Places Featured in Green Fire
Apache National Forest
Carson National Forest
Coon Valley
Eden Place
Forest Products Laboratory
Gila National Forest
International Crane Foundation
James Woodworth Prairie
Leopold Family Shack
Leopold Home
Lodi Reads Leopold
Madison Farmers' Market
Rio Gavilan
Starker-Leopold Home
University of Wisconsin Arboretum
Yale Forest School
Apache National Forest, Springerville, Arizona, 1909-1911
After his graduation from Yale in 1909, Aldo Leopold boarded a westbound train that would take him to his first job: forest assistant on the newly formed Apache National Forest in east central Arizona Territory. Following a brief orientation at the District 3 headquarters in Albuquerque, he took the train to Holbrook, Arizona, from which he rode by stagecoach on a bumpy, two-day trip to Springerville, at the foot of Escudilla Mountain. Fresh out of college on the East Coast, Leopold was green in the ways of the West and its expansive landscapes. After only a week of training, he was assigned to lead a reconnaissance crew in the Blue Range of the Apache. It was a difficult mission for him: his egotism and inexperience earned him the disrespect of several of his crew, his report contained errors, and he was later brought under investigation for mismanagement. It was determined that, although the mission had been inefficiently conducted, his behavior did not merit dismissal. He was given another chance in his second summer on the job and, learning from his mistakes, proved himself to be both a capable forester and a natural leader. His two years on the Apache were especially significant for an event that occurred during the first month of the reconnaissance, the encounter with wolves that he would so vividly describe 35 years later in "Thinking Like a Mountain," and for his encounter with the vexing problem of soil erosion on Southwestern watersheds that would lead eventually to his concepts of land health and a land ethic. The forest is today known as the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.
Carson National Forest, Tres Piedras, New Mexico, 1911-1913
Leopold was transferred to the Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico in June 1911 and became supervisor, his life's ambition, less than a year later at age 25—the first of his Yale class to reach that rank. The Carson was a problematic forest with Native American and Hispanic as well as Anglo interests, competition between cattle and sheep grazers, and a troubled history of management. Leopold and then-supervisor Harry C. Hall decided in 1911 to move the headquarters from Antonito, Colorado to the tiny Hispanic village of Tres Piedras, New Mexico, in the middle of the forest, where Leopold designed and built a house for his new wife-to-be, whom he married in October1912. But "Mia Casita" would be their home for only six months before Aldo, while on a rugged horseback trip to settle a range dispute between cattle and sheepmen, contracted acute nephritis, a serious kidney condition. He nearly died before getting to Santa Fe for medical attention, and would have to spend some 18 months recuperating, first in Santa Fe and then back home in Burlington, Iowa.
Coon Valley, Wisconsin
Coon Valley is located near La Crosse, Wisconsin, in the scenic Driftless Area, an area largely missed by Ice Age glaciers. Rather than being ground down by mountains of ice, the land retained a more rugged character, with rock outcrops, steep ridges, and winding valleys. In 1933, Aldo Leopold and several of his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin developed a comprehensive plan to restore the heavily eroded land in a cooperative effort involving more than 400 hundred local farm families, hundreds of young men in the Civilian Conservation Corps, and experts in agriculture, soil erosion, forestry, wildlife, and engineering. Hugh Hammond Bennett, director of the Soil Erosion Service (later the Soil Conservation Service and then the Natural Resources Conservation Service) designated Coon Valley the nation’s first watershed conservation project. Among those employed by the project were the eldest Leopold children, Starker and Luna, who began to put their college studies to practice.
Eden Place, Chicago, Illinois
Eden Place has worked to raise awareness among community members about the environmental problems that have affected their families for years. Children are making connections with nature like never before, and residents are feeling a renewed sense of community pride. But more than 3/5 of the local area is comprised of abandoned lots where homes and various industries once thrived, and Fuller Park residents still carry the burden of one of the highest local lead levels in the city, so the work continues.
Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, Wisconsin
Aldo Leopold left the Southwest in 1924 to accept an appointment as associate director of the Forest Products Laboratory, at that time the principal research arm of the U.S. Forest Service. The laboratory was established in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1910 under a cooperative agreement with the University of Wisconsin for space and equipment. It was dedicated to research into the physical properties of wood, and it led over the years in developing new forest products, new uses for wood wastes, chemical treatments to extend the durability of construction woods, strength testing of woods for airplanes and construction, and new pulping techniques for paper. Leopold had anticipated becoming director within a few years and probably hoped to take the laboratory into directions more related to the growing of trees, but the current director decided to stay (for two more decades). Leopold, who had become somewhat uncomfortable with the industrial emphasis of the laboratory and increasingly interested in wildlife, left the laboratory and the Forest Service in 1928 to conduct game surveys with funding from the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute.
Gila and Aldo Leopold Wilderness Areas, Gila National Forest,
Silver City, New Mexico
Leopold’s work and travel in national forests of the Southwest led him to advance the idea of wilderness preservation. The nation was reaching a point, he argued, where running out of wildlands, previously unimaginable, was becoming possible. In a 1921 article asserting America’s need for wilderness, he offered his criteria for wilderness areas – “a continuous stretch of country preserved in its natural state, open to lawful hunting and fishing, big enough to absorb a two weeks’ pack trip, and devoid of roads, artificial trails, cottages, or other works of man” – and offered as his example of a place that would meet these requirements the headwaters of the Gila River. The Gila’s natural communities remained relatively intact and encircled by barrier mountains, there had been only light grazing pressure, and he thought setting it aside would not create undue economic loss. In 1922 he submitted an official proposal to his Forest Service colleagues to manage a large portion of the Gila National Forest as a wilderness area. His proposal was accepted in 1924 and the Gila Wilderness became the nation’s first such federally designated area, the prototype for what would eventually become a system of wilderness areas. The Gila, regrettably, was breached by a road in 1931 in order to facilitate hunter access to an overpopulated deer herd, leading to elimination of the central core of the area from wilderness status and separate administration for the Gila Wilderness to the west and the barrier range to the east, designated the Black Range Primitive Area. After passage of the National Wilderness Preservation Act of 1964, the primitive area of 220,000 acres was eventually, in 1980, designated by Congress as the Aldo Leopold Wilderness.
International Crane Foundation, Baraboo, Wisconsin
The International Crane Foundation (ICF), headquartered in Baraboo, Wisconsin, works worldwide to conserve cranes and the wetland and grassland ecosystems on which they depend. ICF is dedicated to providing experience, knowledge, and inspiration to involve people in resolving threats to these ecosystems throughout the world. ICF's focus on cranes provides an opportunity to address a series of issues not tied to a particular place: endangered species management, wetland ecology, habitat restoration, and the critical need for international cooperation. Its programs stress the interdependence between wildlife, their habitats, and people. ICF believes that cranes can serve as a symbol inspiring people from many nations to trust each other and to work together to conserve these magnificent birds.
James Woodworth Prairie Preserve, Glenview, Illinois
The James Woodworth Prairie is 5 acres (2 hectares) of original tallgrass prairie located along Milwaukee Avenue in Glenview, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. Over 140 plant species characteristic of mesic, black-soil Illinois prairie are found on this small site, and many rare prairie invertebrates also successfully persist. A ten-acre remnant of unplowed virgin prairie was protected by its farm owners and studied by scientists at least since 1926, but after it was sold to a real estate developer in 1953 and whittled to only half its size by a housing development, go-cart track, and miniature gold course, concerned citizens mounted a determined campaign during the 1960s to save what remained. They eventually raised enough private money to match a grant to the new University of Illinois at Chicago Circle from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, and the prairie in 1968 became the first and only natural area owned by UIC. A building holds both interpretive exhibits and space for research. The prairie is actively managed, and studies ranging from spatial dynamics and population size of particular species to the impacts of atmospheric nitrogen deposition on plant communities have been conducted there. As a remnant of the prairie that once covered much of Illinois, Woodworth serves the community by providing an opportunity to experience prairie plants and animals that are now rare, and it served as an inspiration to the Chicago Wilderness coalition of organizations committed to restoring prairie ecosystems in the greater Chicago area.
Leopold Family Shack, Baraboo, Wisconsin
Aldo Leopold found and leased an abandoned farm in Sauk County, Wisconsin, along the Wisconsin River in winter 1935, initially to use as a family base for bow-and-arrow deer hunting. The only building was a dilapidated chicken coop, the farmhouse on the hill having burned to the ground some years before. As the family started to fix up the place and began to become attached to it, he decided in May to buy about 60 acres. The family added a bunkhouse wing that summer, a stone fireplace the next summer, and a wood floor in 1939 to the building they variously called the shanty (after their name for an earlier family cabin on the Current River in Missouri), the Elums (after a row of elm trees), Das Jagdschloss (after places Leopold visited on his 1935 trip to Germany), and finally just the shack, by which they referred to the entire place, land as well as structures. They put in a vegetable garden and food patches for wildlife and began the long process of planting trees, shrubs, and prairie grasses, burning the prairie and mowing the marsh to restore the land to ecological integrity, all meticulously documented in more than 2000 pages of shack journals, plus phenological, bird banding, and other records. Over the years Leopold acquired more acreage by purchase and by accretion from channel changes in the Wisconsin River, so the property is now about 264 acres. Estella Leopold and her children and friends continued to visit and maintain the shack after Aldo's death in 1948. In 1965 the Leopold family land was buffered by an agreement among neighboring landowners to establish the Leopold Memorial Reserve, an early land trust that today contains approximately 2000 acres. Unlike other Leopold family homes, the shack remained in the family until it was transferred to the Aldo Leopold Foundation. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, the Aldo Leopold Shack and Farm became a National Historic Landmark in 2009.
Leopold Home, Madison, Wisconsin
When Aldo Leopold moved to Madison, Wisconsin from Albuquerque in 1924, he purchased a modest two-story stucco home for his family at 2222 Van Hise Avenue near West High School, which all his children attended, and within walking distance of the Forest Products Laboratory and, later, his office at the University of Wisconsin. Like all his homes, the house had a back yard with a family garden. His widow Estella continued to live there until her death in 1975, after which it was sold. Today it is an official landmark of the city of Madison.
Lodi Reads Leopold, Lodi, Wisconsin
On March 4, 2000, the citizens of Lodi, a small town in south central Wisconsin, congregated to read A Sand County Almanac aloud, cover to cover. The Friends of Scenic Lodi Valley, who organized the event, dubbed the gathering “Lodi Reads Leopold.” Reading started at noon and ended at 10 that night. The session spanned two locations, involved 35 readers and was so inspiring that they decided it should be an annual experience. During the 4th annual "Lodi Reads Leopold," George Meyer, former Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and a “celebrity reader” wondered aloud why every community in the state wasn’t reading Leopold that weekend. State legislator Mark Miller shouted from the audience, “I’ll introduce that legislation.” That spark caught on, burning bright with bi-partisan support to recognize Wisconsin’s most noted conservationist. One year later, in March 2004, Governor James Doyle signed legislation designating the first weekend in March Aldo Leopold Weekend across Wisconsin. Today, reading events have expanded throughout Wisconsin and beyond to communities in other states, and blossomed to include a wide range of activities. The celebration is now being replicated in communities across the nation.
Madison Farmers’ Market, Madison, Wisconsin
The Saturday Farmers' Market is one of the most unique events in Madison, Wisconsin. The market takes place on Saturday from 6:30 am to 2 pm around the Capitol Square, which was redesigned some years ago to eliminate lanes of traffic and increase the width of sidewalks in part to better accommodate the market and other events. Nearly 200 area farmers sell home-grown produce, but the market is more than just produce! Live music, coffee and fellowship draw the Madison community to the square.
Rio Gavilan, Northern Sierra Madre, Chihuahua, Mexico
Leopold made two bow and arrow hunting trips with friends and relatives to the Rio Gavilan in the Sierra Madre of northern Chihuahua, Mexico, the first in fall 1936 and the second over New Year's in 1937-38. He was immensely taken with the country, especially in contrast to the "sick" soils, impoverished biota, and artificial management he had encountered in Germany and even in contrast with national forests and wilderness lands just north of the Mexico border, such as the Gila, which he now realized were also, in a way, impoverished and sick. The Gavilan watershed still retained the virgin stability of its soils and the integrity of its flora and fauna; the river ran clear between mossy banks, natural wild fires passed repeatedly over the land without doing damage, and deer thrived in the midst of their natural enemies, wolves and mountain lions. It was as a result of these trips to the Gavilan that the concept of land health, toward which he had been groping for years, suddenly crystallized for him and became for him the goal of a land ethic.
Starker-Leopold Family Home, Burlington, Iowa
Aldo Leopold's grandfather Charles Starker, a German-trained architect and landscape engineer, arrived in Burlington in 1850 and in 1870 purchased the Italianate house and three-acre lot on Prospect Hill overlooking the Mississippi River that would remain the seat of the Starker and Leopold families for more than a century. Starker developed a less formal, more naturalistic yard that became known in Burlington as "a bird's paradise." When Aldo was born in 1887, the first of five children of Carl Leopold and Starker's daughter Clara, the Leopold family lived in the big house with the Starkers. In 1893, with the arrival of two more children, they moved to a new house built for them by Starker in the pasture behind his home on the bluff. But with the deaths of both Starker and his wife in 1900, the big house passed to Clara and the Leopolds moved back in. The house and yard were the start of Aldo's many hunting and exploring excursions during his boyhood years, and during the remainder of his life he returned often to Burlington to visit his mother and sister in the big house and his brothers Carl and Frederic in their two homes in the family compound.
University of Wisconsin Arboretum, Madison, Wisconsin
Though they may not have anticipated it when the University of Wisconsin Arboretum was founded in 1934, the foresight of Aldo Leopold and other members of the Arboretum Committee resulted in the institution’s continuing status as a pioneer in the restoration and management of ecological communities. In focusing on the re-establishment of southern Wisconsin's historic landscapes, particularly those that predated large-scale human settlement, they introduced a whole new concept in ecology: ecological restoration—the process of returning an ecosystem or landscape to a more natural condition. Most of the Arboretum’s current holdings came from purchases made by Madison civic leaders during the Great Depression. Leopold served as director of animal research at the arboretum. Between 1935 and 1941, crews from the Civilian Conservation Corps were stationed there and provided most of the labor needed to begin the process of restoration. These efforts have continued over the years, with the result that the Arboretum’s restored ecosystems are not only the oldest but also the most extensive such collection.
Yale Forest School, New Haven, Connecticut
In 1900, two Yale College graduates who had been obliged to go to Europe to study forestry established the first professional forestry school in the United States at Yale University. Gifford Pinchot and Henry S. Graves pioneered forest management in this country and then went on to become the first and second chiefs of the U.S. Forest Service. Aldo Leopold was in the class of 1909, one of the early classes to graduate with masters of forestry degrees, and he and many of his classmates would join the Forest Service and rise to leadership positions. As the Yale Forest School grew, its faculty members expanded their research and teaching to incorporate not only forestry but also broader environmental issues. To reflect this evolution, the school changed its name in 1972 to the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.