Aldo Leopold (Burlington, 11 January 1887 - Baraboo, 21 april 1948) was an American ecologist, Forester, scientist, conservationist and writer. He was Professor at theUniversity of Wisconsin and is known as the author of A Sand County Almanac (1949). Leopold is an influential figure in the development of modern environmental ethicsand in the movement for the protection of wilderness areas. He was creator of the land ethic -a ecocentrische, holistic vision of land and the environment.
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Life and work[Edit][]
Early life and education[Edit][]
Edge Aldo Leopold was born in Burlington on January 11, 1887 in Iowa. His father, Carl Leopold, was a businessman and his mother, Carla Starker, was Carls niece and was descended from German immigrants. Aldo edge was called from his father to two business partners, c. w. edge and Aldo Sommers; his first name was omitted on term.Aldo Leopold grew up in the German but soon learned English.
[1][2]Aldo Leopolds photo and description in the year book of the class of 1908 to Sheffield.
Leopold came in touch with nature at the Mississippi River at Burlington. His parents were both lovers of hunting and encouraged their son to interest at an early age when he began to show in the identification of birds. Leopold was a good student and when he learned that Gifford Pinchot in 1900 had made a donation to Yale University to make the country's first to establish forestry school , Leopold was sure of his calling. His parents agreed to him, in preparation for Yale, to the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey to send. He came up in January 1904 and studied there a year. Because the Yale Forest School only accepted students who already had a Bachelor's degree in his pocket, a preparatory study forestry to the Leopold did Sheffield Scientific School. However, his studies were that he had less and less opportunities to go out in nature.
Career with the Forest Service[Edit][]
With the diploma that he obtained in 1909 to the Forest School, Leopold was certainly founded four years earlier on a career in the United States Forest Service. He was appointed forest assistant in the third district of the Forest Service, Arizona and New Mexico that included the territories. He served under Apache and other in the Carson National Forest.
Aldo Leopold's concern for the fauna resulted in an understanding of and an appreciation for wilderness. He began to see that In district III in the wild state of large animals, but also of fish and water birds, quickly began to take off. From the point of view of a sports lover was that problematic and therefore in 1914 he began to organize in local hunters and fishermen associations to protections of wildlife.
Arthur c. Ring land, Leopolds children, recognized the talent and enthusiasm of his assistant and gave him power over hunting, fish and recreation. Leopold suggested hunting laws in, switched from predators and operated a hunting handboekje on for the district. In 1916, his first article on hunting management. His activities earned him national recognition and none other than Theodore Rooseveltordered Leopolds work on as an example for the whole country.
In 1918 the movement for the protection of wild animals flourished in Arizona and New Mexico thanks to Leopold, but the leadership of the Forest Service was less enthusiastic. Leopold gave his job reluctantly went on and some time for the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce work, always with the idea to return to the Forest Service. Because the newly created National Park Service attention with success on the national parks as places of relaxation, to establish the desire grew within the managed Forest Service to respond to the need for recreational areas in nature. So the Agency retired landscape architect Frank Albert Waugh in to achieve this goal. Leopold felt that the tide was turned and returned in the summer of 1919 back to his older employer. Together with people like Arthur Carhart , however, Leopold came to the realization that hunt-why the Forest Service the fauna protected-itself part of the problem of natural protection, and that had to be protected wilderness maybe its intrinsic value.
Leopold wrote In 1921 an article for the Journal of Forestry sets out his understanding of why there was a need to wilderness areas without roads or buildings. He also suggested to a wild remained part of the Gila National Forest in New Mexico to set aside as a wilderness reserve permanently. Leopolds children thereupon sent him on the road in the area and Leopold worked with Frederic Winn a protection policy for the area.On 3 June 1924, the Forest Service Gila Wilderness to the 2323 km ² large as the world's first wilderness area.
Leopold left the third district in the summer of 1924 to get started as an Assistant-Director of the Products Laboratory at the Forest Service in Madison, Wisconsin. There he received the opportunity to think about the importance of wilderness and the reasons to protect it. He came to the conclusion that the safeguarding of a part of the wild nature was necessary to preserve the American quality of life. Civilization and technological advances were, for Leopold, certainly good business, but it did not go too far: "while the reduction of the wilderness has been a good thing, its death camps would be a very bad one." Leopolds argument to convince the mass of his points of view, was that the individualism and the intellectual curiosity in the nature of America and the Americans were dependent on the circumstances in which American culture came into being, and therefore also of the natural environment.
Later life and views[Edit][]
In 1933 he was appointed professor in sports management at the University of Wisconsin.
Over the years was Leopold's vision of wilderness changed significantly. The field ecology, according to Leopold of similar importance as Darwin's discoveries, had him understand that all life is related to itsenvironment. Also the man belonged to that community: the environment could no longer be seen as a collection for Leopold to mine raw materials where the man over ruled. The man from an "ecological conscience" would really be able to develop respect for all life forms. As a result, could be the reason behind the strictly economic nature conservation move to something ethical and aesthetic. That new insights made sure that Leopold regretted his actions as a young advocate in the fight against predators; He told his students at the University of Wisconsin that there is no such thing existed as an unwanted species:
| [3] | when we attempt to say that an animal is ' useful, ' ' ugly, ' or ' cruel ' we are failing to see it as part of the country. We do not make the same error or calling a carburetor ' greedy. '
— Aldo Leopold, "Wherefore Wildlife Ecology", quoted in Nash (2001) |
[4] |
From the observation that ethics in human history had expanded still further-by male citizens, to both men and women, and so on-he pleaded that the circle was further expanded to include the natural world would become a part of it:
| [5] | The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively the land.
— Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, quoted in Nash (2001) |
[6] |
The concept of ' wilderness ' played an important role in Leopold's views about the land ethic, particularly as an example of how a healthy landscape itself, as an organism, maintains. In addition, he saw wilderness in later life as a reminder of the man about his relationship with the natural world, as a reminder of the dependence of our environment. Leopold In 1935 was involved in the creation of the Wilderness Society.
He lived with his wife and children in Madison. Each of his children also joined in his footsteps: Aldo Starker (1913-1983) was a biologist and professor at UC Berkeley, Luna b. Leopold (1915-2006) was professor of hydro and geology at Berkeley, Nina Leopold Bradley (1917-2011) was a researcher and Carl Aldo Leopold , naturalist (1919-2009) was plant physiologist and professor at Purdue University and Estella Leopold(born in 1927), ethologist, and nature is botaniste is professor emeritus at the University of Washington.
[7][8]Leopolds headstone in Burlington
Leopold had such three acres purchased in the sandy middle Wisconsinstate that was once densely wooded forest clearing, forest fires and overgrazing was but was destroyed. Leopold tried his theories on land and ecology in practice. Shortly before his death he worked the essays A Sand County Almanac off. Aldo Leopold died on 21 april 1948 in Sauk County , Wisconsin by a heart attack when he helped fight a forest fire on the territory of a neighbour. Leopold's son Luna edited his Almanac and gave him in 1949 from; the book became a best seller and a milestone in the history of the American environmental movement.
Bibliography[Edit][]
- 1931- Game Survey of the North Central States
- 1933- Game Management
- 1949- A Sand County Almanac (posthumous)