A. Carl Leopold, nature activist, answers Grist’s questions 0

What work do you do?

Mostly the organizations I'm involved with are oriented toward active programs for nurturing quality pieces of nature. I am on the board of the Aldo Leopold Foundation; president of the Tropical Forestry Initiative; founding president of the Finger Lakes Land Trust; on the board of the Black Locust Initiative; vice president of the Greensprings Natural Cemetery; and president of Commemorative Nature Preserves.

I am the emeritus W.H. Crocker Scientist at the Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell University. I retired in 1990, but I continue to do a modest amount of research, and I continue to write about and remain active in environmental issues, an interest that came naturally through my family.

How does it relate to the environment?

The Aldo Leopold Foundation has the mission to promote the land ethic through the legacy of Aldo Leopold. My family started the foundation in 1982 in response to growing interest in our father's life and work, including A Sand County Almanac. Over the past few years, the foundation has designed and built the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center, an energy-efficient building that opened in April.

The Tropical Forestry Initiative is doing experimental work on how to restore tropical rainforest in Costa Rica. The Finger Lakes Land Trust works in New York state's Finger Lakes Region to protect land through purchase or holding conservation easement. The Black Locust Initiative promotes use of black locust wood, a naturally rot-resistant wood, instead of chemically treated wood, and does outreach to grade-school kids. Greensprings Natural Cemetery is providing sites for natural burials: burial plots in a natural, very peaceful country setting without chemical preservatives or cremation. Commemorative Nature Preserves is bringing natural-history education to existing nature preserves and also is a means of memorializing deceased citizens.

What are you working on at the moment?

As well as all of the above, I'm writing a piece about tropical forests.

How do you get to work?

I drive a scooter for all local transportation. I get 100 miles per gallon of gasoline. In winter, I drive my 1992 Subaru Justy. It has optional four-wheel drive and gets 35 miles per gallon.

What long and winding road led you to your current position?

I grew up with family that was very close to nature and who did exciting restoration of otherwise ruined Wisconsin land.

Where were you born? Where do you live now?

I was born in Albuquerque, N.M., while my father was employed with the U.S. Forest Service. Then we moved to Madison, Wis., where I went through the school and university system. After four years in the Marine Corps, I went to Harvard for graduate work, then to Purdue University for 25 years, then to University of Nebraska administration, then to Cornell for research. I've been in Ithaca, N.Y., for 29 years.

What environmental offense has infuriated you the most?

The alleged election of George Bush in 2000, and the failure of our government to protect our Constitution against the long sequence of violations ever since.

Who is your environmental hero?

Aldo Leopold, of course.

How do you spend your free time (if you have any)? Read any good books lately?

I'm currently reading the new book by John Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry. My other hobbies are ceramics and music.

Which stereotype about environmentalists most fits you?

Carl on the family's Wisconsin property as a boy.

Courtesy Leopold family.

I believe in the environmentalism that is generated by real work out in the real ground. Working with the environment generates good environmentalism. It is mighty difficult to really love something that you know about only through words.

What's your favorite place or ecosystem?

Costa Rican tropical forests. And, of course, the family shack in Wisconsin.

If you could institute by fiat one environmental reform, what would it be?

Educate the public about effective family planning. This can be done effectively only by linking it with improving the status of people in poverty.

Who was your favorite musical artist when you were 18? How about now?

Then, Fritz Kreisler. Now, Hector Villa-Lobos and Astor Piazzolla for tangos.

What's your favorite TV show?

I have no TV.

If you could have every InterActivist reader do one thing, what would it be?

Read A Sand County Almanac.

In your mind, has "environmentalism" changed from your days growing up in Wisconsin to now? If so, how?    -- Andrew Fridley, Portland, Ore.

A. Carl Leopold, nature activist.

Your question makes one think seriously about the world's status in the longer term. In the past decade, we suddenly have become startlingly aware of the contemporary threats to our environment. Who can help but be alarmed at the combination of environmental deterioration and exploitation, the astonishing magnitude of threats of nuclear destruction, planetary change, and civil mayhem, and the inability of governmental systems to provide sensible answers? Yes -- environmentalism is merging into survivalism.

To what extent do you think Baraboo, Wis., and the surrounding communities have embraced or disregarded the work you and your family did at the shack and the ideas that your dad put forth in his writing and life?    -- Allyson Green, Baraboo, Wis.

Thinning the Leopold pines.

Photo: aldoleopold.org

There are surely some happy and positive developments of my father's concepts in Baraboo and surrounding areas. I'm thinking of the statewide Leopold Weekend that began with the Lodi community's reading of A Sand County Almanac; the wonderful program of Jeff Nania in the River Crossing Charter School in Portage; the exciting, innovative programs of Kathe Conn and the Aldo Leopold Nature Center in Monona; and the emergence of Farming and Conservation Together as a local program to protect and restore wetlands in the Baraboo River watershed. These are such good developments. The extent of volunteerism in the community when the Leopold pines were thinned just this last year was happy evidence of real interest in the community.

On the other hand, I believe that the community in general has a poor understanding of Aldo Leopold and his ethical concept of environmentalism. It is such a sensible and a beautiful relation to the nature that supports us, and I earnestly hope that the Aldo Leopold Foundation can really transmit this concept to our communities in the coming decade.

Do you believe it is better to integrate humanity throughout the natural landscape or to have nature preserves separate from centers of humanity?    -- Rick Inglis, Fort Collins, Colo.

Environmentalist communities are still not able to effectively reach the American public about the importance of a relationship with the natural landscape. There are clusters of Americans who feel keenly about the issue, many of whom fashion their lives around caring for our habitat. But the minimal attention of our political system toward caring for our land seems to say that our voters are not really concerned with the environment -- whether it is in the wider landscape or in the centers of humanity. It seems so strange that as a group we can care about having a clean car, or having an orderly house, or keeping the lawn mowed, but be reckless about caring for the earth that sustains us.

As a wildlife biologist and environmental educator, I have always appreciated the role Aldo Leopold played both in the field of wildlife management and the early environmental movement. But as a Christian I am especially aware of the spiritual link that he felt existed between the natural world and God. Could you share any insights that you may have on your father's faith foundations and ways that he may have applied them in his life and work?    -- Gary Longfellow, Grayling, Mich.

Many people ask about the religious views of Aldo Leopold. We all are impressed with his keen knowledge of the Bible and his frequent use of biblical lines in his writing. It is clear to me that he had a beautiful reverence for the natural world; he wrote, "It is here that we seek and still find our meat from God." But this reverence was very personal, and not a bit organizational. I doubt if he ever stepped into any church in his life. I have often said that his ethical focus on human behavior was one of following a guiding principle -- a guiding star of how to live ethically. His way of living seems to me to be so simple and so beautiful. For me it seems clearly based on love and affection for the natural world and a disregard for gimmicks and "improvements." Stand quietly in front of our family's shack, and you should feel the sense of love that he wrote about so beautifully.

What is your opinion on the Green Festivals being held in major cities around the world? What do you feel is the most effective way of getting "non-green" people to pay attention and attend these events?    -- Megan Hearn, Philadelphia, Pa.

The "green" movement is a healthy and positive force that is gathering momentum around the nation. The problem of how to get more people to catch the enthusiasm for it is great, as it has to compete with the big-moneyed major sports, the toys of the electronic age, and the separation of so many of our young people from the natural world. On the other hand, I am always surprised to find that the students in the local school here have a lot of enthusiasm for natural values. The beginnings of a real green movement are there. The big need is to nurture it.

Were you there when the oak tree struck by lightning was cut down for firewood? What do you remember? That passage in A Sand County Almanac brings history, nature, people, and the environment together in a deeply poetic way.    -- Gail Brownell, Cupertino, Calif.

The things I've seen ...

Photo: iStockphoto

The essay on "The Good Oak" is such a wonderful one. It reaches people in so many different ways. The event of the oak tree being struck down was in about 1947, when I was in graduate school, so I was not present. It is probable that my father was very pleased with the essay; my sister Nina tells me he called his friend Joe Hickey when he had finished it and said that he would like to read it to him. That was unusual. One of the aspects of that essay that has such strong appeal is the very simplicity of a valuable tree, a family cutting it for fuel, a mother (the "chief sawyer" who was concerned with the exertion involved), and this as a foil for reciting a sequence of historical events. Cutting firewood was a continuous winter task at the shack. In the winter days, Dad used to laugh, saying, "I think that we burned more firewood this week than we cut."

How can we join the Tropical Forestry Initiative? We have land in Costa Rica we are restoring, which will connect a private preserve above us to the Path of the Tapir below us. It would be good to be working with an organization!    -- Lola Wilcox, Denver, Colo.

The Tropical Forestry Initiative is an effort to study the technique that might be used to restore tropical rainforest. We started planting native trees in abandoned pastures in 1992, and our fastest-growing trees have been averaging more than two meters [6.5 feet] of growth per year. So after 10 years, our trees were over 20 meters [65.6 feet] high! And after the trees closed in their crowns, a wonderful array of undergrowth species has been coming in naturally. We have identified over 500 species of undergrowth in our new developing forest. To say that it is exciting is an understatement.

In addition to the restoration work, we have an intern program with usually about a dozen college kids coming there to work on projects and to learn about tropical forestry. Professor Dick Andrus manages the program and is the best person to to find out more. Five of our interns have written graduate theses on the work they have done there. The program is really a generator of excitement about the tropical forests.

Do you have a plot set aside for yourself in Greensprings Natural Cemetery for that inevitable day?    -- Quinn Biros, Carlisle, Pa.

The Greensprings Natural Cemetery is an exciting new direction for being a part of the natural world. We have been in business since early last year, and the idea of returning our bodies to the natural world generates a great positive reaction. The cemetery is in a beautiful setting, 100 acres of rolling terrain, partly forested, a sweeping view of the glaciated hills to the south. It is so rewarding to attend burial services and hear people repeating again and again how wonderful it was to bring their loved ones to such a beautiful place, for the very natural act of bringing their bodies to the clean natural world. No chemicals, no carved stone, no monoculture of mowed grass. You can be sure that I purchased my own plot at the very onset of the program.

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