Living a land ethic a history of cooperative conservation on the leopold memorial reserve (wisconsin land and life)

Living a Land EthicA History of Cooperative Conservation on the Leopold Memorial Reserve Stephen A.. 1 Settlement and Changing Land Health in the Central Sands Area2 Sowing the Seeds of

WISCONSIN LAND AND LIFE

ARNOLD ALANEN

Series Editor

Living a Land Ethic

A History of Cooperative Conservation on the Leopold Memorial Reserve

Stephen A Laubach

The University of Wisconsin Press

This book was made possible, in part, through support from the Lawrenceville School.

A portion of the royalties from this book will be donated to the Aldo Leopold and Sand CountyFoundations

The University of Wisconsin Press

1930 Monroe Street, 3rd Floor

The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, ortransmitted, in any format or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,

or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission of the University

of Wisconsin Press, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Laubach, Stephen A., author

Living a land ethic : a history of cooperative conservation on the Leopold Memorial Reserve /Stephen A Laubach

pages cm — (Wisconsin land and life)

Includes bibliographical references and index

ISBN 978-0-299-29874-6 (pbk : alk paper) — ISBN 978-0-299-29873-9 (e-book)

1 Leopold, Aldo, 1886–1948 2 Aldo Leopold Memorial Reserve (Wis.) 3 Natural resourcesconservation areas—Wisconsin 4 Restoration ecology—Wisconsin 5 Conservation biology—Wisconsin I Title II Series: Wisconsin land and life

S932.W6L38 2014

333.7209775—dc23

2013037569

To Nina, Noah, and Aurora

Ecology is the science of communities, and the ecological conscience is therefore the ethics of community life.

—Aldo Leopold, “The Ecological Conscience,” 1947

1 Settlement and Changing Land Health in the Central Sands Area

2 Sowing the Seeds of the Leopold Memorial Reserve Idea

3 Implementing a Management Plan

4 Growth in Research and Education Programs

5 Conservation’s Next Generation

Conclusion: The Legacy of the Leopold Memorial Reserve

Afterword

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sand-point pump with oak-and-brass buckets, 1940s

Aerial photo of Leopold Memorial Reserve

Banding a prairie chicken at Faville Grove, 1938

Surveying the landscape at the Riley Game Cooperative, 1947

Natural Bridge State Park

Location of Native American effigy mound clusters

Effigy mound at Man Mound Park near Baraboo

Postcard of Fort Winnebago, 1834

Notes by surveyor J E Whitcher about the future Leopold Memorial Reserve area

Hops yard near Wisconsin Dells, ca 1880

Deed of 17 May 1935 for sale of land from Jacob Alexander to Aldo Leopold

Obituary from 10 January 1936 for Jacob Alexander

Remains of foundation of the Alexander house

Aldo Leopold and Thomas Coleman cooking over a campfire, 1940s

Early experiments in land management

Shack visits by family and friends during the 1950s and 1960s

Russell VanHoosen on tractor with daughter Tami, 1959

Initial planning meetings

Wisconsin State Journal article, 11 February 1973

Letter from Estella B Leopold to Reed Coleman, 1972

Deer research and management on the reserve, early 1970s

The Bradley Study Center

Nina Bradley presents the Leopold Teaching Award to Steven Tucker, 1988

Nina Bradley assisting research fellow Margaret Brittingham

Shack seminars and visitors to the reserve

Reserve management committee meeting, spring 1977

Executive seminar on ecological forest management sponsored by the Sand County Foundation

An example of a food patch

Crew being trained in conducting a controlled burn, 1989

Changes in land cover on the reserve since the 1840s

Sand County Foundation projects

Restoration projects overseen by the Aldo Leopold Foundation

The opening of the Leopold Center

Riley Game Cooperative site, 2013

A meeting of the Tanzania Natural Resource Forum, 2004

Map of Leopold–Pine Island Important Bird Area

Anna Hawley leading a group tour of the reserve and the shack, 2008 Looking ahead

Stanley A Temple

As a precocious teenage naturalist I first learned about Aldo Leopold’s shack and farm in 1960 when

I read A Sand County Almanac I was captivated by the vivid images in Leopold’s month-by-month

essays describing his shack’s natural surroundings I knew most of the plants and animals from myrambles around the woods and fields of northern Ohio, but the way Leopold described them was arefreshing change from the matter-of-fact accounts in my field guides With each essay I imaginedwhat it would be like to experience that landscape firsthand

My curiosity piqued, I tried in vain to find out more about the place But like many inquisitive time readers, I simply couldn’t find Sand County, Wisconsin, in any of the atlases I searched

first-Somewhat disappointed, I concluded that it must be a fictional place, and the “almanac” was just acollection of engaging stories Leopold had fabricated The mystery of Sand County was finally solvedwhen I was a freshman at Cornell and Dan Thompson, who had been one of Leopold’s graduate

students, was assigned to be my academic advisor He not only gave me a geography lesson, but healso shared personal recollections of times he had spent at the shack with his mentor At some point

he even mentioned that efforts were underway to protect the land around the shack I remained curiousabout the place, but the opportunity to visit and experience firsthand the things Leopold describedwould have to wait until 1976 when I accepted an offer from the University of Wisconsin to fill theacademic position once occupied by Aldo Leopold

During my first week in Wisconsin my predecessor in Leopold’s professorship, Joe Hickey, took

me to visit Nina Leopold Bradley and her husband Charlie who had just built their retirement homedown the road from the shack After an emotional pilgrimage to the shack, I spent a wonderful dayexploring what I learned had been designated formally as the Leopold Memorial Reserve, the

culmination of the efforts Dan Thompson had mentioned a decade earlier During the day many of theplaces I remembered reading about came alive, and as a special treat I was even allowed to sleepover at the shack My new relationship with the land immortalized by Leopold’s writings had begun

Although many natural features of the place were as I had imagined them, I was initially surprisedthat as far as I could tell the understated Leopold Memorial Reserve amounted to little more than afew property markers There were no interpretive signs or handouts explaining the significance of thereserve and its purpose, and it seemed the place, which by then was revered by many

conservationists, was being kept a carefully guarded secret I quickly learned there were reasons forthe reserve’s low-key and to some extent even unwelcoming status The reserve was not a publicproperty but a collection of privately owned parcels, the owners of which had voluntarily agreed tomanage their land in ways that would buffer the Leopold shack and farm and exemplify Leopold’sland ethic in action This was a different sort of land conservation project than I was used to

encountering on special landscapes

The personality of the reserve evolved steadily during my years in Wisconsin Nina and Charliebecame the welcoming public faces of the reserve, and the Bradley Study Center where they livedbecame a focal point for a variety of reserve-related activities Informal seminars drew loyal

Leopold fans, fellowships for students encouraged research on the site, ecological restoration andland management efforts gathered steam, and monitoring projects documented the land and how it waschanging My students and I participated in many of those activities, and as I got to know the parties inthe Leopold Memorial Reserve agreement I became increasingly aware of the complex currents andcrosscurrents that ran through this special place and the novel agreement that had created it.

This was clearly a fruitful if somewhat fragile conservation success story, as the reserve’s term future was only loosely guaranteed by the original participants’ voluntary commitments Since

long-1976 I have watched this novel experiment in land conservation mature The influences of individualsand institutions shifted over time, especially as the roles of Reed Coleman and the Sand County

Foundation and the Leopold family and the Aldo Leopold Foundation became more prominent whenoriginal participants sold their lands to these central players Evolving visions for the reserve didn’talways align, but the reserve quietly endured Its public visibility expanded again in 2007 when theAldo Leopold Foundation built its headquarters, the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center, adjacent to thereserve Public visits to the reserve and interest in it increased rapidly A series of subsequent landtransactions further solidified the central role of the two foundations in determining the reserve’sfuture

Although I had interacted often with the two foundations over the years, I eventually became amore active participant in discussions about the reserve’s future when I joined the Board of Directors

of the Sand County Foundation and became a Senior Fellow of the Aldo Leopold Foundation As theLeopold Memorial Reserve approached its fiftieth anniversary it became clear to me that the

reserve’s rich but poorly communicated history needed to be documented and shared if the lessonslearned there were to be helpful to other land conservation projects Voluntary land conservation wasexpanding through the recent emergence of the modern land trust movement, but practitioners knewlittle about the pioneering efforts to protect Leopold’s shack and farm from development throughvoluntary private action Fewer and fewer of the individuals who had played significant roles inshaping the reserve’s first fifty years were still around to share their experiences and insights, and thetwo foundations, in spite of their differences, needed to find a way to jointly celebrate what had beenaccomplished I proposed that a history of the Leopold Memorial Reserve should be written

As the project began to take shape, one of my former graduate students, Steve Laubach, emerged asthe right person to document the history of the reserve His ties to Leopold and the reserve were

strong He did his graduate research project with me on the reserve, knew most of the key players,and after graduation had taken a faculty position at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey whereAldo Leopold had once been a student He had returned to the University of Wisconsin to pursue aPh.D and had a keen interest in environmental history The launch of the project was fortuitous as itgot underway just in time to complete oral history interviews with key individuals who had witnessedthe first fifty years of the reserve’s history but would not live to see the completion of the project

This book is a fitting tribute to all those individuals and institutions that had adopted one of AldoLeopold’s core ideas about land conservation and succeeded in putting it into practice:

“Conservation can accomplish its objectives only when it springs from an impelling conviction on thepart of private land owners.”

I have many people to thank for their support in the writing of this book Foremost among these isStanley Temple, professor emeritus of wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Stanintroduced me to the legacy of Aldo Leopold in the spring of 1999 and he encouraged me to undertakethis writing project a decade later One of the greatest gifts from my initial work with Stan was theopportunity to meet Aldo Leopold’s daughter Nina Bradley, who mentored me in my career path untilher death in May 2011 at the age of ninety-three I remember most especially Nina’s sage advice to

“make your vocation your avocation.” By following this suggestion, I came to know Dr KevinMattingly, director of teaching, learning, and educational partnerships at the Lawrenceville School inNew Jersey Kevin nurtured my continued interest in Leopold in my first job as a teacher of biologyand environmental studies In addition, the Lawrenceville School generously provided partial fundingfor this publication through the efforts of Kevin, James Serach, and Elizabeth Duffy

I extend my deep gratitude to the Aldo Leopold and Sand County Foundations for their financialsupport and staff time In particular, I would like to thank the members of the project’s steering

committee, which, in addition to Stan Temple, included Buddy Huffaker and Curt Meine of the AldoLeopold Foundation, Brent Haglund and Kevin McAleese of the Sand County Foundation, and NancyLangston, professor of environmental history at Michigan Technological University Mark Madison,the US Fish and Wildlife Service historian, conducted and transcribed oral history interviews withseveral elders of the Leopold Memorial Reserve, including Nina Bradley, Reed Coleman, HowardMead, and Frank Terbilcox Many thanks to these interviewees and to Colleen Terbilcox, Susan

Flader, Estella Leopold, Trish Stevenson, and John VanHoosen, each of whom shared insights on thehistory of the reserve

I am indebted to many others for their assistance Jane Rundell offered her considerable expertise

in typography and publishing University of Wisconsin Press acquisitions editor Gwen Walker andcopyeditor Gail Schmitt provided support and critical insight in the publication process Others fromthe press to whom I am grateful include Sheila Leary, Arnold Alanen, Rose Rittenhouse, Adam

Mehring, Terry Emmrich, Carla Marolt, Matthew Cosby, Brontë Wieland, Jonah Horwitz, and ElenaSpagnolie, as well as two anonymous reviewers From the University of Wisconsin– Madison,

William Cronon, professor of history, introduced me to the field of environmental history through hiscourses, seminars, and field trips My advisor in the UW Department of Curriculum and Instruction,the historian of education John Rudolph, helped me navigate the challenge of carrying out this projectalongside my dissertation research Konrad Liegel’s meticulous studies on the history of the LeopoldReserve and Fawn Young-Bear-Tibbetts’s review of sections on the history of indigenous peoples insouth-central Wisconsin strengthened chapter 1

Dylan Moriarty, Stormy Stipe, John Ross, Michael Strigel, Eric Freyfogle, Jen Simoni, JeannineRichards, Jennifer Kobylecky, John Koenigs, Jesse Gant, Brian Hamilton, and Randy Bixby alsoprovided crucial input In addition, staff at the University of Wisconsin libraries, the Wisconsin

Historical Society, the University of Wisconsin Cartography Lab, and the Sauk County HistoricalSociety expertly guided me to the sources necessary to piece together this narrative

Finally, I would like to thank my family for their unwavering support My parents, John and Martha

Laubach, have always been a model for raising a family to live lightly on the land They have instilled

in my siblings and me a strong sense of stewardship and curiosity toward the natural world Last, mywife, Nina, and children, Noah and Aurora, have been an inspiration to me throughout the writing ofthis book Our outdoor adventures have brought joy to our family and constantly remind me of theimportance of meaningful relationships between people and land

Living a Land Ethic

ON A SPRING EVENING IN 1965, two longtime friends in their mid-thirties, Reed Coleman andHoward Mead, gathered for dinner with their spouses at the Colemans’ house in Madison, Wisconsin.The conversation soon turned to one of their favorite hunting grounds, an hour to the northwest ofMadison along the Wisconsin River The land had been in the Coleman family for several years, and

it was the source of vivid memories for Reed and Howard Three decades earlier, Coleman’s father,Tom, an acquaintance of Aldo Leopold’s, had bought this property across a dirt road from theLeopold shack As a child, Reed had helped care for the land by carrying water-laden oak-and-brassbuckets from the sand-point pump next to the shack to thirsty pine seedlings planted by the Leopoldand Coleman families It was on this land and a few nearby sites in southern Wisconsin that Reedlearned from his father how to hunt pheasant and quail and, later, that Coleman and Mead, as youngadults, went hunting together for these two popular game species

At Coleman and Mead’s springtime dinner several years later, however, the mood of the two menwas tempered by recent real estate development near the shack “Howard and I were drinking

martinis and cooking duck and lamenting the fact that we like to go up to our cabin and that … theywere selling thirty-three-foot lots along the riverfront right up next to the Leopold property,” Reedlater recalled “We really did talk about what we could do and how we could do something to keepthat from damaging the Leopold property.” They decided that evening to take action, with Colemanasking, “Why don’t we get a bunch of people to agree to not develop it, put some restrictions on it?”Out of this and other conversations, including with Leopold’s widow Estella and with another

landowner near the shack named Frank Terbilcox, the idea for the Leopold Memorial Reserve wasborn Two years later, in December 1967, five landowning families, who held a combined total of

900 acres, agreed to a proposal outlining the founding principles of the reserve.1 Today, the reservehas grown to over 1,600 acres that are overseen by two nonprofit organizations—the Sand CountyFoundation and the Aldo Leopold Foundation—with their roots in the Coleman and Leopold families

Sand-point pump with oak-and-brass buckets, 1940s (Aldo Leopold Foundation, call no S02294)

To a present-day visitor, the reserve might not seem that different from a state park or nationalwildlife refuge, but it is in fact an unusual achievement in American conservation history In the

decades since the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt implemented the first

comprehensive conservation policies in the United States, conservation has taken on many forms.During the movement’s early years, successes occurred mainly by restricting resource extraction onrecently acquired public lands or through policies that regulated the harvesting of wildlife and otherresources on all land, public or private In the 1930s, and especially after the 1950s, other types ofconservation independent of government intervention became more common, such as cooperative landmanagement, private land purchases, and conservation easements.2

One conservation strategy that emerged with greater frequency during this later period involvesnonprofit land-trust organizations Land trusts focus on purchasing tracts of land of high conservationvalue or on securing the development rights of land through conservation easements and other legalagreements.3 The Leopold Memorial Reserve could be considered one example of a land trust, even

if it is comparatively small in scale and unique in ownership structure Rather than pursuing

conservation through government involvement, property owners of the reserve instead agreed to

restrict development and cooperatively manage the land In their case, they did so to honor the

memory of Leopold, collectively putting into action his call for increased attention to conservation onprivate land

Aerial photo of Leopold Memorial Reserve showing original reserve boundaries by landowner andcurrent extent of land owned by the Sand County and Aldo Leopold Foundations Location of Leopoldshack denoted with a star (image developed by Dylan Moriarty, UW–Madison Cartography Lab,with assistance from John Koenigs, Sand County Foundation, and Jen Simoni, Aldo Leopold

Foundation)

This book highlights this alternative approach to conservation on private land and aims to inspireinvolvement in efforts to reach beyond conventional property lines when considering how to expandthe size and influence of conservation projects Such cooperation among private land-owners is

essential for conservation to succeed at a scale sufficient to maintain functioning ecosystems,

especially when one considers that at least 60 percent of land in the United States is privately

owned.4 The significance of “cross-boundary,” or cooperative, approaches to private lands

conservation is thus a major theme of this book

BECAUSE OF THE DIRECT CONNECTION between Aldo Leopold and the founders of the LeopoldMemorial Reserve, this narrative frequently turns to Leopold’s ideas to fully understand the reasonsfor the reserve’s formation and continued existence While cooperative conservation was stilluncommon at the time of the inception of the Leopold Memorial Reserve, one can look back ageneration earlier to Aldo Leopold’s career and find examples of it in practice Leopold was directlyinvolved in at least four cooperative conservation projects that began in the 1930s Projects overseen

by Leopold included the Riley Game Cooperative, started in 1931, and the Faville Grove WildlifeExperimental Area and Coon Valley Watershed Demonstration Project, which were established in

1933 Beginning in 1938, he was also engaged in consulting work for the Huron Mountain Club inMichigan’s Upper Peninsula.5 Several founders of the Leopold Memorial Reserve were familiar withthese sites, and they were influenced, if only indirectly, through their formative experiences on themduring their childhood years It is therefore instructive to consider such examples

In these cooperative conservation projects, Leopold advised landowners on how to better work

together to enhance habitat quality or, as he frequently referred to it metaphorically, “land health.” Heoffered his most detailed explanation of land health when he wrote, “The land consists of soil, water,plants, and animals, but health is more than a sufficiency of these components It is a state of vigorousself-renewal in each of them, and in all collectively.”6 The ultimate goal for these efforts, then, wasrestoring “health” to different aspects of a degraded or threatened landscape In Coon Valley,

Leopold served as a consultant for a New Deal program initiated under the aegis of Franklin DelanoRoosevelt’s recently created Soil Erosion Service The leaders of this watershed conservation

project sought to reduce agricultural soil erosion that plagued a hilly, unglaciated section of

southwest Wisconsin At the Huron Mountain Club, landowners of some 15,000 acres of unloggedland in the Upper Peninsula hired Leopold to develop a comprehensive land-management plan InRiley and Faville Grove, groups of neighboring farmers joined together and, under the guidance ofLeopold and his graduate students, developed management and research plans to improve wildlifehabitat on their adjoining properties.7

Banding a prairie chicken at Faville Grove, 1938 (Aldo Leopold Foundation, call no S02259)

Of these four efforts, the Riley Game Cooperative resembled the Leopold Memorial Reserve mostclosely in its scale and founding ideals In July 1931, Leopold and the cofounder of the cooperative,Reuben J Paulson, met by chance in the small town of Riley, near Madison Paulson was a farmer inthe Riley area, and Leopold was studying game populations in the Upper Midwest as a consultant forthe Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute After striking up a conversation, the twomen discovered their common interest in hunting This was the beginning of a relationship of such like

minds that a few months later Paulson and Leopold had outlined bylaws for the cooperative.8 Theinitial participants consisted of five town members who financed the project and three landowningfarmers The labor—which included building feeding stations for pheasants and other game birds,maintaining fences to exclude grazing farm animals, and planting trees and vines for wildlife cover—was evenly divided between the farm and town members.

Surveying the landscape at the Riley Game Cooperative, 1947 (Aldo Leopold Foundation, call no.S02195)

The goals of the Riley Cooperative included improving wildlife habitat on the farm members’ landand thus providing easily accessible hunting grounds for participants They also sought to reduce thenumber of poachers on the land The cooperative soon grew to comprise eleven farm families,

encompassing 1,715 acres along south-central Wisconsin’s Sugar River The name of the cooperative

is somewhat misleading; in a 1934 article about Riley in the magazine Field and Stream, Leopold

noted this: “The term ‘game cooperative’ was not quite so accurate It was a ‘cooperative,’ all right,with one farmer and one sportsman constituting its then membership But it was more than ‘game,’both of us contributing to the enterprise an incurable interest in all wild things, great and small,

shootable and non-shootable.”9 This statement by Leopold, as well as the sense of community andshared responsibility that became a part of the cooperative, illustrates some of the similarities

between the Riley experiment and the Leopold Memorial Reserve.

WHETHER ON THE RILEY COOPERATIVE, the Leopold Memorial Reserve, or other similar sites thathave emerged since the former were founded, cooperative conservation is not free of conflict Suchundertakings mean that multiple viewpoints, rather than those of a single land owner, must be takeninto account in making decisions For example, one landowner might feel strongly that her land hastoo many deer that are damaging plants, whereas a neighbor may believe that there should be moredeer because hunting isn’t as good as it was in times past Such disagreements can lead to gridlock oncooperatively managed land.10 Leopold frequently commented on such challenges, which wereinherent to the conservation movement For example, he wrote in 1937 that “conservation, without akeen realization of its vital conflicts, fails to rate as authentic human drama; it falls to the level of amere Utopian dream.” In a later publication, Leopold highlighted the importance of communicationamong conservationists when he noted that “the first job … is to bring the factions together and insistthat they thresh out their differences … The more threshing, the less disagreement The morethreshing, the better the understanding of the other fellow’s interests Mutual respect is often just asgood as mutual agreement.”11 The story of the Leopold Memorial Reserve provides several examples

of participants threshing out their differences as they made decisions that had a lasting influence.Contentious changes in land management practices, disagreements over the siting of building projects,and difficult land-acquisition decisions are just a few of the tensions that are featured here

To better understand the circumstances that led to the reserve’s persistence against such odds, thisillustrated history reflects on the actions and motivations of its participants The names of some, such

as Reed Coleman, Frank Terbilcox, and Howard Mead, may not be as recognizable as those of AldoLeopold and his family members, yet such individuals played an important role in the reserve’s

formation and are the focus of many of the pages that follow.12 Nonetheless, given the importance ofAldo Leopold to the endeavor, it is not without reason that the Leopold family has been prominentlyfeatured in several previous publications about the reserve It will thus be no surprise to many

readers that they are also a central part of this narrative In particular, the ideas of Aldo Leopold are

at the heart of the reserve’s concept and are regularly referred to here

Although the book proceeds in a roughly chronological order, by necessity it returns to Aldo

Leopold’s legacy throughout It begins by considering the land-use history of the reserve prior to hispurchase of the shack in 1935 and then putting that in the context of Leopold’s concept of land health

In chapter 2, the experiences of the Leopold family during their early years in the area are connectedwith the formation of the Leopold Memorial Reserve in 1967 Chapters 3 and 4 explore the growth ofthe reserve’s land management, research, and education programs from 1968 through 1983 Laterdevelopments at the reserve through the construction of the Leopold Center in 2007 are examined in

chapter 5 The conclusion considers the legacy of cooperative conservation on land so touched byLeopold’s presence

Ultimately this book attempts to demonstrate how creative thinking about conservation by a

dedicated group of private citizens can provide great rewards In the case of the Leopold MemorialReserve, the rewards of cooperative conservation became a public good that extended to

participating landowners, visitors to the reserve, and numerous other individuals seeking to deepentheir connection and commitment to the land

A Conservationist from a Young Age

Born in Burlington, Iowa, in 1887, Aldo Leopold shared an avid interest in the outdoors with hisparents Carl and Clara He began hunting with his father as a young boy, and he gained anappreciation for gardening from his mother Starting at the age of eleven, Leopold kept a journal inwhich he made observations about animals and plants during his extensive hikes outdoors, and thispractice developed into a passion for recording his discoveries and reflections Leopold’sexperiences growing up along the wild-lands of the Upper Mississippi River thus helped shape hiscareer choice in conservation and ecology

A keen observer of his natural surroundings, Aldo Leopold continued to develop his skills forstudying wildlife during a lifetime of work in the emerging fields of conservation and ecology At thebeginning of his career, from 1909 to 1928, he worked as an employee of the US Forest Service(USFS), spending most of his time managing public forests and grazing lands in Arizona and NewMexico before moving in 1924 to the USFS’s Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin Heleft public-sector work when the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute hired him

as a consultant to survey game populations in the Upper Mid-west from 1928 to 1932 His researchhelped the institute better understand the reasons for reductions in game species that were affecting itsbottom line In his final career move, he was appointed as a professor and extension scientist at theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison in 1933 in the new field of game management, a position he helduntil his death in 1948.13

In his writing and research, Leopold linked traditionally separate disciplines such as forestry,ecology, and philosophy He was at ease with farmers, scientists, businessmen, and policy makersalike as a result of his work with a diverse set of constituencies during his career For biographies of

Leopold, see Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work ; Susan Flader, Thinking Like a Mountain: Aldo Leopold and the Evolution of an Ecological Attitude toward Deer, Wolves and Forests; and Marybeth Lorbiecki, Aldo Leopold: A Fierce Green Fire.

Settlement and Changing Land Health in the

Central Sands Area

DISCUSSIONS ABOUT THE Leopold Memorial Reserve typically go back only as far as AldoLeopold’s 1935 purchase of the property, with some brief references to the previous landowner: afarmer whom Leopold derisively identified as “the bootlegger.”1 But this particular property features

a much deeper human history Perhaps the reserve area’s most significant feature during most of itshistory has been its location near a portage between the Wisconsin and Fox Rivers Not far from thissite, the proximity of these two rivers joined the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds, alandscape feature that Native Americans and early French trappers depended on for transportation

Soon after the arrival of settlers, federal land surveyors mapped out rectilinear property line grids

in the area in the 1840s as part of an effort to transform the land into marketable property for

prospective owners But the nutrient-poor soil of Wisconsin’s Central Sands area made the land

around the future reserve site vulnerable to overuse if farmed intensively, especially in an economicframework that rewarded short-term profit over sound land management Consequently, the area

sustained significant farming only for a 100-year span beginning in the 1860s Although the Leopoldproperty was in poor ecological health by the time Aldo purchased it in 1935, he saw great potential

in this land In Leopold’s eyes, the value of the land, even in its overused condition, was increased byhis awareness that it could serve as rewarding wildlife habitat and hunting grounds if it were bettermanaged

By examining the history of this land and how it arrived at such a forlorn condition when Leopoldbought it, we can better understand the development of Leopold’s ideas regarding land health and theresponsibilities of private landowners in conservation And to trace the history of land-use changearound the Leopold Memorial Reserve, one must start well before the bootlegger’s time with what

we know of its use by indigenous peoples of the Upper Midwest

Native American Settlement of South-Central Wisconsin

The proximity of the shack property to the plentiful food supply and transportation networks of theWisconsin and Fox Rivers helps explain its long history of human settlement Paleo-Indians firstinhabited the region at the end of the most recent glacial period, some 12,000 years ago.2 Charcoaland pointed chipped-stone artifacts have been found twenty miles to the southwest of the shack in aunique rock formation that gives Natural Bridge State Park its name These remains suggest that thestate’s earliest inhabitants lived in small groups and traveled great distances to obtain sparse food in

a subarctic climate During the next 7,000 years, the rapidly warming climate led to an increased food

supply, larger and more permanent settlements, and expanded trade Approximately 4,500 years ago,Early Woodland Indians near Baraboo left behind pottery and fired clay.3

Natural Bridge State Park (Jay Wilbur, Natural Arch and Bridge Society)

Around 500 BCE, Native Americans constructed some of the first conical burial mounds that laterbecame common across the Upper Midwest The presence of grave offerings, such as shell beads,bear canine teeth, copper artifacts, and pottery from the mound culture of the Middle Woodland

Indians, suggests the emergence of larger Native American settlements and trade networks in the areabetween 800 BCE and 400 CE The Late Woodland Indians continued this rich tradition of burialmounds through 1200 CE but expanded on the practice by constructing more extensive mounds in avariety of shapes, including round, linear, and animal silhouettes called effigy mounds Many of theseeffigy mounds have been lost to agriculture and development, but some remain on the land; close tothe Leopold Memorial Reserve a noteworthy mound in the shape of a human is located at Man MoundPark.6 Although mounds from this period occur elsewhere in the Midwest and beyond, they are

especially abundant in Wisconsin, which had at least 15,000 prior to European settlement Sauk

County alone was thought to have 1,500 Only 100 remain in the county today, and of that only a fewdozen are in good condition The interpretation of the meaning of the mound shapes has been subject

to considerable debate, but recent scholarship indicates that the effigies are connected with system beliefs in spirits of the upper, middle, and lower worlds.7 Examination of the shape and

clan-contents of the burial mounds thus reveals extensive information about the lifestyle and beliefs of theWoodland Indians

Geology of the Leopold Memorial Reserve Area

The Leopold Memorial Reserve is only a few miles east of the Baraboo Hills, an ancient and mostlyeroded mountain range located at the boundary of the unglaciated, or “driftless,” region in thesouthwest corner of Wisconsin The granite rock of the Baraboo Hills is among the oldest in NorthAmerica— more than a billion years old in sections Too steep for farming, much of the land of thehills is forested, forming one of the largest upland hardwood stands in the Upper Midwest.4

In addition to this interesting ancient geology, the rolling hills and scattered ridges around theLeopold Memorial Reserve show the traces of several glaciers that over the millennia haveadvanced, come to a final rest in the area, and then retreated The most recent glacial activity, duringthe Wisconsin period of the last ice age, started 70,000 years ago and lasted until 10,000 years ago.During this era, debris left behind by the terminal moraine of the receding glacier plugged the mainoutlet of the Wisconsin River, creating a vast inland lake The release of this glacial dam and thetremendous impact of gushing lake water forced through a narrow opening created the spectacularbluffs and crevices of the Wisconsin Dells area, which is northwest of the reserve, forming the basisfor the original water attraction of a region whose boosters now call it “the waterpark capital of theworld.” Sand deposits from the draining lake are 500 feet deep in some areas, and geologists thinkthat this draining may have taken only a week

The area’s bedrock and glacial history prompted the geologist and former University of Wisconsinpresident Charles R Van Hise to write, “I know of no other region in the state which illustrates somany principles of the science of geology.”5

Location of Native American effigy mound clusters; area around future Leopold Memorial Reserve isdenoted by a white rectangle (Amy Rosebrough, with assistance from Robert Birmingham)

Effigy mound at Man Mound Park near Baraboo (Sauk County Historical Society)

The Late Woodland and Mississippian civilizations in the Upper Mid-west collapsed between

1200 and 1300 CE for unknown reasons Some hypotheses include overpopulation, conflict withother groups, and a prolonged cooling period At this time a third group, the Oneota Indians, thought

to be descendants of the Late Woodland Indians but whose customs had changed drastically with newagricultural practices, emerged in two settlements: one near Lake Winnebago and Green Bay to thenortheast and the other near La Crosse in the southwest First referred to as the Winnebago Tribe, inWisconsin the members now use the title Ho-Chunk Nation.8

Native American Contact with Europeans

By the time white explorers and fur traders arrived in the seventeenth century, the indigenouspopulation in the state had dropped dramatically, perhaps because of warfare or infectious diseasesspread by the early European explorers.9 During this period, a coalition of French and Ho-Chunkforces drove out the recently arrived Fox and Sauk Indians from the Green Bay area, and the oustedgroups settled in present-day Sauk County Fur trading thrived in the latter area because of its richsupply of game and its proximity to the Wisconsin and Fox Rivers at the present-day city of Portage.The north-flowing Fox River’s connection to the Atlantic Ocean via the Great Lakes and the south-flowing Wisconsin River’s connection to the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River helpedconnect the area’s fur products to global markets Early European explorers described this part of theWisconsin territory as “affording excellent hunting grounds, abounding in deer, elk, and moose andvery rich in bears and beavers.”10

Just after the Revolutionary War, the Sauk and Fox tribes abandoned the area for unknown reasons,leaving the Ho-Chunk as the only Native Americans in the vicinity One early white pioneer, Edward

Tanner, wrote in 1818, “The Winnebago [Ho-Chunk] Indians inhabit the country bordering on thetributary streams on both sides of the [Wisconsin] river … Their territory extends from the

Mississippi to the vicinity of Green Bay, and the number of their warriors is seven hundred.” Of thelocation near Portage where the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers nearly meet, he continued, “The two

rivers might be united by a canal of only one mile in length … At this prairie the Fox River does notexceed sixty feet in width, and is usually from three to ten deep, has little current, and is full of a thickgrowth of wild rice It abounds with some geese and an immense quantity and variety of ducks.”11

Such abundance made this land highly desirable and led to growing conflicts between the whitesettlers and Native American inhabitants These conflicts included a skirmish in 1827, which

contributed to the US government’s 1828 construction of Fort Winnebago, near Portage.12 Officials atthe new Fort Winnebago Indian Agency mediated disputes between white settlers and Indians Afterfailed attempts to coexist, in 1832 the United States Army drove out returning Sauk Indians from theregion during the Black Hawk War.13 Following his capture, Chief Black Hawk explained his reasonsfor participating in the uprising that had led to the war: “I have determined to give my motives andreasons for my former hostilities to the whites, and to vindicate my character from misrepresentation

… My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live

upon, and cultivate, as far as it is necessary for their subsistence … Nothing can be sold, but suchthings as can be carried away.”14 Black Hawk’s words had little effect, however, on policies thatencouraged the sale of land in the region to the growing number of white settlers After the Ho-Chunksigned an 1837 treaty ceding the tribal lands east of the Mississippi to the United States, the federalgovernment opened up much of Wisconsin and other parts of the Northwest Territory to white settlers.Meanwhile, government officials forcibly relocated the Ho-Chunk tribe to Minnesota and, later, toNebraska Some members, however, resisted the treaty, remained in Wisconsin, and were later

recognized as rightful owners of their ancestral lands in south-central Wisconsin.15

Postcard of Fort Winnebago, 1834 (Wisconsin Historical Society, image 4376)

The Arrival of Land Surveyors and an Influx of Settlers

The presence of so many new settlers in the 1840s signaled a new era in the state’s history Theresulting local, state, and federal government documents from this period provide insights into thesettlement of specific locations, including the site where the Leopold shack now stands Landsurveyors in particular took detailed field notes during this period Teams of surveyors, their workmandated by Thomas Jefferson’s 1785 Land Ordinance Act and 1787 Northwest Ordinance Act,reached eastern Wisconsin in 1833 and took until 1866 to complete the project statewide Theydescribed the future shack property along the Wisconsin River as a mixture of open oak savanna,marshland, and forest, with the land occupying a floodplain forest and oak opening.16 Red, white, burrand black oak trees grew best in this landscape, which was kept open and savanna-like by regularfires, with one early surveyor describing the land as “third rate rolling, sandy; oak—barrens” and

“marshy.” The only European settler present at that time, the surveyor quaintly noted, was “aNorwegian named Anderson.”17

At around the time of the Civil War, the federal government began conducting the ten-year

agricultural census in Wisconsin, and officials collected more extensive information about peopleliving in the newly surveyed region On the edge of the western frontier, 1860 Agricultural Censusdata reveal that little of the area’s expanses of oak savanna and woodland were under plow The newowners of the future shack property, William and Caroline Baxter, farmed less than 25 percent oftheir land Census data for the land, however, indicate that grain production and animal husbandrysteadily rose during the early years of farming.18 In one firsthand account of the area from this period,the founder of the Sierra Club, John Muir, wrote a vivid description of this sparsely settled land inthe early days of white settlement after he and his family moved to Wisconsin from Scotland: “Thissudden plash into pure wilderness—baptism in Nature’s warm heart—how utterly happy it made us!Nature streaming into us, wooingly teaching her wonderful glowing lessons, so unlike the dismalgrammar ashes and cinders so long thrashed into us.”19 While Muir’s adolescence as a family laborer

on a pioneer farmstead in Wisconsin included many hardships, he clearly reveled in the chance tolive in a new, wild area far removed from the dreary city life of his early years in Scotland

Notes from 1845 by surveyor J E Whitcher about the future Leopold Memorial Reserve area.

Sentence near top reads “The Wisconsin is very high indeed, the flats are all overflowed, could notset 1/4 post.” (from the collections of the Wisconsin Board of Commissioners of Public Lands)

As more land in the area was cleared and put into production, yields on the Baxter farm increasedover the years in spite of the low quality of their sandy floodplain property In the Baxters’ first twodecades there, they grew mainly corn, wheat, and oats, perhaps to sell to an influx of settlers attracted

to work in a Wisconsin Dells pinery that was new to the lumber industry at that time.20 The KilbournDam, just upstream and among the earliest of several dams that eventually dotted the river, had beencompleted in 1859 to help regulate water levels for logs being floated downstream.21 On the Baxterfarm, the most dramatic increase of crop production in the early years was in corn, which went fromnone in 1860 to 500 bushels by 1880 Other crops, such as potatoes, apples, barley, buckwheat, andmolasses, were also sources of income and subsistence to the Baxters and other nearby farm families

In 1880, for example, the Baxters had fifteen apple trees that produced 40 bushels, and some of thesetrees may have formed the orchard just west of the shack “at the foot of the sandhill,” which Leopoldrefers to in his essay “The Good Oak.”22

After the arrival of the chinch bug, an insect pest, to Wisconsin early in the Baxters’ years on thefarm, wheat farming collapsed throughout the state In Sauk County, hops quickly took wheat’s place

as the next cash crop, but its rise was also brief.23 As a key ingredient in beer production, this crop’sappearance in the agricultural records corresponded with a “hops craze” in the area during the 1860s

and 1870s According to one account, “preachers and temperance men even went into hop raising,quieting their consciences with the rationalization that the hops would be used for tanning In fact, ameeting was held in the county courthouse one evening to discuss the matter ‘The arguments weremany and the house was filled The argument of big profits … seemed to be sufficient for most ofthem.’” Another observer wrote, “When you saw a farmer in 1867, the peak year, with an expensivedriving team and a fancy buggy you just assumed that he was a hop grower In that year Sauk Countyraised more than a fourth of all the hops grown in the state, and they brought up to 65 cents a

pound.”24 Like the decline of wheat markets a few years earlier, the arrival of another insect pest, thehop louse, brought the demise of the crop, putting an end to many get-rich-quick farming schemes

Hops yard near Wisconsin Dells, ca 1880 (Wisconsin Historical Society, image 30472)

A more lasting enterprise of the Baxters was their animal husbandry, which increased notably intheir first two decades They began with a small dairy operation, making 100 pounds of butter fromthree cows in 1860; by 1880 their butter production had risen to 500 pounds Sheep, swine, andpoultry were nonexistent in the 1860 census but had increased by 1880 to between ten and thirty ofeach The Baxters and other area farmers most likely chose to sell products such as butter, wool, andeggs because they were less apt to wilt in the field or spoil in transport than plant crops or milk Thecombined increase in animal husbandry, corn, and other products provided the Baxters with a

comfortable income even as they withstood economic challenges such as the demise of wheat andhops Over the next several decades, they and their children remained in the area and expanded theirlandholdings

The Beginning of the Modern Agricultural Era

Wisconsin agricultural census data from this land in the early twentieth century paint a very differentpicture than the one just forty-five years earlier Area farmers began to shift from raising a diversemix of animals and crops toward a monoculture more similar to what has become common on twenty-first-century farms The relationship of these farmers to the Wisconsin River also changeddramatically Beginning in the late nineteenth century, federal, state, and local agencies constructedlevees starting just east of the Baxter property and extending to the flood-prone downstream city ofPortage Combined with greater flood regulation provided by the newly rebuilt Kilbourn Damupstream, the land was less susceptible— though never immune—to floods.25 During their years ofownership, from 1915 to 1935, Jacob and Emma Alexander moved away from livestock toward row-crop agriculture They ceased raising sheep but maintained a small number of cows, pigs, and hens—the last being the source of the knee-deep chicken manure the Leopold family removed from the shackupon its purchase Among the grain crops, wheat production remained low following the end ofWisconsin’s period of high-volume wheat production a few decades earlier, but the Alexanders grewcorn and oats at about the same acreage as recorded in the 1880 census.26

As European farmers returned to work after World War I, more commodities supplied from

overseas reduced the global demand for American agricultural goods, and consequently prices began

to drop.27 Furthermore, increased mechanization accompanying the advent of gasoline-powered

tractors, as well as higher yields from new crop varieties, made life more difficult for small farmerswith limited financial access to technological developments In this economic climate, a depressionbegan in the agricultural sector that predated the national economic collapse of 1929 Farming on theAlexander property no longer provided sufficient income, and in the 1930s state records show thatJacob Alexander was unable to pay his property taxes.28 Similar to farmers across the country,

Alexander may have been striving to increase production to offset debt from low prices In

Alexander’s case, he nearly doubled the amount of land farmed in an effort to counteract the

commodity prices that had in some cases dropped roughly 85 percent from World War I highs.29 In

1933, his last year on the property, he farmed his third-highest total acreage, which suggests a ditch attempt to overcome his dire financial troubles

last-During the drought years of the 1930s, however, the weather did not cooperate with Alexander’shopes for a bumper harvest Although the Wisconsin droughts were not as dramatic as those in theDust Bowl region farther to the south and west, Wisconsin did experience a local dust bowl duringthese years.30 Unable to receive enough income from his withered crops to keep up with new

developments in agriculture, and being recently widowed after his wife Emma’s death in March of

1933, Alexander gave up on farming, abandoned his land, and went to live with his sister Ida in

California He did not sell the land at this time, however, most probably because the severe economicdepression gripping the country would have made it difficult to find a buyer

Alexander returned to Wisconsin in the spring of 1935 to live with his brother George near

Baraboo, and he began farming again at the age of sixty-five He did so on land rented from George’sneighbor.31 County records indicate that he was saddled with a debt of $548 in unpaid property taxes

on his abandoned farmstead Taking care of unfinished business from his last attempt at farming andperhaps glad to be rid of the reminder of a failed business venture, he signed a warranty deed on 17May 1935, transferring this land to Aldo Leopold.32 Free of the burden of unpaid taxes, he was nowset to return to full-time farming Before he was able to realize this dream, though, Alexander died in

“adherents had some initial success in promoting the concepts of societal longevity, ecological

interdependence, and the utopian possibilities of the new farming Permanent agriculture’s manyprecepts circulated through the late 1940s, reaching Americans of all stripes with their infectiouspromises of health, wealth, and prosperity.”34 Reeling from the disastrous effects of the Dust Bowland Great Depression, farmers and city dwellers alike were hungry for new ideas about how to growfood without destroying the soil.

Obituary from 10 January 1936 for Jacob Alexander (Baraboo News Republic)

When he wrote the essay “Good Oak,” Aldo Leopold considered the history of his small farm incentral Wisconsin Although he never specifically mentioned indigenous land-use practices in thisessay, he implicitly compared the area’s robust land health during presettlement times with eventsfrom the 1860s onward, such as the extinction of the passenger pigeon, the disappearance of elk in thestate, and the widespread drainage of marshland for farming As for his immediate predecessor’sland-use history, Leopold referred to Jacob Alexander as a “bootlegger” who carelessly burned

down the property’s house There is no evidence to suggest that he knew Alexander personally,

however, and it is clear from government records that Alexander was, if indeed a bootlegger at all,also a legitimate farmer.35 It is possible, too, that an unauthorized, nonfarming bootlegger inhabitedAlexander’s abandoned house and burned it down sometime between late 1933 and early 1935 YetLeopold’s further description of the “bootlegger” as a farmer who “skinned” the land of its fertilitysuggests that Leopold’s criticism of Alexander is grounded, to at least some degree, in actual events

in Alexander’s life Overall, the bootlegger character in A Sand County Almanac may have been part

composite sketch of previous dwellers and part fictional character

REGARDLESS OF THE TRUE IDENTITY of the bootlegger, this description and the other events noted in

“Good Oak” serve as a useful metaphor for major problems in the agricultural sector of the UnitedStates, thus advancing Leopold’s literary goals The problems he identified that started in the 1860sand came to a head in the 1930s—of declines in land health and economic well-being—were clearlyoutside the control of the individual farmers, who had property taxes, mortgages, and equipment debts

to pay amid drought, industrialization of farms, and wildly fluctuating prices for their crops Theeconomic challenges of the Great Depression, which began earlier in the agricultural sector than inthe rest of the country, pushed farmers like Alexander to pursue poor practices on marginal farmland

In the earliest years of the Depression, critiques of agricultural practices by Leopold and others wereahead of their time and therefore were unheard of by farmers like Jacob Alexander

Remains of foundation of the Alexander house (Stephen Laubach)

Aldo Leopold went on to connect his appraisal of farming practices to a broader assessment ofconservation responsibilities of society as a whole While working for the USFS, he regularly

suggested that public agencies expand or reimagine their conservation mission In 1924 he

successfully lobbied for the establishment by the Forest Service of the Gila Wilderness in New

Mexico, the first such publicly protected land in the country He also criticized federal policies thatoffered a bounty for killing large carnivores like wolves and grizzly bears, policies that he himselfhad once supported He often interacted with private landowners, as when he mediated policy

disputes between the Forest Service and local ranchers who were using a mix of private and publicgrazing lands Between 1928 and 1932, while working on game surveys as a consulting ecologist, hewitnessed firsthand the poor condition of wildlife habitat in the Midwest.36 By the time Leopoldcofounded the Riley Game Cooperative and, not long after, bought the shack, he was more keenlyaware of the challenges to conservation posed by private landownership than he had been in his dayswith the Forest Service It was during this period that he concentrated on the responsibilities of

landowners independent of government land purchases or incentives programs.37 This gradual turn inhis thinking influenced the conservation strategies advocated by Leopold and, after his death, by thefounders of the Leopold Memorial Reserve

What helped form the future Leopold Memorial Reserve was not just the commitment of one

family, though Aldo Leopold understood as well as anyone in the conservation field the need forcooperation among landowners in making habitat improvements on a larger scale This was based onhis recent experience as an extension scientist at the University of Wisconsin—a land-grant university

—and with setting up cooperative projects at Riley, Coon Valley, and elsewhere His earlier work as

a forester in the newly incorporated states of Arizona and New Mexico, in which he mediated

disputes between the US Forest Service and ranchers who were using federal grazing lands, alsostrongly influenced his conservation philosophy.2 His wide-ranging professional interactions shapedhis personal experiments with land ownership, management, and conservation At the shack property,his partner in conservation turned out to be a family friend and hunting companion from Madison, thebusinessman Tom Coleman Impressed by the hunting opportunities near the shack, Coleman decided,two years after Leopold’s 1935 land purchase, to buy his own property across the dirt road The

collaboration between the Coleman and Leopold families set the stage for continued cooperativeconservation at the shack property in the decades to follow

Aldo Leopold (right) and Thomas Coleman cooking over a campfire, 1940s (Aldo Leopold

Foundation, call no S01999)

Pioneers in Ecological Restoration

At the time of Aldo Leopold’s death in April 1948 at the age of sixty-one, he and his family had begunnursing the land around the shack back to health from the poor farming practices of previous owners.3This land provided Leopold with a testing ground for a series of ad hoc experiments on habitatimprovement, many of which were later formalized into an evolving series of comprehensivemanagement plans for the Leopold Memorial Reserve

Sometimes important discoveries occurred quite by accident Leopold’s daughter Estella recalledwith great fondness, for example, her father’s growing appreciation for the role of fire in restoringprairie ecosystems following the simple act of forming a fire break around the shack: “Dad got theselong pieces of corrugated tin, roofing tin, and [he’d] punch holes in each end and put some wires onthem as a handle.” Then, to form a fire break, the family would pair them and burn in between Bymoving the tins and burning between the pairs to form a perimeter of charred vegetation around theshack, the family protected their dwelling from fire A fire arriving at this strip of land would have agreater chance of burning out from a lack of fuel To keep the fires between the corrugated tins undercontrol, they used “mops and brooms and pails of water to stick the broom in and even some longburlap sacks that we could put on a stick and put in the water … to mat out something you wanted tocontrol.” Not long after, Estella’s father discovered that a nice mix of prairie plant species

germinated in the fire breaks that he had initially formed to protect the shack: “What he saw …

coming up on the fire lanes was more perennial native grasses than the other area, the control.”4

Naturally, the family’s next land-management decision was to burn not just fire breaks but wholefields.

Estella’s account of the way her father experimented with and learned from the land’s response tofire provides a glimpse of Aldo Leopold’s commitment to understanding land health This anecdotealso shows how the scale of her father’s experiments increased over time His other projects on theshack property similarly expanded, eventually including forest restoration, animal population studies,phenological record keeping, and food-patch and brush-shelter construction.5

In all of these endeavors, Leopold was testing ideas that played an important role in the

development of ecological restoration as a formal field of study Leopold strongly believed that

degraded land could be returned to health through active management techniques Aldo Leopold, JohnCurtis, and others working at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum are considered some of thefield’s earliest American practitioners because of their efforts to restore, through controlled burnsand prairie plantings, a sample of the largely destroyed prairie ecosystem They based their vision for

a functioning ecosystem on historical research of presettlement vegetation The environmental

historian and Leopold scholar Susan Flader believes that Leopold’s diverse career experiences,including those at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum and Coon Valley, influenced his restorationwork at the shack “That idea of actually beginning to work on the land,” she explains, “was deepwithin him and he always wanted to work on his own land … Even when he was in the Forest

Service, he wrote home that he was made to live and work on his land, and whether it’s a big nationalforest or a small parcel that he might actually own, it was all the same.”6 In carrying out his numerousecological restoration projects, Leopold revolutionized land conservation He moved beyond the idea

of managing land intensively for human uses, or passively managing protected land, to actively andscientifically managing land for the purpose of improving wildlife habitat and, more broadly,

restoring ecological diversity and processes—land health

Early experiments in land management

Martin house installation with (l-r) Estella B., Starker, and Aldo Leopold, 1935 (Aldo LeopoldFoundation, call no S01893)

Construction of brush pile by Starker Leopold, 1936 (Aldo Leopold Foundation, call no S02081)

Aldo (left) and Luna Leopold sharpening a shovel, 1939 (Aldo Leopold Foundation, call no.S01910)

Aldo, Carl, and Nina Leopold surveying the landscape on skis, 1939 (Aldo Leopold Foundation, call

no S01991)

Aldo Leopold next to a fire break at the shack, 1940s (Aldo Leopold Foundation, call no S02065)