that farmers need to be included as more active participants in wolf management.
SEPTEMBER 17 (At the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center)
Ted Cochrane
Origin of the Wisconsin Prairie and Savanna Flora
When the Laurentide Ice Sheet finally melted from Wisconsin between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, it left behind a gigantic seedbed that was open to plant invasion from all directions. Populations that furnished the seeds of invasion still survive in unglaciated territories. By examining their total modern distributions, we can link the majority of species to a particular unglaciated geographic region. Thus, we can assign most species to a particular floristic element, whether Alleghenian-Appalachian, Ozarkian, Coastal Plain, Prairie, Southwestern, Cordilleran, or Arctic. Each species, of course, migrated individually and now survives in its own appropriate habitats, but those pre-adapted to a warm dry climate tended to migrate together and assembled themselves into Wisconsin’s prairie and savanna communities. This talk will identify the floristic elements of our prairie flora and give examples by way of maps and pictures showing plant ranges and wildflowers.
OCTOBER 22 (At the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center)
Cristina Eisenberg
Was Aldo Leopold Right about Wolves?
Aldo Leopold’s well-known essay, “Thinking Like a Mountain” describes his epiphany when he witnessed the shooting of a female wolf. He spent the last ten years of his life studying and writing about the profound ecological effects predators have on food webs, a phenomenon known today as trophic cascades. He found a strong relationship between the extirpation of large carnivores, deer population eruptions, and extensive browsing damage to plant communities. Additionally, he worked to bring together the public, wildlife managers, and scientists to solve the deer problem in the Midwest. In this seminar we will examine how Aldo Leopold developed these seminal ecological concepts and discuss the exciting and innovative ways that the scientific community and agencies are applying them today to research and ecosystem management.
NOVEMBER 12 (At the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center)
Peter Annin
The Great Lakes Water Wars
The Great Lakes Water Wars is the first authoritative examination of more than 100 years of Great Lakes water diversion controversies and the new Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Basin Water Resources Compact that hopes to lay them to rest. Author Peter Annin will present his findings on the struggle over use of the greatest fresh water resources on the planet, the Great Lakes. Annin, a former Newsweek correspondent, delves into the long history of political maneuvers and water diversion schemes that have proposed sending Great Lakes water everywhere from Akron to Arizona. Join author Annin as he uses the prism of the past to analyze the future of Great Lakes water resources.
Volunteer Training Days
Saturday, May 19th
Volunteer Shack Tour Guide Training
8:30am - 4:00pm
Please RSVP on E-vite, or contact Education Coordinator Jennifer Kobylecky for more information.
Saturday, June 9th
Aldo Leopold Legacy Center Bookstore Volunteer Training
10:00am - 12:00pm
Please RSVP on E-vite, or contact Education Coordinator Jennifer Kobylecky for more information.
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