A Fierce Green Fire A Fierce Green Fire Aldo Leopold’s Life and Legacy NEW EDITION x x w Marybeth Lorbiecki 1 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Marybeth Lorbiecki 2016 First Edition published in 1996 New Edition published in 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Lorbiecki, Marybeth. [Aldo Leopold] A fierce green fire : Aldo Leopold’s life and legacy / Marybeth Lorbiecki. — 2nd edition. pages cm Previous editions have title: Aldo Leopold : a fierce green fire. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–996503–8 1. Leopold, Aldo, 1886–1948. 2. Naturalists—Wisconsin—Biography. 3. Conservationists—Wisconsin—Biography. I. Title. QH31.L618L66 2015 508.092—dc23 [B] 2015019906 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Sheridan, USA For Julie Dunlap, a spiritual daughter of Aldo, And for Nina, who carried on his dream at the Shack n o ati d n u o F d ol p o Le o d Al The Nina with her dog relaxing at the Shack. CONTENTS Author’s Note ix Foreword: “A Daughter’s Reflections” (by Nina Leopold Bradley) and Reflections upon these Reflections xvii PART ONE: Aldo Leopold’s Life and Writings 1. Lug- Ins- Land: 1887– 1901 3 2. Ornithologists and Explorations: 1901– 1903 16 3. The Naturalist Out East: 1903– 1905 22 4. Women and Wise Use: 1905– 1909 31 5. A Cowboy in Love: 1909– 1912 39 6. New Life and Near Death: 1912– 1914 51 7. Save That Game: 1915– 1919 60 8. A Wild Proposal: 1919– 1924 74 9. Surveying the Field: 1924– 1933 86 10. The Land Laboratories: 1933– 1936 108 11. The Professor: 1937– 1939 128 12. Paths of Violence: 1939– 1945 139 13. Great Possessions: 1945– 1948 152 14. Adios and Happy Trails 160 PART TWO: Updates from Here and There 15. All in the Family 165 16. Aldo’s Students and Colleagues 204 17. The Shack, the Aldo Leopold Foundation, and Other Leopold Initiatives 226 18. The Wilderness Idea 239 19. The Endangered Species and Youth:  Keeping All the Cogs and Wheels 254 20. The Farmer as Conservationist … and Restorationist 276 21. The Round River of Ecological Economics and Development 285 vii viii—Contents PART THREE: The Upshot 22. The Land Ethic 299 23. Love and the Restoration of Ourselves 316 Acknowledgments 329 Notes 331 Works by Aldo Leopold 351 Selected References 353 Index 355 AUTHOR’S NOTE Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher “standard of living” is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque- flower is a right as inalienable as free speech. Foreword, A Sand County Almanac After a long day of rain, wind, and swampy portages, we pitch our tent. A misty blanket settles over the melon- tinted horizon, and the long, eerie trill of a loon drifts over air.  Neither humming motors nor their exhaust dull our spirits. City lights do not dim the skies. The stars are crisp and startling in the blackness, and the air smells of pine. Later, if we are lucky, the distant howl of a wolf will jerk us out of sleep. It’s hard to imagine what this beloved place and the American landscape might look like if Aldo Leopold hadn’t come along when he did. Would my tenting spot in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA), atop a slab of pine- dotted granite, now be the site of a tourist condominium? Would the forests of the Southwest have declined into desert? How many game spe- cies, like deer, quail, woodcocks, and various waterfowl, would have gone extinct? And wolves— would they too have been completely hunted, trapped, or poisoned away? Aldo Leopold was a game changer in every aspect of the conservation movement. His famed book of personal essays A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There has been dubbed “the conservationist’s bible” and Leopold, an American prophet.1 For those of us who have often read the Almanac, his words are as familiar as our backpacks, canoes, and walking sticks. They ix