Legendary Names in Conservation
The First Name in Wildlife Management - Aldo Leopold (1887-1948)

Aldo Leopold was a visionary scientist whose teachings became the cornerstone of the modern conservation movement. Known as “the father of wildlife management”, Leopold was an outdoorsman, a philosopher and a poet whose skill as a wordsmith ranks him alongside Henry David Thoreau and John Muir.

A Sand County Almanac, published shortly after his death, is Leopold’s best-known work. When the late Mollie Beattie was sworn in as director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, she placed one hand on the Bible and the other on A Sand County Almanac. Beattie could quote entire passages from the book, and often did.

Leopold was an associate and close friend of the late Al Hochbaum, the former director of Delta Waterfowl. The two corresponded frequently.

Animal protectionists have been known to quote Leopold and some have even attempted to portray him as an anti-hunter, but his writings tell a different story. Retired biologist and former student Art Hawkins says Leopold was an avid waterfowler with a particular fondness for diving ducks.

In the foreword to Sand County, Leopold summed up his feelings about the outdoor experience: “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.”

The following excerpts from A Sand County Almanac and Round River are even more pertinent today than when Leopold penned them more than half a century ago:

On hunters: “That he is already overfed in no way dampens his avidity for gathering his meat from God.”

On education: “Education, I fear, is learning to see one thing by going blind to another.”

More on education: “I once knew an educated lady, banded by Phi Beta Kappa, who told me she had never heard or seen the geese that twice a year proclaim the revolving seasons to her well-insulated roof. Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth? The goose who trades his is soon a pile of feathers.”

On land values: “Poor land may be rich country, and vice versa. Only economists mistake physical opulence for riches.”

More on land: “Our children are our signature to the roster of history; our land is merely the place our money was made.”

On mechanization: “…motorized transport has nearly destroyed the sport of wilderness travel by leaving only flyspecks of wilderness to travel in.”

On hunting: “A man may not care for golf and still be human, but the man who does not like to see, hunt, photograph or otherwise outwit birds or animals is hardly normal. He is supercivilized, and I for one do not know how to deal with him.”

On outdoor ethics: “A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct. The ethics of sportsmanship is not a fixed code, but must be formulated by the individual, with no referee but the Almighty.”

On the land ethic: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

On land use: “…when the soil loses fertility, or washes away faster than it forms, and when water systems exhibit abnormal floods and shortages, the land is sick.”

On the land: “We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve, but to strive.”

On wilderness: “Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.”

On conservation: “American conservation is, I fear, still concerned for the most part with show pieces.”

On sporting equipment: “…why cannot our concept of sport grow with the same vigor as our list of gadgets?”

More on wilderness: “Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow.”

On development: “Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity in the still unlovely human mind.”