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Aldo and Estella (Bergere) Leopold raised five children. Each of them inherited their father’s deep curiosity about the natural world and how it works, and his commitment to building an ethical relationship between people and the land. And as they grew up, they all participated in the ecological restoration experiment that their parents undertook on their farm near Baraboo, Wisconsin—nicknamed “the Shack” for the rehabilitated chicken coop that provided their accommodations there.
The family spent school vacations and weekends at the shack planting pine trees, restoring native prairie grasses, cutting firewood, closely observing wildlife, and tracking the unfolding events of the seasons. All five children became respected scientists and conservationists, and three – Starker, Luna, and Estella – were elected members of the NationalAcademy of Sciences, a remarkable and unparalleled achievement for one family. In 1982, the children together established the Baraboo-based Aldo Leopold Foundation to “foster the land ethic through the legacy of Aldo Leopold” and to care for the Wisconsin landscape they helped to restore, now a National Historic Landmark, made famous in their father’s seminal work, A Sand County Almanac.
Aldo met his wife Estella, then a schoolteacher, while working for the U.S. Forest Service in the American Southwest. A member of a prominent family in her community of Santa Fe, Estella’s father was a concert pianist and her mother was a descendant of a Spanish land grant family that included the Duke of Albuquerque. Following a long-distance courtship, the couple was married in 1912. They would go on to have their first four children between 1913 and 1919. Their youngest daughter would be born after the family’s move to Wisconsin in 1924.
On top of being a mother and teacher, Estella enjoyed a very active lifestyle, which not surprisingly included a love of the outdoors. She was crowned the Wisconsin woman archery champion 5 years in a row during the 1930s and earned a fourth-place finish in the national competition held in Chicago. At home, she shared her love of classical Spanish music with her family, teaching them Spanish and Cuban folk songs that Leopold family descendants still sing together today. In 1973, Mrs. Leopold received an honorary doctor of science degree from Northland College. After a long, incredible life, Estella passed away in 1975 at the age of 84 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Estella’s stepsister, Nina Otero-Warren, gained notoriety as a suffragist and the first Latina to run for Congress. In recognition of her legacy in education, public health, and activism, Nina was featured on the US Quarter, making her the first Hispanic American to earn a place on United States currency. The “Otero quarter” began circulating in 2022.
Like his father, Starker Leopold was an influential ecologist, well-respected for his contributions to the fields of wildlife conservation, education, and public policy. The eldest Leopold child was born in Burlington, Iowa, while his father was on temporary leave from the US Forest Service as he recuperated from illness. Starker spent part of his youth in New Mexico, enjoying many hunting trips with his father and deciding early on that wildlife biology and management would be the focus of his work. He received degrees from the University of Wisconsin and the Yale School of Forestry before earning a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1944. Upon graduation from Berkeley he worked for two years as the Director of Field Research for the Conservation Section of the Pan American Union in Mexico. His continued interest in Mexico resulted in a notable 1959 book, Wildlife ofMexico: The Game Birds and Mammals.
In 1946, Starker was appointed to the faculty at UC Berkeley as an Assistant Professor and began a 20-year affiliation with the university’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, serving as director for two years the mid-1960s. He became Professor of Zoology and Forestry in the Department of Forestry and Conservation in 1967 and remained in that position until 1978, when he retired as Professor Emeritus. He was highly regarded as a gifted teacher and graduate student advisor and made important contributions to the development of the curricula in wildlife biology and management and forestry, incorporating emerging concepts in ecology and landscape conservation.
In addition to his teaching, Starker also played a significant role in the development of public policy through his participation on various advisory boards of the National Park Service and the Interior Department over two decades. Beginning with his appointment to the Special Advisory Board onWildlife Management by Secretary of the Interior Steward Udall in 1962, Starker served on several advisory committees, often as chair, that addressed many controversial issues. His leadership and influence led to important new policies for wildlife management in national parks, marking a basic shift toward park management and conservation decisions based on historical, biological, and ecological considerations. In particular, a 1963 report titled “Wildlife Management in the National Parks,” but more commonly known as “The Leopold Report,” called for an ecological approach to the preservation, management, and restoration of the native natural landscapes and ecosystems, including the wildlife populations, of the national parks. The report recommended that the primary goal of park management be to maintain and, where necessary, recreate “the biotic associations within each park... as nearly as possible in the condition that prevailed” at the time of Euro-American contact.
As a scholar and author of more than 100 scientific papers and five books, Starker was recognized for his ground-breaking research in the fields of ornithology and conservation as well as wildlife management. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and received many other awards including the Department of Interior Conservation Award, the Aldo Leopold Medal of The Wildlife Society, the Audubon Society Medal, the Browning Medal of the Smithsonian Institution, the Fellows Medal of the California Academy of Sciences, and a Distinguished Service Award from the American Institute ofBiological Sciences.
He died at age 70 after suffering a heart attack at his home in Berkeley, California, on August 23, 1983.
Aldo and Estella’s second son, Luna, is widely credited with combining his training and expertise in engineering, meteorology, geology, and hydrology to develop the scientific foundation for the field of fluvial geomorphology, the study of how rivers are shaped and influenced by their surrounding landscapes.
Born in Albuquerque, Luna was named for the Lunas, a prominent Southwest family from whom his mother was descended. Like his older brother, he developed a passion for the outdoors and the natural world under his father’s influence. After his father’s death in 1948, Luna took responsibility for the final editing of the collection of essays that became A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, published in 1949.
Luna received a degree in civil engineering from the University of Wisconsin in 1936 and worked for a time with the U.S. Soil Conservation Service (now the Natural Resources Conservation Service) before earning a master’s degree in physics and meteorology from the University of California at Los Angeles and a doctorate in geology from Harvard University. He joined the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in 1950 as a hydraulic engineer, and from 1956 to 1966 served as the Survey’s chief hydrologist. It was during this time that he and his colleagues made many of the observations, measurements and calculations that would lead to the ability to connect a river’s characteristics, such as velocity, width, depth, and suspended sediment load, to the geology, soils, and vegetation of the surrounding landscape. In 1964 Luna co-authored (with M. Gordon Wolman and John P. Miller) a seminal book on the subject, Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology.
In 1969, while he was still with the USGS, Luna was involved with two high-profile issues that led to important outcomes and helped shape the future environments of Florida and Alaska. In Florida, he led a study that determined that a proposed 39-acre airport on wetlands near Everglades National Park would have serious negative impacts on the Everglades ecosystem. Although a much smaller airstrip was allowed to be built, plans for the large airport were scrapped. This “Leopold Report” was credited with drawing attention to the fragility of the Everglades and the need to protect its ecosystems. It also served as the model for the development of the Environmental Impact Statement. In Alaska, Luna was a technical consultant on the permit application for the planned trans-Alaska oil pipeline. His technical assessment of the original project proposal revealed potentially dire consequences for the surrounding permafrost environment. He convinced Department of Interior officials to deny the permit, ultimately for several years, until the plans were revised to address issues specifically related to the unique tundra ecosystem.
After retiring from the USGS in 1972, Luna joined the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley in the Department ofGeology and Geophysics and the Department of Landscape Architecture, where he taught for the next 14 years. He continued to write scientific papers as well as books for general audiences, including A View of the River (1994). He also was active in conservation organizations, serving on the board of directors of the Sierra Club and the Environmental Law Institute.
In all, Luna Leopold authored some 200 articles and books, many of which remain widely used in teaching and field work today. His achievements were recognized during his lifetime with many prestigious awards and honors, including the National Medal of Science, which he received from President George H.W. Bush during a ceremony in the Rose Garden at the White House in September 1991. His other awards and honors include the Penrose Medal of the Geological Society of America, the Distinguished Service Medal of the U.S. Department of Interior, the Warren Prize of the National Academy of Sciences, the Robert E. Horton Medal of the American Geophysical Union, election to the National Academy of Sciences, and election as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the California Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth and Environmental Science, posthumously, in 2006.
He died on February 23, 2006, at the age of 90 at his home in Berkeley, California.
Aldo and Estella Leopold’s third child and eldest daughter Adelina (Nina) was born in Albuquerque on August 4, 2017. Through a long career as a naturalist, researcher, and conservationist, Nina was widely beloved as a champion of conservation and land ethics.
Nina earned a degree in geography from the University of Wisconsin. With her first husband Bill Elder she conducted research on lead poisoning of waterfowl in the 1940s, the biology of Nene geese in Hawaii in the1950s, and the behavior of waterbuck in Botswana in the 1960s. In her later years she was especially devoted to phenological studies of the plants and wildlife in the “Shack” landscape in Wisconsin, adding to her father’s records and establishing a long-term research record for the area. She was the senior author of a 1999 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that analyzed these phenological records, demonstrating that climate change was affecting the region and its native fauna, flora, and ecosystems.
In 1971, Nina married geologist Charles Bradley (1911-2002) in a ceremony at the Shack. The couple relocated to Wisconsin in 1976 after he retired from Montana State University. They lived on what was then referred to as the Leopold Memorial Reserve (now incorporated into the Leopold-Pines Conservation Area), not far from the Shack, and continued the work that Aldo and Estella Leopold began with their family, restoring the landscape and maintaining detailed ecological observations and records.
Nina and Charlie Bradley were instrumental in the creation of the Leopold Fellows program, which initially provided opportunities for graduate students to pursue research in biology, ecology, and restoration on the Leopold Memorial Reserve. The program resulted in more than two dozen publications in scientific journals as well as several master’s theses and doctoral dissertations. In 1982, when the Leopold children established the Aldo Leopold Foundation, Nina served as a full-time volunteer and with her husband Charlie helped establish many of the educational and landscape restoration and conservation initiatives that have become the cornerstone of the foundation’s work.
After the Leopold Foundation hired its first full-time staff in 1996, Nina remained an active member of the Foundation’s board of directors, at times serving as chairperson. She played a key role in envisioning and fundraising for the construction of the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center, a highly acclaimed green building complex that opened in 2007. The Center serves as the Foundation’s headquarters, the base of its education and training programs, and a gathering place for scholars and conservation professionals. Located just down the road from the historic Leopold Shack and Farm, and on the site where her father passed away helping to suppress a grass fire in 1948, the complex of buildings was constructed with locally harvested timber (including pines planted by the Leopolds 60 years earlier) and generates as much electricity as it consumes. It received Platinum certification – the highest level available – from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.
Nina Leopold Bradley received many awards and recognitions, including honorary doctorates from Northland College and the University ofWisconsin-Madison, and an Award of Distinction from the UW’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. She also received the Wilderness Society’s BobMarshall Award and, on behalf of the Aldo Leopold Foundation, the Society ofConservation Biology’s Distinguished Service Award.
Nina died at age 93 at her home in Baraboo, Wisconsin on May 25, 2011.
Carl was a well-known plant Physiologist whose 1964 book, Plant Growth and Development, became a classic textbook in the field. He made a major scientific contribution with his discovery of the metabolic properties of plant seeds that allows them to withstand extensive periods of dry storage and still germinate when moisture is replenished––a finding that was used for example to develop a medication for diabetes by inhalation of dry insulin. In later years Carl was devoted to broadening Aldo Leopold’s legacy and advancing a land ethic through writing, lectures, and interviews.
Like Luna and Nina, Carl was born (on December 18, 1919) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, during the time his father worked there for the U.S.Forest Service. The family moved to Wisconsin in 1924 when he was in grade school. His involvement in the family project of planting pine trees and restoring the native landscape of the Shack would serve him well many years later when, in retirement, he established a dry tropical forest restoration program in Costa Rica.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in botany from the University of Wisconsin in 1941, Carl served in the US Marines in the Pacific Theater during World War II, eventually earning the rank of captain. After the war he earned a master’s and Ph.D. in plant physiology from Harvard University.In 1949, he joined the faculty of Purdue University as an assistant professor of physiology in horticultural crops and rose to the rank of full professor within six years, building a reputation as an outstanding scientist.
In the mid-1970s, Carl served briefly as a senior policy analyst for the National Science Foundation’s Science and Technology Policy office, where he worked on food and agriculture issues. He then was appointed Dean of the Graduate College and Assistant Vice President for Research at the University ofNebraska, but stayed for only two years before moving to Ithaca, New York to become a Distinguished Scientist at the Boyce Thompson Institute for PlantResearch. He officially “retired” in 1990 but remained affiliated with research projects there.
In 1992, with the encouragement and support of colleagues,Carl founded the Tropical Forestry Initiative (TFI), a non-profit organization that oversaw the demonstration project for tropical forest restoration that he and his wife Lynn established on 350 acres near Domincal, Costa Rica. The project hosted students to conduct research and learn about the diverse ecological and biological processes associated with tropical forests. The initiative spawned the development in 1998 of a companion local community forestry collective dedicated to forest conservation and replanting multiple seedlings for every tree cut down. With more than 40,000 trees of various species planted after its inception, the demonstration site also served as a nursery, supplying seedlings to local farmers and landowners. It also developed a carbon offset program for individuals wishing to make a donation toward tree planting.
In addition to his work as president of the TFI, Carl was very active near his home in Ithaca, in New York’s Finger Lakes region. He was a founding president of the Finger Lakes Land Trust and a cofounder of Greensprings Natural Cemetery, providing natural burials and a legacy of land stewardship. He was a board member of the Black Locust Initiative, anIthaca-based organization that promotes the use of sustainably managed and harvested local black locust trees, whose lumber is highly rot resistant, for benches and use in other public structures.
Carl published some 200 scientific papers and five books on various aspects of plant physiology. He was elected president of the American Society of Plant Physiologists in 1996. He was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Agriculture from Purdue University and two awards from the Royal Gallician Academy of Science in Spain.
Carl passed away at the age of 89 on November 18, 2009, at his home inIthaca, New York.
The youngest of the Leopold children, Estella Leopold was born in Madison, Wisconsin on January 8, 1927, after her father became the assistant director of the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory. She was University of Washington Professor Emeritus of botany, forest resources and quaternary research, and taught and conducted research for more than 60 years.
Estella recalled that as a teenager she told her father that she wanted to study entomology, but he bought her a botany book and a hand lens and gently pushed her toward the study of plants instead. Estella received a bachelor’s degree in botany from the University of Wisconsin in 1948 before earning a master’s from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in plant sciences from Yale University in 1956. She then went to work for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in its paleontology laboratory in Denver. Her scientific work and her willingness to get involved in major political battles were key to the creation of the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, a 6,000-acre reserve in central Colorado that is home to one of the richest and most diverse deposits of plant and insect fossils in the world. In the early 1960s, when Congress failed to pass legislation creating the monument and residential development of the property seemed imminent, Estella led concerned scientists and citizens in creating the Defenders of Florissant, which was successful in bringing legal action to stop the bulldozers. In the meantime, Estella and her colleagues worked to convince the U.S. Senator from Colorado, Gordon Allott, that the unique area had to be protected with National Monument status. The legislation creating Florissant FossilBeds National Monument was finally signed into law in August 1969.
After 20 years with the USGS, Estella moved in 1976 to the University of Washington where she served as director of the Quarternary Research Center until 1982. She also was a professor of botany and forest resources from 1976 to 1989 and professor of botany and environmental studies from 1989 to 1995. During her career, Estella authored more than 100 scientific publications in the fields of paleobotany, forest history, restoration ecology and environmental quality. Her research focused on the use of fossil pollen and seeds to determine the regional history of climate change, the origin of grasslands, desert tundra and forest types, and the evolution of herbacious and woody plant groups. She is known among paleobotanists for using fossil pollen from deep-sea cores to validate Darwin’s concept that atolls evolved from sinking volcanoes. She was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1974 and the American Philosophical Society in 2000.
Like the other Leopold children, Estella was an active supporter of conservation organizations, serving on the boards of Environmental Defense and the NationalAudubon Society and as an advisor to the Children & Nature Network. She also was an ex officio member of the advisory board for the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program, a fellowship program providing training for mid-career academic scientists in communicating science effectively to non-scientific audiences, especially policymakers and journalists. She was an active member of the board of directors of the Aldo Leopold Foundation, serving multiple times as the board chair, until her passing on February 25, 2024 at the age of 97.
The Aldo Leopold Foundation was founded in 1982 with a mission to foster the land ethic through the legacy of Aldo Leopold, awakening an ecological conscience in people throughout the world.
