Staff Profile: Craig Maier

Name: Craig Maier

Job Title: Communications Coordinator

What does your job entail? I work with writers, TV crews, and other communicators to help them tell the story of Aldo Leopold and the Aldo Leopold Foundation. I help them find background information and to organize visits and interviews. Sometimes the media comes to us, and other times we seek out editors, producers, and journalists to pitch story ideas.

I also edit our newsletter and some of our other printed media, such as our building brochure, and I assist with our online content.

What is your educational and professional background? As a geology student, I learned that something as apparently featureless as drab a green rock outcrop along a highway can tell illuminate stories of underwater volcanoes, the births of ancient oceans, Ice Age glaciers, and 21st Century gold miners. Since then, I’ve tried to defy the artificial barrier between science and the arts. I graduated from Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin, with a Bachelor of Science in Geoscience. Before working for ALF, I worked as a newspaper reporter and a stream survey crew member. I started here as an ecological restoration intern in February 2005 and transitioned into my current role in the fall of 2006.

Where are you originally from? I grew up just a few miles north of the Leopold Shack and Farm.

What brought you to work in the environmental field? I believe that land is important to people.  Even as a backdrop for modern lives where fundamental connections are largely hidden or overlooked, land is important to the human psyche. The shapes of landforms, the weather, the waters, the soils, the kinds of plants and animals found there, and opportunities to interact with a place really shape who we are and what we value. Growing up, I didn’t yet sense that land mattered to me; it was mostly just a place where our neighbors grew crops, along with a few old fields and hedge rows where we played as kids. ( I was abducted by science fiction at a young age—my early heroes and their fictional settings were expertly-crafted by Asimov, Clarke, and their descendants.) My relationship to land and my values were totally shaken up when I was 14. In the summer between 8th and 9th grade, I took part in a three-week-long camping trip with 13 other teenagers—led by 3 very ambitious and capable teachers. We departed from farm country and went west, hiking and camping in the Black Hills, Yellowstone, the Tetons, Arches National Park, Mesa Verde, and Rocky Mountain National Park, among other wild Western places. I came away with a sense that the world is much larger and grander than I had known or imagined, and I was hungry for more outdoor recreation and encounters with wildness.

Suddenly, land mattered to me as a place where ancient forests, many kinds of wildlife, and clear streams survived; the Perfect Place was suddenly a place I had walked. In college, I began to understand more about how people depend on the land and ecological health for clean water, productive forests and farmland, and even cultural and personal identity. Perhaps the greatest turn for me came with the realization, so ably articulated by Wendell Berry, that a society which cannot maintain healthy farms and cities cannot preserve healthy parks and wilderness. Our shared values shape how we use land, period. Leopold’s land ethic inspires us to work as a “plain member and citizen” of the community we belong to, and this call is relevant across all parts of the landscape, from urban to wild.

I originally did not see much of value in the Midwestern landscape I call home. Yet I now work in this field and in this place because I am awed by the beauty and diversity of the natural world everywhere, and I believe that we can re-work agriculture, forestry, and even manufacturing, construction, and commerce, to restore ecological health and natural beauty to the places we inhabit. We need to maintain and strengthen our commitment to wild and threatened places like Wyoming’s high mountains and wind-swept basins, but we will lose something just as critical if we cannot find a way to value, revere and uphold our natural heritage where we live—whether Manhattan, Kansas, or Manhattan, New York. It will be a tough climb.

How long have you worked for ALF? Since February 2005.

What is your favorite part of your job? Leopold’s practice informed his philosophy, and his philosophy informed his practice. I think our staff and our programs reflect that ideal—we are not focused just on spreading an important message, or just on taking care of a historic piece of land. These activities inform one another. It’s a fun and lively process to be a part of.

What is the biggest challenge? Leopold set a very high standard for all of us! Working on the pine harvest two years ago, it was very humbling to cut a tree that the Leopold family had worked so hard to plant and care for; yet the harvest was carefully planned, and cutting trees was a necessary part of continuing to care for the maturing forest. Interpreting and sharing Leopold’s Land Ethic through our publications or by interacting with members, visitors, or the media sometimes feels like a selective harvest of A Sand County Almanac and Leopold’s legacy. Handing over a copy of the Almanac isn’t always an effective way to begin sharing the story, however, and the challenge is selecting the appropriate idea or anecdote to reach someone on an intellectual and emotional level. The hope is to entice them to further investigate their ecological connections to other people and the land. 

How has working for ALF changed your thinking? Counting myself as someone who did not intuitively sense the myriad of connections between people and land, my understanding of what conservation means—and means for people—has grown greatly during my time here. Working in the field in all seasons as an ecological restoration intern laid the foundations of my ecological understanding and proved to be an invaluable experience. That experience has been just as important to my current work as my previous experience as a writer.

What is your favorite Leopold quote/essay? I think one of the most important phrases Leopold coined is “ecological conscience,” which he wrote about in “The Land Ethic.” In just two words, Leopold bridges science and philosophy. Our ecological conscience is the figurative backbone of the Land Ethic, our gut feeling (backed up by data, experience, and culture) about whether we have done right by the land or not.

“A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity.”