Living a Land Ethic: A History of Cooperative Conservation on the Leopold Memorial Reserve

Living a Land Ethic

Wisconsin Land and Life

Arnold AlanenSeries Editor

A History of CooperativeConservation on the LeopoldMemorial Reserve

Stephen A. Laubach

The University of Wisconsin Press

Living a Land Ethic

is 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.

e University of Wisconsin Press1930 Monroe Street, 3rd FloorMadison, Wisconsin 53711-2059uwpress.wisc.edu

3 Henrietta StreetLondon WC2E 8LU, Englandeurospanbookstore.com

Copyright © 2014e Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin SystemAll 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 Universityof 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 2014333.7209775—dc232013037569

To Nina, Noah, and Aurora

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

—Aldo Leopold, “e Ecological Conscience,” 1947

vii

Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Foreword by Stanley A. Temple xi

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction 3

1 Settlement and Changing Land Health in the Central Sands Area 12

2 Sowing the Seeds of the Leopold Memorial Reserve Idea 29

3 Implementing a Management Plan 45

4 Growth in Research and Education Programs 64

5 Conservation’s Next Generation 80

Conclusion: The Legacy of the Leopold Memorial Reserve 95

Afterword 106

Notes 109

Bibliography 127

Index 133

ix

Illustrations

Sand-point pump with oak-and-brass buckets, 1940s 4

Aerial photo of Leopold Memorial Reserve 5

Banding a prairie chicken at Faville Grove, 1938 7

Surveying the landscape at the Riley Game Cooperative, 1947 8

Natural Bridge State Park 13

Location of Native American effigy mound clusters 15

Effigy mound at Man Mound Park near Baraboo 16

Postcard of Fort Winnebago, 1834 18

Notes by surveyor J. E. Whitcher about the future Leopold Memorial Reserve area 20

Hops yard near Wisconsin Dells, ca. 1880 21

Deed of 17 May 1935 for sale of land from Jacob Alexander to Aldo Leopold 24

Obituary from 10 January 1936 for Jacob Alexander 25

Remains of foundation of the Alexander house 27

Aldo Leopold and omas Coleman cooking over a campfire, 1940s 30

Early experiments in land management 32–33

Shack visits by family and friends during the 1950s and 1960s 38–39

Russell VanHoosen on tractor with daughter Tami, 1959 43

Initial planning meetings 47

Wisconsin State Journal article, 11 February 1973 49

Prairie restoration 50–51

Wetlands management 52

Aerial photos from 1937 and 1968 with outline of the original Leopold Memorial Reserve 53

List of reserve tours and outreach by Frank Terbilcox, 1975 55

Letter from Estella B. Leopold to Reed Coleman, 1972 57

Deer research and management on the reserve, early 1970s 60– 61

e Bradley Study Center 67

Nina Bradley presents the Leopold Teaching Award to Steven Tucker, 1988 68

Nina Bradley assisting research fellow Margaret Brittingham 69

Shack seminars and visitors to the reserve 72–73

Reserve management committee meeting, spring 1977 74

Executive seminar on ecological forest management sponsored by the Sand County Foundation 78

An example of a food patch 82

Crew being trained in conducting a controlled burn, 1989 84

Changes in land cover on the reserve since the 1840s 85

Sand County Foundation projects 88

Restoration projects overseen by the Aldo Leopold Foundation 90–91

e opening of the Leopold Center 92–93

Riley Game Cooperative site, 2013 97

A meeting of the Tanzania Natural Resource Forum, 2004 99

Map of Leopold–Pine Island Important Bird Area 100

Anna Hawley leading a group tour of the reserve and the shack, 2008 103

Looking ahead 105

Illustrations

x

xi

Foreword

Stanley A. Temple

As a precocious teenage naturalist I first learned about Aldo Leopold’sshack and farm in 1960 when I read A Sand County Almanac. I was capti-vated by the vivid images in Leopold’s month-by-month essays describinghis shack’s natural surroundings. I knew most of the plants and animalsfrom my rambles around the woods and fields of northern Ohio, but theway Leopold described them was a refreshing change from the matter-of-fact accounts in my field guides. With each essay I imagined what it wouldbe like to experience that landscape firsthand.

My curiosity piqued, I tried in vain to find out more about the place.But like many inquisitive first-time readers, I simply couldn’t find SandCounty, Wisconsin, in any of the atlases I searched. Somewhat disap-pointed, I concluded that it must be a fictional place, and the “almanac”was just a collection of engaging stories Leopold had fabricated. e mys-tery of Sand County was finally solved when I was a freshman at Cornelland Dan ompson, who had been one of Leopold’s graduate students,was assigned to be my academic advisor. He not only gave me a geographylesson, but he also shared personal recollections of times he had spent atthe shack with his mentor. At some point he even mentioned that effortswere underway to protect the land around the shack. I remained curiousabout the place, but the opportunity to visit and experience firsthand thethings Leopold described would have to wait until 1976 when I acceptedan offer from the University of Wisconsin to fill the academic positiononce occupied by Aldo Leopold.

During my first week in Wisconsin my predecessor in Leopold’s pro-fessorship, Joe Hickey, took me to visit Nina Leopold Bradley and her hus-band Charlie who had just built their retirement home down the roadfrom the shack. After an emotional pilgrimage to the shack, I spent a won-derful day exploring what I learned had been designated formally as theLeopold Memorial Reserve, the culmination of the efforts Dan ompsonhad mentioned a decade earlier. During the day many of the places Iremembered reading about came alive, and as a special treat I was evenallowed to sleep over at the shack. My new relationship with the landimmortalized by Leopold’s writings had begun.

Although many natural features of the place were as I had imaginedthem, I was initially surprised that as far as I could tell the understatedLeopold Memorial Reserve amounted to little more than a few propertymarkers. ere were no interpretive signs or handouts explaining the sig-nificance of the reserve and its purpose, and it seemed the place, which bythen was revered by many conservationists, was being kept a carefullyguarded secret. I quickly learned there were reasons for the reserve’s low-key and to some extent even unwelcoming status. e reserve was not apublic property but a collection of privately owned parcels, the owners ofwhich had voluntarily agreed to manage their land in ways that wouldbuffer the Leopold shack and farm and exemplify Leopold’s land ethic inaction. is was a different sort of land conservation project than I wasused to encountering on special landscapes.

e personality of the reserve evolved steadily during my years in Wis-consin. Nina and Charlie became the welcoming public faces of thereserve, and the Bradley Study Center where they lived became a focalpoint for a variety of reserve-related activities. Informal seminars drewloyal Leopold fans, fellowships for students encouraged research on thesite, ecological restoration and land management efforts gathered steam,and monitoring projects documented the land and how it was changing.My students and I participated in many of those activities, and as I got toknow the parties in the Leopold Memorial Reserve agreement I becameincreasingly aware of the complex currents and crosscurrents that ranthrough this special place and the novel agreement that had created it.

is was clearly a fruitful if somewhat fragile conservation successstory, as the reserve’s long-term future was only loosely guaranteed by the

Foreword

xii

original participants’ voluntary commitments. Since 1976 I have watchedthis novel experiment in land conservation mature. e influences of indi-viduals and institutions shifted over time, especially as the roles of ReedColeman and the Sand County Foundation and the Leopold family andthe Aldo Leopold Foundation became more prominent when original par-ticipants sold their lands to these central players. Evolving visions for thereserve didn’t always align, but the reserve quietly endured. Its public visi-bility expanded again in 2007 when the Aldo Leopold Foundation builtits headquarters, the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center, adjacent to the reserve.Public visits to the reserve and interest in it increased rapidly. A series ofsubsequent land transactions further solidified the central role of the twofoundations in determining the reserve’s future.

Although I had interacted often with the two foundations over theyears, I eventually became a more active participant in discussions aboutthe reserve’s future when I joined the Board of Directors of the SandCounty Foundation and became a Senior Fellow of the Aldo LeopoldFoundation. As the Leopold Memorial Reserve approached its fiftiethanniversary it became clear to me that the reserve’s rich but poorly com-municated history needed to be documented and shared if the lessonslearned there were to be helpful to other land conservation projects. Vol-untary land conservation was expanding through the recent emergence ofthe modern land trust movement, but practitioners knew little about thepioneering efforts to protect Leopold’s shack and farm from developmentthrough voluntary private action. Fewer and fewer of the individuals whohad played significant roles in shaping the reserve’s first fifty years were stillaround to share their experiences and insights, and the two foundations, inspite of their differences, needed to find a way to jointly celebrate what hadbeen accomplished. I proposed that a history of the Leopold MemorialReserve should be written.

As the project began to take shape, one of my former graduate stu-dents, Steve Laubach, emerged as the right person to document the his-tory of the reserve. His ties to Leopold and the reserve were strong. He didhis graduate research project with me on the reserve, knew most of the keyplayers, and after graduation had taken a faculty position at the Lawrence -ville School in New Jersey where Aldo Leopold had once been a student.He had returned to the University of Wisconsin to pursue a Ph.D. and had

Foreword

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a keen interest in environmental history. e launch of the project was for-tuitous as it got underway just in time to complete oral history interviewswith key individuals who had witnessed the first fifty years of the reserve’shistory but would not live to see the completion of the project.

is book is a fitting tribute to all those individuals and institutionsthat had adopted one of Aldo Leopold’s core ideas about land conserva-tion and succeeded in putting it into practice: “Conservation can accom-plish its objectives only when it springs from an impelling conviction onthe part of private land owners.”

Foreword

xiv

xv

Acknowledgments

I have many people to thank for their support in the writing of this book.Foremost among these is Stanley Temple, professor emeritus of wildlifeecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Stan introduced me tothe legacy of Aldo Leopold in the spring of 1999 and he encouraged me toundertake this writing project a decade later. One of the greatest gifts frommy initial work with Stan was the opportunity to meet Aldo Leopold’sdaughter Nina Bradley, who mentored me in my career path until herdeath in May 2011 at the age of ninety-three. I remember most especiallyNina’s sage advice to “make your vocation your avocation.” By followingthis suggestion, I came to know Dr. Kevin Mattingly, director of teaching,learning, and educational partnerships at the Lawrenceville School in NewJersey. Kevin nurtured my continued interest in Leopold in my first job asa teacher of biology and environmental studies. In addition, the Lawrence -ville School generously provided partial funding for this publicationthrough the efforts of Kevin, James Serach, and Elizabeth Duffy.

I extend my deep gratitude to the Aldo Leopold and Sand CountyFoundations for their financial support and staff time. In particular, I wouldlike to thank the members of the project’s steering committee, which, inaddition to Stan Temple, included Buddy Huffaker and Curt Meine of theAldo Leopold Foundation, Brent Haglund and Kevin McAleese of the SandCounty Foundation, and Nancy Langston, pro fessor of environmental his-tory at Michigan Technological University. Mark Madison, the US Fish andWildlife Service historian, conducted and transcribed oral history inter-

views with several elders of the Leopold Memorial Reserve, including NinaBradley, Reed Coleman, Howard Mead, and Frank Terbilcox. Many thanksto these interviewees and to Colleen Terbilcox, Susan Flader, EstellaLeopold, Trish Stevenson, and John VanHoosen, each of whom sharedinsights on the history of the reserve.

I am indebted to many others for their assistance. Jane Rundell offeredher considerable expertise in typography and publishing. University ofWisconsin Press acquisitions editor Gwen Walker and copyeditor GailSchmitt provided support and critical insight in the publication process.Others from the press to whom I am grateful include Sheila Leary, ArnoldAlanen, Rose Rittenhouse, Adam Mehring, Terry Emmrich, Carla Marolt,Matthew Cosby, Brontë Wieland, Jonah Horwitz, and Elena Spagnolie, aswell as two anonymous reviewers. From the University of Wisconsin–Madison, William Cronon, professor of history, introduced me to the fieldof environmental history through his courses, seminars, and field trips. Myadvisor in the UW Department of Curriculum and Instruction, the histo-rian of education John Rudolph, helped me navigate the challenge of car-rying out this project alongside my dissertation research. Konrad Liegel’smeticulous studies on the history of the Leopold Reserve 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 Frey-fogle, Jen Simoni, Jeannine Richards, Jennifer Kobylecky, John Koenigs,Jesse Gant, Brian Hamilton, and Randy Bixby also provided crucial input.In addition, staff at the University of Wisconsin libraries, the WisconsinHistorical Society, the University of Wisconsin Cartography Lab, and theSauk County Historical Society expertly guided me to the sources neces-sary 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 rais-ing a family to live lightly on the land. ey have instilled in my siblingsand me a strong sense of stewardship and curiosity toward the naturalworld. Last, my wife, Nina, and children, Noah and Aurora, have been aninspiration to me throughout the writing of this book. Our outdooradventures have brought joy to our family and constantly remind me of theimportance of meaningful relationships between people and land.

Acknowledgments

xvi

Living a Land Ethic

Introduction

3

On a spring evening in 1965, two longtime friendsin their mid-thirties, Reed Coleman and Howard Mead, gathered for din-ner with their spouses at the Colemans’ house in Madison, Wisconsin. econversation soon turned to one of their favorite hunting grounds, an hourto the northwest of Madison along the Wisconsin River. e land hadbeen in the Coleman family for several years, and it was the source of vividmemories for Reed and Howard. ree decades earlier, Coleman’s father,Tom, an acquaintance of Aldo Leopold’s, had bought this property acrossa dirt road from the Leopold shack. As a child, Reed had helped care forthe land by carrying water-laden oak-and-brass buckets from the sand-point pump next to the shack to thirsty pine seedlings planted by theLeopold and Coleman families. It was on this land and a few nearby sitesin southern Wisconsin that Reed learned from his father how to huntpheasant and quail and, later, that Coleman and Mead, as young adults,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 men was tempered by recent real estate developmentnear the shack. “Howard and I were drinking martinis and cooking duckand 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 theLeopold property,” Reed later recalled. “We really did talk about what wecould do and how we could do something to keep that from damaging theLeopold property.” ey decided that evening to take action, with Coleman

asking, “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, includ-ing with Leopold’s widow Estella and with another landowner near theshack named Frank Terbilcox, the idea for the Leopold Memorial Reservewas born. Two years later, in December 1967, five landowning families,who held a combined total of 900 acres, agreed to a proposal outlining thefounding principles of the reserve.1 Today, the reserve has grown to over1,600 acres that are overseen by two nonprofit organizations—the SandCounty Foundation and the Aldo Leopold Foundation—with their rootsin the Coleman and Leopold families.

To a present-day visitor, the reserve might not seem that different froma state park or national wildlife refuge, but it is in fact an unusual achieve-ment in American conservation history. In the decades since the adminis-tration of President eodore Roosevelt implemented the first compre-hensive conservation policies in the United States, conservation has taken

Introduction

4

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

on many forms. During the movement’s early years, successes occurredmainly by restricting resource extraction on recently acquired public landsor through policies that regulated the harvesting of wildlife and otherresources on all land, public or private. In the 1930s, and especially afterthe 1950s, other types of conservation independent of government inter-vention became more common, such as cooperative land management,private land purchases, and conservation easements.2

One conservation strategy that emerged with greater frequency duringthis later period involves nonprofit land-trust organizations. Land trustsfocus on purchasing tracts of land of high conservation value or on secur-ing the development rights of land through conservation easements andother legal agreements.3 e Leopold Memorial Reserve could be consid-ered one example of a land trust, even if it is comparatively small in scaleand unique in ownership structure. Rather than pursuing conservation

Introduction

5

Aerial photo of Leopold Memorial Reserve showing original reserve boundaries bylandowner and current extent of land owned by the Sand County and Aldo LeopoldFoundations. Location of Leopold shack denoted with a star. (image developed byDylan Moriarty, UW–Madison Cartography Lab, with assistance from John Koenigs,Sand County Foundation, and Jen Simoni, Aldo Leopold Foundation)

through government involvement, property owners of the reserve insteadagreed to restrict development and cooperatively manage the land. In theircase, they did so to honor the memory of Leopold, collectively puttinginto action his call for increased attention to conservation on private land.

is book highlights this alternative approach to conservation on pri-vate land and aims to inspire involvement in efforts to reach beyond con-ventional property lines when considering how to expand the size andinfluence of conservation projects. Such cooperation among private land -owners is essential for conservation to succeed at a scale sufficient to main-tain functioning ecosystems, especially when one considers that at least 60percent of land in the United States is privately owned.4 e significanceof “cross-boundary,” or cooperative, approaches to private lands conserva-tion is thus a major theme of this book.

Because of the direct connection between Aldo Leopold and thefounders of the Leopold Memorial Reserve, this narrative frequently turnsto Leopold’s ideas to fully understand the reasons for the reserve’s forma-tion and continued existence. While cooperative conservation was stilluncommon at the time of the inception of the Leopold Memorial Reserve,one can look back a generation earlier to Aldo Leopold’s career and findexamples of it in practice. Leopold was directly involved in at least fourcooperative conservation projects that began in the 1930s. Projects over-seen by Leopold included the Riley Game Cooperative, started in 1931,and the Faville Grove Wildlife Experimental Area and Coon Valley Water-shed Demonstration Project, which were established in 1933. Beginningin 1938, he was also engaged in consulting work for the Huron MountainClub in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.5 Several founders of the LeopoldMemorial Reserve were familiar with these sites, and they were influenced,if only indirectly, through their formative experiences on them during theirchildhood years. It is therefore instructive to consider such examples.

In these cooperative conservation projects, Leopold advised landown-ers on how to better work together to enhance habitat quality or, as he fre-quently referred it to metaphorically, “land health.” He offered his mostdetailed explanation of land health when he wrote, “e land consists ofsoil, water, plants, and animals, but health is more than a sufficiency ofthese components. It is a state of vigorous self-renewal in each of them,and in all collectively.”6 e ultimate goal for these efforts, then, was

Introduction

6

restoring “health” to different aspects of a degraded or threatened land-scape. In Coon Valley, Leopold served as a consultant for a New Deal pro-gram initiated under the aegis of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s recently created Soil Erosion Service. e leaders of this watershed conservationproject sought to reduce agricultural soil erosion that plagued a hilly,unglaciated section of southwest Wisconsin. At the Huron MountainClub, landowners of some 15,000 acres of unlogged land in the UpperPeninsula hired Leopold to develop a comprehensive land-managementplan. In Riley and Faville Grove, groups of neighboring farmers joinedtogether and, under the guidance of Leopold and his graduate students,developed management and research plans to improve wildlife habitat ontheir adjoining properties.7

Of these four efforts, the Riley Game Cooperative resembled theLeopold Memorial Reserve most closely 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. Paulsonwas a farmer in the Riley area, and Leopold was studying game populations

Introduction

7

Banding a prairie chickenat Faville Grove, 1938.(Aldo Leopold Foundation,call no. S02259)

in the Upper Midwest as a consultant for the Sporting Arms and Ammu-nition Manufacturers’ Institute. After striking up a conversation, the twomen discovered their common interest in hunting. is was the beginningof a relationship of such like minds that a few months later Paulson andLeopold had outlined bylaws for the cooperative.8 e initial participantsconsisted of five town members who financed the project and three land-owning farmers. e labor—which included building feeding stations forpheasants and other game birds, maintaining fences to exclude grazingfarm animals, and planting trees and vines for wildlife cover—was evenlydivided between the farm and town members.

Introduction

8

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

e goals of the Riley Cooperative included improving wildlife habitaton the farm members’ land and thus providing easily accessible huntinggrounds for participants. ey also sought to reduce the number of poach-ers on the land. e cooperative soon grew to comprise eleven farm fami-lies, encompassing 1,715 acres along south-central Wisconsin’s SugarRiver. e name of the cooperative is somewhat misleading; in a 1934 arti-cle about Riley in the magazine Field and Stream, Leopold noted this: “eterm ‘game cooperative’ was not quite so accurate. It was a ‘cooperative,’ allright, with one farmer and one sportsman constituting its then member-ship. But it was more than ‘game,’ both of us contributing to the enter-prise an incurable interest in all wild things, great and small, shootable andnon-shootable.”9 is statement by Leopold, as well as the sense of com-munity and shared responsibility that became a part of the cooperative,illustrates some of the similarities between the Riley experiment and theLeopold Memorial Reserve.

Whether on the Riley Cooperative, the Leopold Memorial Reserve,or other similar sites that have emerged since the former were founded,cooperative conservation is not free of conflict. Such undertakings meanthat multiple viewpoints, rather than those of a single land owner, must betaken into account in making decisions. For example, one landownermight feel strongly that her land has too many deer that are damagingplants, whereas a neighbor may believe that there should be more deerbecause hunting isn’t as good as it was in times past. Such disagreementscan lead to gridlock on cooperatively managed land.10 Leopold frequentlycommented on such challenges, which were inherent to the conservationmovement. For example, he wrote in 1937 that “conservation, without akeen realization of its vital conflicts, fails to rate as authentic humandrama; it falls to the level of a mere Utopian dream.” In a later publica-tion, Leopold highlighted the importance of communication among con-servationists when he noted that “the first job . . . is to bring the factionstogether and insist that they thresh out their differences. . . . e morethreshing, the less disagreement. e more threshing, the better the under-standing of the other fellow’s interests. Mutual respect is often just as goodas mutual agreement.”11 e story of the Leopold Memorial Reserve pro-vides several examples of participants threshing out their differences as theymade decisions that had a lasting influence. Contentious changes in land

Introduction

9

management practices, disagreements over the siting of building projects,and difficult land-acquisition decisions are just a few of the tensions thatare featured here.

To better understand the circumstances that led to the reserve’s per-sistence against such odds, this illustrated history reflects on the actionsand motivations of its participants. e names of some, such as Reed Cole-man, Frank Terbilcox, and Howard Mead, may not be as recognizable asthose of Aldo Leopold and his family members, yet such individuals playedan important role in the reserve’s formation and are the focus of many ofthe pages that follow.12 Nonetheless, given the importance of Aldo Leopoldto the endeavor, it is not without reason that the Leopold family has beenprominently featured in several previous publications about the reserve. Itwill thus be no surprise to many readers that they are also a central part ofthis narrative. In particular, the ideas of Aldo Leopold are at the heart ofthe reserve’s concept and are regularly referred to here.

Although the book proceeds in a roughly chronological order, by neces -sity it returns to Aldo Leopold’s legacy throughout. It begins by consider-

Introduction

10

A Conservationist from a Young AgeBorn in Burlington, Iowa, in 1887, Aldo Leopold shared an avid interest inthe outdoors with his parents Carl and Clara. He began hunting with hisfather as a young boy, and he gained an appreciation for gardening from hismother. Starting at the age of eleven, Leopold kept a journal in which hemade observations about animals and plants during his extensive hikesoutdoors, and this practice developed into a passion for recording his dis-coveries and reflections. Leopold’s experiences growing up along the wild-lands of the Upper Mississippi River thus helped shape his career choice inconservation and ecology.

A keen observer of his natural surroundings, Aldo Leopold continued todevelop his skills for studying wildlife during a lifetime of work in theemerg ing fields of conservation and ecology. At the beginning 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 grazinglands in Ari zona and New Mexico before moving in 1924 to the USFS’s

ing the land-use history of the reserve prior to his purchase of the shack in1935 and then putting that in the context of Leopold’s concept of landhealth. In chapter , the experiences of the Leopold family during theirearly years in the area are connected with the formation of the LeopoldMemorial Reserve in 1967. Chapters 3 and 4 explore the growth of thereserve’s land management, research, and education programs from 1968through 1983. Later developments at the reserve through the constructionof the Leopold Center in 2007 are examined in chapter 5. e conclusionconsiders the legacy of cooperative conservation on land so touched byLeopold’s presence.

Ultimately this book attempts to demonstrate how creative thinkingabout conservation by a dedicated group of private citizens can providegreat rewards. In the case of the Leopold Memorial Reserve, the rewards ofcooperative conservation became a public good that extended to partici-pating landowners, visitors to the reserve, and numerous other individualsseeking to deepen their connection and commitment to the land.

Introduction

11

Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin. He left public-sectorwork when the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institutehired him as a consultant to survey game populations in the Upper Mid-west from 1928 to 1932. His research helped the institute better understandthe reasons for reductions in game species that were affecting its bottomline. In his final career move, he was appointed as a professor and exten-sion scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1933 in the newfield of game management, a position he held until his death in 1948.13

In his writing and research, Leopold linked traditionally separate disci-plines such as forestry, ecology, and philosophy. He was at ease with farm-ers, scientists, businessmen, and policy makers alike as a result of his workwith a diverse set of constituencies during his career. For biographies ofLeopold, see Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work; Susan Flader,Thinking Like a Mountain: Aldo Leopold and the Evolution of an EcologicalAttitude toward Deer, Wolves and Forests; and Marybeth Lorbiecki, AldoLeopold: A Fierce Green Fire.

1 Settlement and ChangingLand Health in the CentralSands Area

12

Discussions about the Leopold Memorial Reservetypically go back only as far as Aldo Leopold’s 1935 purchase of the prop-erty, with some brief references to the previous landowner: a farmer whomLeopold derisively identified as “the bootlegger.”1 But this particular prop-erty features a much deeper human history. Perhaps the reserve area’s mostsignificant feature during most of its history has been its location near aportage between the Wisconsin and Fox Rivers. Not far from this site, theproximity of these two rivers joined the Great Lakes and Mississippi Riverwatersheds, a landscape feature that Native Americans and early Frenchtrappers depended on for transportation.

Soon after the arrival of settlers, federal land surveyors mapped out rec-tilinear property line grids in the area in the 1840s as part of an effort totransform the land into marketable property for prospective owners. Butthe nutrient-poor soil of Wisconsin’s Central Sands area made the landaround the future reserve site vulnerable to overuse if farmed intensively,especially in an economic framework that rewarded short-term profit oversound land management. Consequently, the area sustained significantfarming only for a 100-year span beginning in the 1860s. Although theLeopold property was in poor ecological health by the time Aldo pur-chased it in 1935, he saw great potential in this land. In Leopold’s eyes, thevalue of the land, even in its overused condition, was increased by hisawareness that it could serve as rewarding wildlife habitat and huntinggrounds if it were better managed.

12

Settlement and Changing Land Health in the Central Sands Area

13

By examining the history of this land and how it arrived at such a for-lorn condition when Leopold bought it, we can better understand thedevelopment of Leopold’s ideas regarding land health and the responsibil-ities of private landowners in conservation. And to trace the history ofland-use change around the Leopold Memorial Reserve, one must startwell before the bootlegger’s time with what we know of its use by indige-nous peoples of the Upper Midwest.

Native American Settlement of South-Central Wisconsin

e proximity of the shack property to the plentiful food supply and trans-portation networks of the Wisconsin and Fox Rivers helps explain its longhistory of human settlement. Paleo-Indians first inhabited the region at theend of the most recent glacial period, some 12,000 years ago.2 Charcoal

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


14

and pointed chipped-stone artifacts have been found twenty miles to thesouthwest of the shack in a unique rock formation that gives NaturalBridge State Park its name. ese remains suggest that the state’s earliestinhabitants lived in small groups and traveled great distances to obtainsparse food in a subarctic climate. During the next 7,000 years, the rapidlywarming climate led to an increased food supply, larger and more perma-nent settlements, and expanded trade. Approximately 4,500 years ago,Early Woodland Indians near Baraboo left behind pottery and fired clay.3

Around 500 BCE, Native Americans constructed some of the first con-

Geology of the Leopold Memorial Reserve AreaThe Leopold Memorial Reserve is only a few miles east of the Baraboo Hills,an ancient and mostly eroded mountain range located at the boundary of theunglaciated, or “driftless,” region in the southwest corner of Wisconsin. Thegranite rock of the Baraboo Hills is among the oldest in North America—more than a billion years old in sections. Too steep for farming, much of theland of the hills is forested, forming one of the largest upland hardwoodstands in the Upper Midwest.4

In addition to this interesting ancient geology, the rolling hills and scat-tered ridges around the Leopold Memorial Reserve show the traces of sev-eral glaciers that over the millennia have advanced, come to a final rest inthe area, and then retreated. The most recent glacial activity, during the Wis-consin period of the last ice age, started 70,000 years ago and lasted until10,000 years ago. During this era, debris left behind by the terminal moraineof the receding glacier plugged the main outlet of the Wisconsin River, cre-ating a vast inland lake. The release of this glacial dam and the tremendousimpact of gushing lake water forced through a narrow opening created thespectacular bluffs and crevices of the Wisconsin Dells area, which is north-west of the reserve, forming the basis for the original water attraction of aregion whose boosters now call it “the waterpark capital of the world.” Sanddeposits from the draining lake are 500 feet deep in some areas, and geolo-gists think that this draining may have taken only a week.

The area’s bedrock and glacial history prompted the geologist and for-mer University of Wisconsin president Charles R. Van Hise to write, “I knowof no other region in the state which illustrates so many principles of the sci-ence of geology.”5

ical burial mounds that later became common across the Upper Midwest.e presence of grave offerings, such as shell beads, bear canine teeth, cop-per artifacts, and pottery from the mound culture of the Middle Wood-land Indians, suggests the emergence of larger Native American settle-ments and trade networks in the area between 800 BCE and 400 CE. eLate Woodland Indians continued this rich tradition of burial moundsthrough 1200 CE but expanded on the practice by constructing moreextensive mounds in a variety of shapes, including round, linear, and ani-mal silhouettes called effigy mounds. Many of these effigy mounds have


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Location of Native American effigy mound clusters; area around future LeopoldMemorial Reserve is denoted by a white rectangle. (Amy Rosebrough, withassistance from Robert Birmingham)

been lost to agriculture and development, but some remain on the land;close to the Leopold Memorial Reserve a noteworthy mound in the shapeof a human is located at Man Mound Park.6 Although mounds from thisperiod occur elsewhere in the Midwest and beyond, they are especiallyabundant in Wisconsin, which had at least 15,000 prior to European set-tlement. Sauk County alone was thought to have 1,500. Only 100 remainin the county today, and of that only a few dozen are in good condition.e interpretation of the meaning of the mound shapes has been subjectto considerable debate, but recent scholarship indicates that the effigies areconnected with clan-system beliefs in spirits of the upper, middle, andlower worlds.7 Examination of the shape and contents of the burialmounds thus reveals extensive information about the lifestyle and beliefsof the Woodland Indians.

e Late Woodland and Mississippian civilizations in the Upper Mid-west collapsed between 1200 and 1300 CE for unknown reasons. Somehypotheses include overpopulation, conflict with other groups, and a pro-


16

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

longed cooling period. At this time a third group, the Oneota Indians,thought to be descendants of the Late Woodland Indians but whose cus-toms had changed drastically with new agricultural practices, emerged intwo settlements: one near Lake Winnebago and Green Bay to the north-east and the other near La Crosse in the southwest. First referred to as theWinnebago Tribe, in Wisconsin the members now use the title Ho-ChunkNation.8

Native American Contact with Europeans

By the time white explorers and fur traders arrived in the seventeenth cen-tury, the indigenous population in the state had dropped dramatically, per-haps because of warfare or infectious diseases spread by the early Europeanexplorers.9 During this period, a coalition of French and Ho-Chunk forcesdrove out the recently arrived Fox and Sauk Indians from the Green Bayarea, and the ousted groups settled in present-day Sauk County. Fur trad-ing thrived in the latter area because of its rich supply of game and itsproximity to the Wisconsin and Fox Rivers at the present-day city ofPortage. e north-flowing Fox River’s connection to the Atlantic Oceanvia the Great Lakes and the south-flowing Wisconsin River’s connectionto the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River helped connect the area’sfur products to global markets. Early European explorers described thispart of the Wisconsin territory as “affording excellent hunting grounds,abounding in deer, elk, and moose and very rich in bears and beavers.”10

Just after the Revolutionary War, the Sauk and Fox tribes abandonedthe area for unknown reasons, leaving the Ho-Chunk as the only NativeAmericans in the vicinity. One early white pioneer, Edward Tanner, wrotein 1818, “e Winnebago [Ho-Chunk] Indians inhabit the country bor-dering on the tributary streams on both sides of the [Wisconsin] river. . . .eir territory extends from the Mississippi to the vicinity of Green Bay,and the number of their warriors is seven hundred.” Of the location nearPortage where the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers nearly meet, he continued,“e two rivers might be united by a canal of only one mile in length. . . .At this prairie the Fox River does not exceed sixty feet in width, and is usu-ally from three to ten deep, has little current, and is full of a thick growthof wild rice. It abounds with some geese and an immense quantity and variety of ducks.”11


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Such abundance made this land highly desirable and led to growingconflicts between the white settlers and Native American inhabitants.ese conflicts included a skirmish in 1827, which contributed to the USgovernment’s 1828 construction of Fort Winnebago, near Portage.12 Offi-cials at the new Fort Winnebago Indian Agency mediated disputes be -tween white settlers and Indians. After failed attempts to coexist, in 1832the United States Army drove out returning Sauk Indians from the regionduring the Black Hawk War.13 Following his capture, Chief Black Hawkexplained his reasons for participating in the uprising that had led to thewar: “I have determined to give my motives and reasons for my formerhostilities to the whites, and to vindicate my character from misrepresen-tation. . . . My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. e Great Spiritgave it to his children to live upon, and cultivate, as far as it is necessary fortheir subsistence. . . . Nothing can be sold, but such things as can be car-ried 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 whitesettlers. After the Ho-Chunk signed an 1837 treaty ceding the tribal landseast of the Mississippi to the United States, the federal government openedup much of Wisconsin and other parts of the Northwest Territory to white


18

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


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settlers. Meanwhile, government officials forcibly relocated the Ho-Chunktribe to Minnesota and, later, to Nebraska. Some members, however, resist-ed the treaty, remained in Wisconsin, and were later recognized as rightfulowners of their ancestral lands in south-central Wisconsin.15

The Arrival of Land Surveyors and an Influx of Settlers

e presence of so many new settlers in the 1840s signaled a new era inthe state’s history. e resulting local, state, and federal government docu-ments from this period provide insights into the settlement of specific loca-tions, including the site where the Leopold shack now stands. Land sur-veyors in particular took detailed field notes during this period. Teams ofsurveyors, their work mandated by omas Jefferson’s 1785 Land Ordi-nance Act and 1787 Northwest Ordinance Act, reached eastern Wisconsinin 1833 and took until 1866 to complete the project statewide. eydescribed the future shack property along the Wisconsin River as a mixtureof open oak savanna, marshland, and forest, with the land occupying afloodplain forest and oak opening.16 Red, white, burr and black oak treesgrew best in this landscape, which was kept open and savanna-like by reg-ular fires, with one early surveyor describing the land as “third rate rolling,sandy; oak—barrens” and “marshy.” e only European settler present atthat time, the surveyor quaintly noted, was “a Norwegian named Ander-son.”17

At around the time of the Civil War, the federal government began con-ducting the ten-year agricultural census in Wisconsin, and officials collectedmore extensive information about people living in the newly surveyedregion. On the edge of the western frontier, 1860 Agricultural Census datareveal that little of the area’s expanses of oak savanna and woodland wereunder plow. e new owners of the future shack property, William andCaroline Baxter, farmed less than 25 percent of their land. Census data forthe land, however, indicate that grain production and animal husbandrysteadily rose during the early years of farming.18 In one firsthand accountof the area from this period, the founder of the Sierra Club, John Muir,wrote a vivid description of this sparsely settled land in the early days ofwhite settlement after he and his family moved to Wisconsin from Scot-land: “is sudden plash into pure wilderness—baptism in Nature’s warmheart—how utterly happy it made us! Nature streaming into us, wooingly


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teaching her wonderful glowing lessons, so unlike the dismal grammarashes and cinders so long thrashed into us.”19 While Muir’s adolescence asa family laborer on a pioneer farmstead in Wisconsin included many hard-ships, he clearly reveled in the chance to live in a new, wild area far removedfrom the dreary city life of his early years in Scotland.

As more land in the area was cleared and put into production, yieldson the Baxter farm increased over the years in spite of the low quality oftheir sandy floodplain property. In the Baxters’ first two decades there, theygrew mainly corn, wheat, and oats, perhaps to sell to an influx of settlersattracted to work in a Wisconsin Dells pinery that was new to the lumberindustry at that time.20 e Kilbourn Dam, just upstream and among theearliest of several dams that eventually dotted the river, had been com-pleted in 1859 to help regulate water levels for logs being floated down-stream.21 On the Baxter farm, the most dramatic increase of crop produc-tion in the early years was in corn, which went from none in 1860 to 500bushels by 1880. Other crops, such as potatoes, apples, barley, buckwheat,and molasses, were also sources of income and subsistence to the Baxters

Notes from 1845 by surveyorJ. E. Whitcher about thefuture Leopold MemorialReserve area. Sentence neartop reads “The Wisconsin isvery high indeed, the flats areall overflowed, could not set1/4 post.” (from the col lec -tions of the Wisconsin Boardof Commissioners of PublicLands)

and other nearby farm families. In 1880, for example, the Baxters had fif-teen apple trees that produced 40 bushels, and some of these trees mayhave formed the orchard just west of the shack “at the foot of the sandhill,”which Leopold refers to in his essay “e Good Oak.”22

After the arrival of the chinch bug, an insect pest, to Wisconsin earlyin the Baxters’ years on the farm, wheat farming collapsed throughout thestate. In Sauk County, hops quickly took wheat’s place as the next cashcrop, but its rise was also brief.23 As a key ingredient in beer production,this crop’s appearance in the agricultural records corresponded with a“hops craze” in the area during the 1860s and 1870s. According to oneaccount, “preachers and temperance men even went into hop raising, qui-eting their consciences with the rationalization that the hops would beused for tanning. In fact, a meeting was held in the county courthouse oneevening to discuss the matter. ‘e arguments were many and the house


21

Hops yard near Wisconsin Dells, ca. 1880. (Wisconsin Historical Society, image30472)


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was filled. e argument of big profits . . . seemed to be sufficient for mostof them.’” Another observer wrote, “When you saw a farmer in 1867, thepeak year, with an expensive driving team and a fancy buggy you justassumed that he was a hop grower. In that year Sauk County raised morethan a fourth of all the hops grown in the state, and they brought up to 65cents a pound.”24 Like the decline of wheat markets a few years earlier, thearrival of another insect pest, the hop louse, brought the demise of thecrop, putting an end to many get-rich-quick farming schemes.

A more lasting enterprise of the Baxters was their animal husbandry,which increased notably in their first two decades. ey began with a smalldairy operation, making 100 pounds of butter from three cows in 1860;by 1880 their butter production had risen to 500 pounds. Sheep, swine,and poultry were nonexistent in the 1860 census but had increased by1880 to between ten and thirty of each. e Baxters and other area farmersmost likely chose to sell products such as butter, wool, and eggs becausethey were less apt to wilt in the field or spoil in transport than plant cropsor milk. e combined increase in animal husbandry, corn, and otherproducts provided the Baxters with a comfortable income even as theywithstood economic challenges such as the demise of wheat and hops.Over the next several decades, they and their children remained in the areaand expanded their landholdings.

The Beginning of the Modern Agricultural Era

Wisconsin agricultural census data from this land in the early twentiethcentury paint a very different picture than the one just forty-five years ear-lier. Area farmers began to shift from raising a diverse mix of animals andcrops toward a monoculture more similar to what has become common ontwenty-first-century farms. e relationship of these farmers to the Wis-consin River also changed dramatically. Beginning in the late nineteenthcentury, federal, state, and local agencies constructed levees starting justeast of the Baxter property and extending to the flood-prone downstreamcity of Portage. Combined with greater flood regulation provided by thenewly rebuilt Kilbourn Dam upstream, the land was less susceptible—though never immune—to floods.25 During their years of ownership,from 1915 to 1935, Jacob and Emma Alexander moved away from live-stock toward row-crop agriculture. ey ceased raising sheep but main-

tained a small number of cows, pigs, and hens—the last being the sourceof the knee-deep chicken manure the Leopold family removed from theshack upon its purchase. Among the grain crops, wheat productionremained low following the end of Wisconsin’s period of high-volumewheat production a few decades earlier, but the Alexanders grew corn andoats at about the same acreage as recorded in the 1880 census.26

As European farmers returned to work after World War I, more com-modities supplied from overseas reduced the global demand for Americanagricultural goods, and consequently prices began to drop.27 Furthermore,increased mechanization accompanying the advent of gasoline-poweredtractors, as well as higher yields from new crop varieties, made life moredifficult for small farmers with limited financial access to technologicaldevelopments. In this economic climate, a depression began in the agricul-tural sector that predated the national economic collapse of 1929. Farmingon the Alexander property no longer provided sufficient income, and inthe 1930s state records show that Jacob Alexander was unable to pay hisproperty taxes.28 Similar to farmers across the country, Alexander may havebeen striving to increase production to offset debt from low prices. InAlexander’s case, he nearly doubled the amount of land farmed in an effortto counteract the commodity prices that had in some cases droppedroughly 85 percent from World War I highs.29 In 1933, his last year on theproperty, he farmed his third-highest total acreage, which suggests a last-ditch attempt to overcome his dire financial troubles.

During the drought years of the 1930s, however, the weather did notcooperate with Alexander’s hopes for a bumper harvest. Although the Wis-consin droughts were not as dramatic as those in the Dust Bowl region far-ther to the south and west, Wisconsin did experience a local dust bowlduring these years.30 Unable to receive enough income from his witheredcrops to keep up with new developments in agriculture, and being recentlywidowed after his wife Emma’s death in March of 1933, Alexander gaveup on farming, abandoned his land, and went to live with his sister Ida inCalifornia. He did not sell the land at this time, however, most probablybecause the severe economic depression gripping the country would havemade it difficult to find a buyer.

Alexander returned to Wisconsin in the spring of 1935 to live with hisbrother George near Baraboo, and he began farming again at the age ofsixty-five. He did so on land rented from George’s neighbor.31 County


23

Deed of 17 May 1935 for sale of land from Jacob Alexander to Aldo Leopold. (SaukCounty Register of Deeds)

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records indicate that he was saddled with a debt of $548 in unpaid prop-erty taxes on his abandoned farmstead. Taking care of unfinished businessfrom his last attempt at farming and perhaps glad to be rid of the reminderof a failed business venture, he signed a warranty deed on 17 May 1935,transferring this land to Aldo Leopold.32 Free of the burden of unpaidtaxes, he was now set to return to full-time farming. Before he was able torealize this dream, though, Alexander died in January 1936.

e collapse of the agricultural sector in the United States that beganafter World War I lasted well throughthe 1940s and claimed the livelihoodsof many small family farmers likeJacob Alexander. ese events alsoforced the surviving farmers to exam-ine more seriously the ideas of AldoLeopold and other national leaders,such as Hugh Hammond Bennett,Paul Sears, and J. I. Rodale, who wereinvolved in the permanent agricul-ture movement of the 1930s to1950s.33 ose in that movementadvocated the idea of smaller-scalefarming that worked within ecologi-cal limits instead of pushing for max-imum production at all costs. emessage of permanent agricultureeven reached beyond farmers to thebroader public. According to the his-torians Randal Beeman and JamesPritchard, “adherents had some initialsuccess in promoting the concepts ofsocietal longevity, ecological interde-pendence, and the utopian possibili-ties of the new farming. Permanentagriculture’s many precepts circulatedthrough the late 1940s, reachingAmericans of all stripes with theirinfectious promises of health, wealth,


25

Obituary from 10 January 1936 forJacob Alexander. (Baraboo NewsRepublic)

and prosperity.”34 Reeling from the disastrous effects of the Dust Bowl andGreat Depression, farmers and city dwellers alike were hungry for newideas about how to grow food without destroying the soil.

When he wrote the essay “Good Oak,” Aldo Leopold considered thehistory of his small farm in central Wisconsin. Although he never specifi-cally mentioned indigenous land-use practices in this essay, he implicitlycompared the area’s robust land health during presettlement times withevents from the 1860s onward, such as the extinction of the passengerpigeon, the disappearance of elk in the state, and the widespread drainageof marshland for farming. As for his immediate predecessor’s land-use his-tory, Leopold referred to Jacob Alexander as a “bootlegger” who carelesslyburned down the property’s house. ere is no evidence to suggest that heknew Alexander personally, however, and it is clear from governmentrecords that Alexander was, if indeed a bootlegger at all, also a legitimatefarmer.35 It is possible, too, that an unauthorized, nonfarming bootleggerinhabited Alexander’s abandoned house and burned it down sometimebetween late 1933 and early 1935. Yet Leopold’s further description of the“bootlegger” as a farmer who “skinned” the land of its fertility suggeststhat 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 previousdwellers and part fictional character.

Regardless of the true identity of the bootlegger, this descriptionand the other events noted in “Good Oak” serve as a useful metaphor formajor problems in the agricultural sector of the United States, thusadvancing Leopold’s literary goals. e problems he identified that startedin the 1860s and came to a head in the 1930s—of declines in land healthand economic well-being—were clearly outside the control of the individ-ual farmers, who had property taxes, mortgages, and equipment debts topay amid drought, industrialization of farms, and wildly fluctuating pricesfor their crops. e economic challenges of the Great Depression, whichbegan earlier in the agricultural sector than in the rest of the country,pushed farmers like Alexander to pursue poor practices on marginal farm-land. In the earliest years of the Depression, critiques of agricultural prac-tices by Leopold and others were ahead of their time and therefore wereunheard of by farmers like Jacob Alexander.


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Aldo Leopold went on to connect his appraisal of farming practices toa broader assessment of conservation responsibilities of society as a whole.While working for the USFS, he regularly suggested that public agenciesexpand or reimagine their conservation mission. In 1924 he successfullylobbied for the establishment by the Forest Service of the Gila Wildernessin New Mexico, the first such publicly protected land in the country. Healso criticized federal policies that offered a bounty for killing large carni-vores like wolves and grizzly bears, policies that he himself had once sup-ported. He often interacted with private landowners, as when he medi-ated policy disputes between the Forest Service and local ranchers whowere using a mix of private and public grazing lands. Between 1928 and1932, while working on game surveys as a consulting ecologist, he wit-nessed firsthand the poor condition of wildlife habitat in the Midwest.36

By the time Leopold cofounded the Riley Game Cooperative and, notlong after, bought the shack, he was more keenly aware of the challenges


27

Remains of foundation of the Alexander house. (Stephen Laubach)

to conservation posed by private landownership than he had been in hisdays with the Forest Service. It was during this period that he concen-trated on the responsibilities of landowners independent of governmentland purchases or incentives programs.37 is gradual turn in his thinkinginfluenced the conservation strategies advocated by Leopold and, after hisdeath, by the founders of the Leopold Memorial Reserve.


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2 Sowing the Seeds of theLeopold Memorial ReserveIdea

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After his 1935 purchase of Jacob Alexander’s aban-doned farm, Aldo Leopold and his family quickly became attached to thisforlorn patch of land and recognized its potential for renewal. e familylater used the term “shack” to affectionately describe the property’s onlyremaining building at the time they acquired the land. Now designated aNational Historic Landmark, the simple structure had been the Alexan-ders’ chicken coop. Aldo and his wife Estella converted the coop into lodg-ing (and later expanded it slightly with a 10-by-15-foot “west wing addi-tion”) for their family of five children, who ranged in age from eight totwenty-two at the time of its purchase. Similar to most other dwellings inthe area, it lacked plumbing and electricity. Nevertheless, the Leopold chil-dren were so fond of the shack and surrounding land that they were willingto trade special occasions such as the high school prom for the family’sweekend trips there.1

What helped form the future Leopold Memorial Reserve was not justthe commitment of one family, though. Aldo Leopold understood as wellas anyone in the conservation field the need for cooperation amonglandowners in making habitat improvements on a larger scale. is wasbased on his recent experience as an extension scientist at the Universityof Wisconsin—a land-grant university—and with setting up cooperativeprojects at Riley, Coon Valley, and elsewhere. His earlier work as a foresterin the newly incorporated states of Arizona and New Mexico, in which hemediated disputes between the US Forest Service and ranchers who were

using federal grazing lands, also strongly influenced his conservation phi-losophy.2 His wide-ranging professional interactions shaped his personalexperiments with land ownership, management, and conservation. At theshack property, his partner in conservation turned out to be a family friendand hunting companion from Madison, the businessman Tom Coleman.Impressed by the hunting opportunities near the shack, Coleman decided,two years after Leopold’s 1935 land purchase, to buy his own propertyacross the dirt road. e collaboration between the Coleman and Leopoldfamilies set the stage for continued cooperative conservation at the shackproperty in the decades to follow.

Pioneers in Ecological Restoration

At the time of Aldo Leopold’s death in April 1948 at the age of sixty-one, heand his family had begun nursing the land around the shack back to healthfrom the poor farming practices of previous owners.3 is land provided

Sowing the Seeds of the Leopold Memorial Reserve Idea

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Aldo Leopold (right) and Thomas Coleman cooking over a campfire, 1940s. (AldoLeopold Foundation, call no. S01999)

Leopold with a testing ground for a series of ad hoc experiments on habitatimprovement, many of which were later formalized into an evolving seriesof comprehensive management plans for the Leopold Memorial Reserve.

Sometimes important discoveries occurred quite by accident. Leopold’sdaughter Estella recalled with great fondness, for example, her father’sgrowing appreciation for the role of fire in restoring prairie ecosystems fol-lowing the simple act of forming a fire break around the shack: “Dad gotthese long pieces of corrugated tin, roofing tin, and [he’d] punch holes ineach end and put some wires on them as a handle.” en, to form a firebreak, the family would pair them and burn in between. By moving thetins and burning between the pairs to form a perimeter of charred vegeta-tion around the shack, the family protected their dwelling from fire. A firearriving at this strip of land would have a greater chance of burning outfrom 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 broomin and even some long burlap sacks that we could put on a stick and putin the water . . . to mat out something you wanted to control.” Not longafter, Estella’s father discovered that a nice mix of prairie plant species ger-minated 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 nativegrasses than the other area, the control.”4 Naturally, the family’s next land-management decision was to burn not just fire breaks but whole fields.

Estella’s account of the way her father experimented with and learnedfrom the land’s response to fire provides a glimpse of Aldo Leopold’s com-mitment to understanding land health. is anecdote also shows how thescale of her father’s experiments increased over time. His other projects onthe shack property similarly expanded, eventually including forest restora-tion, 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 impor-tant role in the development of ecological restoration as a formal field ofstudy. Leopold strongly believed that degraded land could be returned tohealth through active management techniques. Aldo Leopold, John Curtis,and others working at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum are consid-ered some of the field’s earliest American practitioners because of their effortsto restore, through controlled burns and prairie plantings, a sample of thelargely destroyed prairie ecosystem. ey based their vision for a functioning


31

32

Martin house installation with (l-r) EstellaB., Starker, and Aldo Leopold, 1935. (AldoLeopold Foundation, call no. S01893)

Early experiments in land management

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

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

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Aldo, Carl, and Nina Leopold surveying the landscape on skis, 1939. (Aldo LeopoldFoundation, call no. S01991)

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

Nina planting white pines, 1940s. (AldoLeopold Foundation, call no. S01706)


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ecosystem on historical research of presettlement vegetation. e environ-mental historian and Leopold scholar Susan Flader believes that Leopold’sdiverse career experiences, including those at the University of WisconsinArboretum and Coon Valley, influenced his restoration work at the shack.“at idea of actually beginning to work on the land,” she explains, “wasdeep within him and he always wanted to work on his own land. . . . Evenwhen he was in the Forest Service, he wrote home that he was made to liveand work on his land, and whether it’s a big national forest or a small parcelthat he might actually own, it was all the same.”6 In carrying out his numer-ous ecological restoration projects, Leopold revolutionized land conserva-tion. He moved beyond the idea of managing land intensively for humanuses, or passively managing protected land, to actively and scientifically man-aging land for the purpose of improving wildlife habitat and, more broadly,restoring ecological diversity and processes—land health.

Leopold did not have long, however, to put his evolving ideas intopractice. At the pinnacle of his career, he died suddenly on 21 April 1948,while fighting a brushfire on his neighbor’s property near the shack. Hisfinal reflections on a wide-ranging career appear in A Sand County Almanacand Sketches Here and ere, which had been accepted for publication just

The Progressive Era Roots of Aldo Leopold’sConservation Philosophy

To fully understand Aldo Leopold’s approach to land conservation, it is nec-essary to examine the conservation tradition from which Leopold emerged.As Neil Maher argues, politicians such as Theodore Roosevelt and GiffordPinchot popularized conservation in the early twentieth century, and thatlegacy was expanded by Franklin Roosevelt through programs like the Civil-ian Conservation Corps.7 Conservation was firmly grounded in the Progres-sive Era ideals of civic responsibility. Progressive conservationists wrestledwith how to appropriately harvest or use natural resources like game, lumber,and soils without destroying their supply for future use. Pinchot describedthe conservationist’s goal with regard to resource use and pre ser vation as“the greatest good to the greatest number, for the longest time.”8

Aldo Leopold initially supported this utilitarian tradition of resource usethat placed human needs first in decisions about the use of natural

two weeks before his death and was published posthumously in 1949 afteredits by his son Luna. Leopold divided the book into three sections: a tra-ditional almanac with his deft observations about the changing seasons athis shack property; a second part, “Sketches Here and ere,” whichincluded broader reflections about his work around the country and travelsto other parts of the world; and a third section, “e Upshot,” which washis philosophical meditation on the relationship between humans andnature.

In the conclusion to part three, Leopold developed the concept of a land ethic. He proposed that the boundaries of ethical behavior beexpanded beyond interactions among humans to also include humans’interactions with “soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: theland.”9 He called for a change in societal attitudes—from viewing land asa commodity to seeing it as something to be cherished and respected.While this perspective is similar to belief systems in other cultures, includ-ing those of the indigenous peoples who inhabited his Wisconsin Riverproperty as recently as a century before, Leopold’s contribution to what isnow called environmental ethics lay in his ability to put his ideas on a sci-entific footing—in this case, on the emerging science of ecology.10


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resources. Trained in the early 1900s by Pinchot, who was chief of the newlyformed US Forest Service and who later served as governor of Pennsylva-nia, Leopold embraced such an approach in his early career as a forester.One of his first jobs in the Forest Service, for example, was to lead workcrews estimating the volume of harvestable timber in newly designatednational forests in the Arizona Territory.11 But in the 1920s, and especiallythe 1930s, he began to seriously question his own commitment to Pinchot-style conservation, which counted numbers of harvestable trees withoutconsidering the value of intact forests. This shift is illustrated by his 1922recommendation to maintain roadless areas in the Gila National Forest inNew Mexico and by his later rejection of predator-control policies that paida bounty for the killing of wolves, grizzlies, and other large carnivores. Ashis career path turned more toward the emerging science of wildlife ecol-ogy, Leopold began to incorporate a less human-centered approach into hisconservation philosophy. In his thinking, however, he still leaned heavily onconservation based on a sense of civic responsibility.12

Development Pressure around the Shack

After Leopold’s unexpected death, his wife Estella, children—Starker,Luna, Nina, Carl, and Estella—and various family friends continued touse the property as a “refuge from too much modernity.”13 During the1950s and 1960s, however, the Leopolds’ grown children were startingcareers or raising children of their own. For a time, visits by the familybecame infrequent and their journal observations at the shack lessdetailed.14 A journal started in 1956 that in former decades would havetaken just a few years to fill, for example, took twenty years.15 Leopold’swife nonetheless visited often. In a 2009 interview, Nina Leopold Bradleyobserved that “after dad died, mother kept coming up to the shack withfriends of hers from Madison. And on a regular basis she just kept com-ing—in fact one year she even planted some white pine trees.”16 In oneJune 1959 visit with Tom Coleman’s wife Catherine, the elder Estella wrotein the shack journal, “We came up to plant lady slippers and butterflyweed and puccoon. Very hot and dry, but we had lunch here where it iscool in the breeze. Lots of bird song.”17

Beside trips with family and friends, other visitors during this transi-tional period included University of Wisconsin–Madison wildlife ecologyclasses, especially those of professors Joe Hickey, Bob McCabe, and OrrinRongstad, two of whom (Hickey and McCabe) were former students ofLeopold’s. School groups and organizations such as the Nature Conser-vancy and the Sierra Club also visited the shack area. One journal entryfrom June 1963 describes the seventy-one-year-old Estella Leopold leading“two flocks of thirty people through the poison ivy and prickly ash lectur-ing on the local ecology, and,” the entry continues, she “nearly wore themout!”18

With the passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 during theadministration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Interstate 90/94 wasconstructed in 1962 through south-central Wisconsin. is event, alongwith the related post–World War II tourism boom, meant that the for-merly isolated shack site became more attractive to developers.19 At aboutthat time, farmland immediately to the east of the shack was subdividedand sold into small lots. Long-time landowners grew concerned about theencroaching development. In Madison, the businessman Reed Coleman,the son of Tom and Catherine Coleman and who was now in his thirties,


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began to worry about the future of the area around the Leopold shack.After the Colemans had bought their land across the road from the shackin 1937, Reed Coleman had visited often and had grown quite attached tothe land. “I spent most of my high school and some grade school weekendsup there as a kid, so that place was very special to me,” Reed said in 2009.20

As Estella Leopold’s godson, Reed had been very close to Aldo and hiswife, relating to them more like family than friends. Right up until herdeath in 1974, letters to Reed from Estella Leopold were often addressed“My Dear Reed” and signed “Aunt Estella.” Understandably, then, at thetime when development pressure first began in the 1960s, he did not wantto see the landscape altered in ways that were incompatible with the con-servation philosophy of the Leopold and Coleman families.

In the mid-1960s, Reed Coleman became the executor of his family’sproperty, which was adjacent to that of the shack, and he devoted himselfto finding a way to protect the area from development. With Aldo andEstella Leopold’s children all living in other states, Reed assumed a leader-ship role in making decisions not only about his family’s property but alsoabout other land surrounding the shack. Soon after the March 1965 dinner at which he and Howard Mead had conceived of an agreementbetween area landowners to voluntarily restrict development, they dis-cussed the idea with neighboring landowner Frank Terbilcox. Frank hadstudied botany in the 1940s under Aldo Leopold’s colleagues at the UW–Madison and now co-owned, with his wife Colleen, the Ross Floral Com-pany, a greenhouse business in Baraboo. Reed explained that “Frank wastired of getting up at midnight to go and turn on the boiler in his floralcompany, so as we moved down the line we talked to him and he said‘Yeah, I’d like to get involved,’ and then . . . eventually [he] became themanager.”21 As a landowner of 300 acres adjacent to the shack, Terbilcox,after selling his floral business, enthusiastically agreed not only to partici-pate in the emerging Leopold Memorial Reserve project but also to behired as the reserve’s land manager, a post he held until his retirement in1993.22

e group’s idea was for the Coleman, Leopold, and Terbilcox families,as well as any other interested landowners of property surrounding theshack, to agree to coordinated conservation measures on their land to pre-serve natural habitat on nonagricultural land, implement fire control, andprevent trespassing. Without a board of directors or a management team,


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Leopold grandchildren Trish, Nina, and Madelyn (l-r) shucking corn with Nina Leopold Elderand Estella B. Leopold, 1950s. (Aldo Leopold Foundation, call no. S02043)

Shack visits by family and friends during the1950s and 1960s

Estella B. Leopold (far right) with family, 1950s. (Aldo Leopold Foundation, call no. S02094)

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Susan Flader, Estella B. Leopold, and Estella Leopold (l-r), 1960s. (Frank Terbilcox)

Starker Leopoldtesting the waterpump, 1960s.(Frank Terbilcox)

as would have typically been the case for a public conservation area or pri-vate nature reserve, they needed to establish a governing structure. eyagreed to place a local environmental nonprofit organization recently setup by Reed Coleman and his mother Catherine, the Louis R. Head Foun-dation, in charge of fund-raising, day-to-day operations, and long-termplanning. e foundation, which had already established the L. R. HeadNature Center in Madison, was a natural fit for supporting and promotingthe guiding principles of the reserve.


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The Louis R. Head FoundationReed Coleman’s late grandfather and honoree in the foundation’s title, Dr.Louis R. Head, was once the medical director of the Morningside Sanato-rium in the city of Monona on Madison’s east side. Morningside hadserved as a treatment center for tuberculosis, a much more common dis-ease before the 1960s. After antibiotics were invented, Morningside closedas a result of a steep decline in the number of patients. Coleman and hismother formed the foundation in 1965 in an effort to preserve the largelyundeveloped fifty-eight-acre Monona property.

The original agreement for the L. R. Head Foundation called for the cre-ation of “a conservatory . . . in which formal flower shows might be held,”“a natural setting wild flower refuge and viewing area,” and “a miniatureEast Side Arboretum.”23 The foundation hired the horticulturist and educa-tor Gar Dawson to direct programs, and the L. R. Head Nature Center wasformed in 1974 to provide environmental education for area schools. Thecenter also was part of an effort to relieve pressure from school groups onthe University of Wisconsin Arboretum, whose university-based researchprogram was being overwhelmed by demands from schools.

By the early 1980s, the L. R. Head Nature Center was receiving morethan 6,000 visitors per year—mostly school children from Madison-areaschools. In 1994, the Sand County (formerly L. R. Head) Foundation facili-tated the center’s transition to an independently operated, nonprofit organ-ization and was renamed the Aldo Leopold Nature Center (ALNC). TheALNC now receives over 40,000 school children per year. For twenty years,the Sand County Foundation thus sponsored, managed, and funded envi-ronmental education for children in what is now a flourishing independentnature center.24

Going one step further than the Riley Cooperative idea conceived ofby Aldo Leopold and Reuben Paulson a generation earlier, the reserveagreement included restrictions on landowner activity, such as limits onbuilding construction or wetland draining on the property. e one legalprinciple associated with the agreement was the “right of first refusal,”which specified that participating landowners who decided to sell or trans-fer their property would have to alert the Head Foundation of the pro-posed transaction. e foundation then had sixty days to meet the offer orwaive its right to refuse sale or transfer of the land to another owner out-side the agreement. e right of first refusal would also carry over to anynew owners not specified in the original agreement.

In setting up the agreement for the reserve, Coleman, Mead, and Ter-bilcox were strongly guided by Leopold’s writings in works ranging fromthe philosophical Sand County Almanac to the highly practical Game Man-agement. One ideal articulated in “e Land Ethic” that the founders allconsidered important was the need for a greater commitment to conserva-tion on private land. In that essay, Leopold called for “some other forcewhich assigns more obligation to the private landowner.”25 Looking back,Mead describes the reserve project as “a chance to make an example of theland ethic. . . . It was a chance to surround the shack with some otherproperty and give it more protection.” Mead marvels at “how well it hasdone,” commenting that “it was so simple in so many ways. We didn’t haveto go out and raise great amounts of money.”26 Early on, then, the reserve’sfounders agreed that action needed to be taken to protect the area aroundthe shack from development, and they implemented a creative solution tothe challenge of setting aside an area of sufficient size.

Beyond their commitment to a broad set of ideas about conservationas espoused by Aldo Leopold, the three founders of the reserve appear tohave been drawn to different aspects of their intellectual mentor’s writings.Mead, the founder of Wisconsin Trails magazine, was inspired by the philo-sophical ideas of Leopold, as was Coleman, whose formative childhoodexperiences included hunting trips with his father and Aldo Leopold at theRiley Game Cooperative and the shack. Terbilcox was attracted toLeopold’s on-the-ground recommendations for land management. esevaried connections to Leopold among the founders provided an importantbalance in their emerging plans for the Leopold Memorial Reserve.


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Implementation of the Reserve Idea

Moving from concept to workable agreement proved difficult, in partbecause of the need for lengthy conversations with other potential partic-ipants. According to Reed, a lot of evenings were spent talking to farmersin their kitchens “trying to convince them that we weren’t a hunting clubfrom Chicago or the Wisconsin DNR.” Frank Terbilcox worked his wayalong Levee Road, starting three miles west of the Leopold shack, talking


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Getting to Know the VanHoosen and Anchor FamiliesWhile the Leopold, Coleman, and Terbilcox families will receive most of thecoverage in this book, the reserve’s two other participating families do meritsome further attention. The late Russell (1922–2005) and Dorothy (1919–2008) VanHoosen were one of two other families that were signatories tothe Leopold Memorial Reserve agreement. They were not actively involved indecisions about the reserve, but by agreeing to restrict development on theirland, they embarked on a course of action that was very different from thattaken by most private landowners, one that should not be overlooked. Theirson John describes the two as a loving couple who “always got along” and“never fought.”27 Russell was “quiet,” “laid-back,” “gentle,” and someonewho “did a lot with his kids.” John notes that his mother was “extremelyhard working” and had “a green thumb,” adding emphatically that “sheloved flowers.” Dorothy often took care of all the family’s hogs (between 30and 200, depending on the time of year) and helped pick rocks out of thesoil after plowing. She also decided that she did not like riding mowers, soduring the growing season, she regularly mowed the family’s entire two-acre lawn with a push mower “from dawn to dusk” with hardly a break.

Russell’s father, Leo, began farming the property in 1935 while simulta-neously farming previously owned land in nearby Elroy, Wisconsin, andRussell took over in 1955.28 Similar to all of the farmers in the immediatevicinity of the Leopold Memorial Reserve, the VanHoosens were not able tomake a living in agriculture on this small family farm after the early 1970s.Russell continued to work for the Farmers’ Union Cooperative in Baraboo,however, as he had for many years. The VanHoosens sold most of their 190acres to the Head Foundation by the late 1970s, except for a farmhouse and40 acres that John VanHoosen still owns.

to landowners who might have been interested in joining the agreementor selling their land.29

Eventually, Coleman, Terbilcox, and Mead persuaded two adjacentlandowning families, Carl and Eleanor Anchor and Russell and DorothyVanHoosen, to sign an agreement in December 1967. e agreement stip-ulated that those involved “join together and participate in the creation ofan area to be known as the ‘Leopold Memorial Reserve’ for the purpose ofmaintaining the natural state of the area and preserving its natural beauty


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Russell VanHoosen on tractor with daughter Tami, 1959. (John VanHoosen)

Less is known about the reserve participants Carl and Eleanor Anchor,because no family members or acquaintances remain in the area. ReedColeman describes Carl Anchor as “an old farmer” who was “not much fortalking.”30 According to agricultural census records, Carl farmed their 154-acre property from 1923 to 1960. His father had purchased the property in1893, and his name appears in the 1905 state agricultural census (few otherfederal or state agricultural census records remain for the years 1881 to1922, most likely because of fire damage). The Anchors sold all of their landto the Head Foundation in 1971.31


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and historic value.” e parties would accomplish these goals “through pri-vate rather than public or governmental means,” committing themselvesto “cooperate and work together to prevent unnatural exploitation of thearea.”32 To provide a financial incentive to reserve participants, the HeadFoundation agreed to pay each member $200 per year.33

Initial negotiations were also coordinated with the Leopold family’splans to form a trust, as indicated by wording in the reserve’s 1967 found-ing document that the Leopold property would be “an integral part of saidReserve upon completion of the organization of the Aldo Leopold SandCounty Trust to which the heirs of Aldo Leopold are conveying the prop-erty.” e Leopold family formally set up a trust and joined the agreementin June 1968.34

The Leopold Memorial Reserve agreement focused on the com-mitment of the participating families to limit development, care for theland, and prevent trespassing. e scope and formality of the agreementrepresented a significant expansion of the 1930s campfire conversationsbetween Aldo Leopold and Tom Coleman at the shack, but that collabo-rative spirit provided important inspiration for the cooperative conserva-tion carried out by their children three decades later. Reed Colemanresponded to rising pressure from development by initiating discussionswith Howard Mead and Frank Terbilcox that, in 1968, resulted in five par-ticipating families signing the Leopold Memorial Reserve agreement.35

ey had little time to celebrate the achievement, however, because thehardest part of their proposal was yet to come. Establishing on-the-groundoperations for a reserve jointly owned by multiple families surely was causefor not just satisfaction but also trepidation.

3 Implementing aManagement Plan

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Despite the commitment of the founders of theLeopold Memorial Reserve to broad conservation principles, many practi-cal concerns about their new endeavor could not easily be resolved. How,for instance, would a foundation in Madison effectively oversee a propertynear Baraboo? Who would be hired to manage the land? How wouldLeopold’s guiding principles be applied in practice? e founders attemptedto address these issues by hiring in January 1968 one of the reserve’s par-ticipants, Frank Terbilcox, to be the resident manager. Funding for Terbil-cox’s position was provided by the Madison-Kipp Corporation, of whichReed Coleman was president. Ongoing support from Madison-Kippenabled the Head Foundation to continue to devote resources to landmanagement and outreach activities in its early years.1 Soon after Terbilcoxassumed the position of manager, the Head Foundation hired RobertEllarson, a professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a former Leopold student, to write the first managementplan for the reserve. Ellarson continued to serve as a consultant to thefoundation for the next twenty years.

During the reserve’s first decade, those in charge of stewardship therebalanced its increasing visibility in the community with the desire to man-age the land according to ecological principles. e approach to conserva-tion Ellarson proposed in his management plan resembled that of his mentor Leopold, with a focus on prairie restoration plantings, wildlifemanagement, and controlled burns overseen by a small management team.

Frank Terbilcox, as the manager and main representative of the reserve tothe surrounding community, quickly learned public-relations skills beyondthose required in his previous job running a greenhouse business in Bara-boo, such as how to negotiate with individuals and town officials who haddiffering visions for land use and management.

Early Management Plans

After consulting with key stakeholders, Bob Ellarson submitted his firstmanagement plan for the reserve in September 1969. In it he suggestedfour objectives for managing the Leopold Memorial Reserve: (1) to main-tain the biological health and productivity of the reserve; (2) to maintainand create a diversity of ecological communities consistent with the landresources available on the reserve; (3) to provide a demonstration areawhere various land-management techniques would be employed in theinterest of creating a landscape both aesthetically pleasant and economi-cally productive; and (4) to provide opportunities for scientific research,aesthetic appreciation, recreation, and economic endeavors such as farm-ing and forestry.2

Given his expertise in ecology, Ellarson’s objectives went beyond theidea of collectively protecting the land from development by adding spe-cific management actions to the principles outlined in the 1967 agree-ment. He started by recommending ways to continue nursing the landback to health through the planting of native prairie and wetland plantspecies, the use of controlled burns to maintain and expand prairie land-scapes, and the establishment of small wildlife food-patch plantings ofcorn and soybeans interspersed with the prairie restorations. He proposedthat the existing trail network be expanded to provide easy access fornature study and observation. He suggested as well that artificial ponds beconstructed on the reserve and that nest boxes be installed to aid in therecovery of wood duck populations. At the same time, management of thereserve’s deer herd emerged as an important issue. Like other wildlife man-agers of the period, Ellarson recommended a reduction of the size of thedeer herd in order to prevent damage to native forest vegetation and tocrops on nearby farm fields. is could be accomplished, he maintained,through the establishment of a game-harvest reporting system.3

Implementing a Management Plan

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Bill Elder, Bob Ellarson,Nina Leopold (Elder)Bradley, and Estella B.Leopold (l-r), 1968. (FrankTerbilcox)

Frank Terbilcox and Bobette Helland talking with Catherine Coleman. (Frank Terbilcox)

Initial planning meetings

Frank Terbilcox had already begun to implement some ideas of his ownduring the previous year. Before signing the reserve agreement, he hadworked with the Sauk County Soil Conservation District to develop a soiland water conservation plan on his own 300-acre property that included,among other things, digging artificial ponds.4 Terbilcox was thereforefamiliar with the cost-sharing policies of federal and state agencies forincreasing waterfowl habitat, and within weeks of being hired, Terbilcoxexplored the feasibility of digging new ponds on the Leopold MemorialReserve. Along with several others who contributed management ideas tothe reserve, Ellarson supported Terbilcox’s decision to construct numerouswaterfowl ponds during the following two decades.


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Evolving Approaches to Waterfowl Habitat ManagementSoon after Frank and Colleen Terbilcox bought their land across the roadfrom the Leopold family in 1958, they began constructing an artificial water-fowl pond on their property. Once they decided on a location and size for thepond, they participated in federal habitat improvement programs that sub-sidized the pond’s construction. After he became land manager, Terbilcoxconstructed at least ten more ponds scattered around the reserve.

This approach to wetlands conservation—building ponds to improvehabitat for declining waterfowl populations—was quite common between1960 and 1990. Other methods included seasonal manipulation of water lev-els timed with the migration and breeding seasons of different waterfowlspecies.5 However, by the time the North American Waterfowl ManagementPlan was implemented between the United States and Canada in 1986 andthen expanded to include Mexico in 1994, wildlife biologists had shiftedaway from excessive reliance on artificial pond construction and insteadfocused on preserving existing habitat or developing more sophisticatedmethods for manipulating water levels to mimic seasonal fluctuations.6

One example of targeted water-level manipulation to improve habitatnear the Leopold Memorial Reserve occurred on a farm owned by RichardGumz. As a participant in a federal program involving collaboration with thereserve’s land managers, Gumz used pumps to flood low-lying areas of hiscornfields after the fall 2002 harvest. Migrating waterfowl responded in a bigway, with an estimated 1,000 mallards, gadwall, teal, tundra swans, sandhillcranes, and other shorebirds roosting at or visiting the site.7

Just a month into his position, Terbilcox could barely contain his enthu-siasm for his new job, as evidenced by his meticulous work reports to Cole-man. In one report from February 1968, Terbilcox sent a lengthy summaryof fifteen different projects he had worked on in the previous month, includ-ing scoping out an area for a new wildlife pond, tax work he had done for aland purchase on the reserve, discussions he had had with county forestersabout the new reserve project, and meetings he had had with UW–Madisonfaculty in an effort to enlist their involvement in the project.8 “I don’t thinkthere’s ever been a job description written,” joked Howard Mead in a 2009interview describing Terbilcox’s work. Regarding his friend’s boundlessenergy, he added, “He was kind of everywhere. He’s a very energetic man.. . . He’s a very easy person to love, but he can get excited.”9

Many people began to take notice of the enthusiasm with which newconservation practices at the reserve were being conducted. AldoLeopold’s son Starker, by then a leading ecologist and wildlife biologistbest known as the principle author of the landmark 1963 federal report“Management of Wildlife in the National Parks,” wrote to Terbilcox inJanuary 1969, “It is a source of real gratification to know that you areattending to this most important ecological bit of housekeeping.”10 Localnewspaper reporters shared the project with a larger audience, with theWisconsin State Journal describing the reserve in a February 1973 article as“a Mecca for ecologists.”11


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Wisconsin State Journal article, 11 February 1973. (Wisconsin State Journal)

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Prairie restoration

Aspen removal onthe Coleman Prairie,1969. (FrankTerbilcox)

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Controlled burn, 1976. (Frank Terbilcox)

A burn that got away (Frank Terbilcox's son Pat in photo). (Frank Terbilcox)

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Wetlands management

Constructing an artificial waterfowl pond, 1968. (Frank Terbilcox)

Aerial photos from 1937 (above) and 1968 (below) with outline of the original LeopoldMemorial Reserve (star indicates the location of the Leopold shack). Notice the increase inforest cover near the shack and in other locations as a result of tree plantings by the Leopoldand Coleman families and a reduction in flooding and fire on the landscape. The new inter -state highway is visible along the southern edge of the 1968 photo, as are some of theartificial ponds constructed by Frank Terbilcox as of 1968 (for more ponds, see the 2008aerial photo of the reserve area featured in the introduction). (US National Archives,Washington, DC, images WR-14-1118 and WR-14-1163 [1937] and WR-2JJ-40 [1968]; imagesdeveloped by Dylan Moriarty, UW–Madison Cartography Lab)

Sharing the Leopold Memorial Reserve Idea

In its early years of operation, the leading participants in the LeopoldMemorial Reserve agreement sought to accomplish many of the objectivesspelled out by the Ellarson report, such as organizing a hunting-permit andreporting system for deer herd management, arranging field trips for highschool and college students, and providing outreach to landowners. In oneexample of outreach, the private landowners Samuel C. Johnson, Jr. andhis wife Imogene hired Terbilcox to develop land-conservation recom-mendations for their property far to the north of the reserve in Cable, Wis-consin.12 Johnson, CEO of the S. C. Johnson Company, received detailedinformation about native plant restoration and wetlands managementfrom Terbilcox over several years. e couple also asked Terbilcox to assistthem in raising funds through public natural history lectures for the RiverBend Nature Center near the S. C. Johnson headquarters, which is southof Milwaukee in Racine. Recommendations by Terbilcox to these andother landowners provided assistance with prairie restoration, wetlandsmanagement, and strategic planning.

In another case, a regional power company, Wisconsin Power andLight, sought out the advice of the Head Foundation when deciding whereto site a new power plant. Power company staff met with a team of con-sulting scientists hired by the Head Foundation that included Bob Ellar-son in order to systematically compare the ecological effects of siting a newcoal-fired power plant. ey examined two locations near the LeopoldMemorial Reserve where the company had purchased land. e input ofEllarson and others persuaded Wisconsin Power and Light to abandonplans to build the new plant along the Wisconsin River south of Portagenear Devil’s Lake State Park and choose the alternative site instead. Con-sultants from the Head foundation then helped the power companydevelop a management plan for the extensive undeveloped wetlandsaround the plant’s chosen location. Terbilcox proudly wrote in one of hisweekly reports to Coleman that this was “a good opportunity for privatebig business to show what it can do to preserve and enhance a wildlife areaand at the same time provide a needed service to the community.”13

During the early years of its existence, then, the Leopold MemorialReserve project provided the Head Foundation with numerous newopportunities to take a leadership role in promoting ecologically informed


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land stewardship. Compared to Aldo Leopold’s projects a generation ear-lier at the Riley Game Cooperative and the Coon Valley Watershed Dem -onstration Project, these efforts of the 1970s did not involve the samedegree of community-building among neighboring landowners, but theyprovided a visible alternative to relying on public lands to implement con-servation efforts. Frank Terbilcox was also part of a new generation of con-servation practitioners who sought to achieve broader ecological objectives,such as improving land health, as opposed to individually managing natu-ral resources.14

In the 1970s, word spread about the Leopold Memorial Reserve, andgroups ranging from high school students to conservation practitionersbegan arriving there in larger numbers to learn about restoration and landmanagement. Terbilcox gave an average of fifteen to twenty tours of thereserve a year, as well as occasional lectures in the area. Visitors includedbird watching groups, UW wildlife ecology classes, the nonprofit group


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List of reserve tours and outreach by Frank Terbilcox, 1975. (Sand CountyFoundation)

Friends of Our Native Landscape, and school groups from Baraboo andMadison. In his dedication to outreach, Terbilcox connected with thecommunity in other ways, including serving as a judge at a school speechcontest on environmental topics.15

Challenges and Successes in Ecological Land Management

e growing number of visitors to the Leopold Memorial Reserve, how-ever, increased the potential for conflict on the property. Issues of overuse,such as deterioration of the shack and trampling of vegetation, ledLeopold’s wife Estella to propose on behalf of her family “ideas for con-trolling the problem,” namely the granting of advance permission for vis-iting the Leopold property, limits on group sizes, and a ban on the dis-semination of maps that identified the location of the shack.16 e boardof directors of the Head Foundation approved the guidelines soon afterthey were proposed.

e size of the deer herd also became an issue on the reserve, echoingin many respects the experience of Aldo Leopold on this contentious topic.During the previous three decades, Wisconsin had seen significant growthof its deer herds from historic lows a generation earlier. Early in this recov-ery process, Leopold was the leader of reform-minded members of theWisconsin Conservation Committee, who had unsuccessfully advocatedin the early 1940s for reduction of the deer herd, against the wishes ofhunters groups, through a revised management program. irty years later,this issue continued to elicit debates about the appropriate size of a deerherd, given the potential of large deer herds to enhance the hunting expe-rience yet also damage forest vegetation, reduce crop yields, and contributeto increases in automobile accidents.17

In Terbilcox’s case, the framing of the issue at the reserve and aroundthe state had changed little from Leopold’s time, with some arguing forculling the herd through hunting antlerless deer and others proposingfewer restrictions on hunting bucks. Terbilcox’s own record on this issuewas mixed. He kept a close eye each fall on the size and movements of thedeer herd, tracked the number of hunters on the property, and collecteddata about how many deer were killed each year. To this end he partici-pated in population surveys and radio-tracking studies between 1971 and


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1973 in collaboration with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. In somereports, Terbilcox shared the results of radio-tracking data that helped himbetter understand daily and seasonal movements of deer, especially duringthe hunting season.

In his yearly reports, however, Terbilcox revealed sentiments that con-tradicted his own stated goal of reducing the herd size. On one occasion hecounted “50–55 hunters” with “14 known bucks killed and no does orfawns found dead or reported as yet, which makes me happy to know.” ToTerbilcox, this indicated “a sane bunch of hunters.”18 As implied by Ter-bilcox’s relief in noting that these sane hunters had killed only bucks, hehad a strong personal preference as a hunter himself for a policy thatfavored hunting bucks. is type of management did little to reduce deerpopulations on the reserve since reproductive females remained numerous.

Beyond his highly visible role managing a hunter reporting system,


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Letter from Estella B. Leopold to Reed Coleman, 1972. (Sand County Foundation)


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Ongoing Conflicts over Deer-Herd Management in Wisconsin

By the 1930s, Aldo Leopold began to recognize the value of regulating deerpopulations. In the absence of predators in places like Wisconsin, the deerherds had recovered from the overhunting that had occurred earlier in thecentury. Leopold realized that large deer herds damaged forests becausethey browsed on tree and shrub seedlings that were key to forest regenera-tion. Left unchecked, the long-term consequences of excessive deer browsewas the shift to a lower-quality forest habitat with reduced plant biodiver-sity.19 When he participated in deer-policy discussions during his time on theWisconsin Conservation Committee, Leopold supported hunting policiesthat called for culling the herds. He encountered stiff resistance, however,from others on the committee and from hunters’ groups. Nonetheless,Leopold successfully pushed for modifications to permits that would reducethe herd size. This victory was short-lived, however, because a large deer die-off in Wisconsin during the winter of 1943—referred to by hunters’ groupsas the “crime of ’43”—led coalition members to back down from siding withLeopold even though the extent of the die-off may have been exaggerated.20

Nearly seventy years later, a similar debate continues. One headline from2011 reads “Governor Signs Repeal of Earn-a-Buck Program.”21 Respondingto pressure from hunters, this new mandate eliminated the DNR’s previousearn-a-buck policy. Implemented in 1996, the earn-a-buck program requiredhunters to kill a doe first as part of an effort to more aggressively keep herdsizes low by reducing the number of reproductive female deer. It was con-troversial because hunters could not shoot a trophy buck, even if they sawone while in a hunting stand, unless they had first bagged a doe.22 At theLeopold Memorial Reserve, land managers had already developed practicesthat provided incentives for hunter cooperation with landowners prior to theDNR’s program. These had been in place on the reserve since the early1990s, and because the reserve is privately owned, the policy has remainedin place. Its landowners have embraced an ecological approach to deer-herdmanagement called Quality Hunting Ecology, or QHE. Under the QHE pro-gram, reserve landowners allow hunters to kill a buck only after they havekilled two female deer. The ultimate goals of QHE include reducing the deerpopulation and improving hunter safety and enjoyment.23

serving as the public face of the reserve throughout the year was challeng-ing work for Terbilcox. He had the difficult task of being the gatekeeper forhunting, snowmobiling, and other activities and at times had the uncom-fortable job of turning down requests for access from neighbors he knewpersonally. He commented with a mix of humor and wistfulness in a 1973report, “I try to keep in good graces with the local people by helping themwith occasional snow plowing, school biology tours, [and] deer huntingpermits . . . plus some soft sell on keeping an area for the future that is asnatural as we can keep it in these days of the mechanized sportsman. Idon’t win any popularity contests.”24 His experience of being at odds withpublic opinion thus bore some similarity to what Aldo Leopold had facedwhen he had worked on instituting revised deer-herd policies for the Wis-consin Conservation Committee in the 1940s.25

Terbilcox also served as the point person for disagreements with offi-cials from the town of Fairfield, which had jurisdiction over the land onwhich the reserve was located. Several debates with the town occurred overmanagement of the road that bisects the reserve, Levee Road (formerlycalled River Road). Coleman and Terbilcox felt strongly that in order topreserve the wild character of the reserve, the road should receive minimalmaintenance. Disagreements between the two parties involved decidingwhether the road should be modified for safety purposes or left as it was foraesthetic and historic reasons. e town board wanted its gravel surface tobe paved, and they planned to level out a hill on Levee Road just west ofthe shack. e town did end up paving the road in 1977 but was not ableto win approval for removing the hill—part of the glacial moraine nearthe shack that Aldo Leopold affectionately referred to as “the sandhill” inhis essay “Good Oak”—before the road was declared a Rustic Road by theWisconsin legislature.26 e new designation limited modifications thatcould be made to the road, thus preserving a topographical feature impor-tant to Leopold and others. Lobbying of state officials by the Head Foun-dation board may have played a role in the Wisconsin legislature’s decision.

Another conflict between the town board and the reserve occurred overtrees close to the edge of Levee Road that the board wanted cut down. Inthis case, Terbilcox and Coleman once again preferred a more natural look,with trees close to the road, while some members of the board wanted tocut all trees within twenty feet of the thoroughfare. Judging by the road’s


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Deer research and management on the reserve,early 1970s

Tom Larsen, US Fish and Wildlife district manager, with VW van and deer radio-tracking device. (Frank Terbilcox)

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Remotely operated net trap for capturing deer. (Frank Terbilcox)

Frank Terbilcox putting a radio collar on adeer. (Frank Terbilcox)

Releasing a radio-collared deer. (FrankTerbilcox)

longstanding condition of having trees right up to its edge, the board ulti-mately appears to have given up on the tree-cutting proposal, althoughoccasional conflicts continue to arise over this issue.27

Not to be overlooked is the fact that the Head Foundation tried toshow its good intentions in several ways. For the position of land manager,it hired a local resident in the form of Frank Terbilcox, and he was involvedin the community because of his connections to the area as a taxpayer andparent. e foundation also hoped to remain in the good graces of thecommunity by paying property taxes for its portion of reserve land, eventhough payment of those taxes was not required of a nonprofit organiza-tion.28 Yet the examples above regarding Levee Road illustrate that therewere times when officials of the town of Fairfield and the managers of theLeopold Memorial Reserve were not in agreement.

In other areas, such as land acquisition around the reserve and the shar-ing of ideas about measures for reaching conservation goals, the HeadFoundation went beyond achieving the objectives set out in Ellarson’smanagement plan. Less than a year after the reserve’s formation, forinstance, the foundation bought surrounding land in order to provide abuffer between the Leopold Memorial Reserve and nearby development.Early purchases included those of the neighboring Turner and Kammererfamilies, with several more acquisitions made over the years. In a colorfulanecdote that shows much about the interplay between Terbilcox’s com-passionate side and Coleman’s business side, Frank shared how the HeadFoundation cared for and later acquired two tracts of land in the earlyyears of the reserve. Before the Turner and Kammerer lands were sold tothe Head Foundation, Terbilcox frequently mowed their lawns, but henever sent the families a bill. Instead, he “just did it because they weredelightful old people.” is generosity paid dividends later on when theTurner tract came up for sale:

A couple of the kids said, “Well, you know, Frank always took care of ourfolks and everything.” So when it came [time] to buy it, we got it. Iremember when we did. . . . I think we were settling on $15,000 for a 150or a 160 acres of land and I said, “at sounds fair to me.” And I got akick under the table from Reed. So that ole Republican. He still remindsme of it, I hope that’s on tape. He thought we’d get it a little cheaper butanyway we got it and that’s the Turner tract.29


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Elsewhere around the state, the Head Foundation shared the idea ofusing right-of-first-refusal commitments as a way to expand its regionalcontribution to conservation.30 One such effort occurred among land -owners in the village of Spring Green, fifty miles downstream on the Wis-consin River. Rare dry-prairie habitats there were at risk as housing devel-opments encroached on former prairie land. Terbilcox spent a significantamount of time as a consulting land manager to landowners at the sitefrom 1969 to 1979. e Nature Conservancy—another nonprofit involvedin land conservation—later acquired the tract, now known as the SpringGreen Preserve. In another project among private landowners in the early1970s, the Head Foundation played an important role in wetlands preser-vation, advising several property owners on the south shore of Madison’sLake Waubesa on how to manage their land. e site, called the WaubesaWetlands, is now a protected area managed jointly by the Nature Conser-vancy and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.31

The difficult work of moving from concept to implementation of theLeopold Memorial Reserve thus paid dividends not only at the reserve butalso at locations around the state. Reed Coleman encouraged the reserve’sstaff and consultants to offer their expertise to property owners, and Ter-bilcox, Ellarson, and others influenced decisions on a range of issues thatincluded habitat restoration, siting of a power plant, and protecting prairieand wetlands habitats in Wisconsin. At the reserve, convincing neighborsand town officials that the practices there appropriately balanced ecologi-cal, social, and economic interests sometimes involved taking unpopularstances. Frank Terbilcox, however, worked tirelessly and to good effect tohelp the Head Foundation inform the public about the best ways to man-age the land. Much of the time, all of this was accomplished by a very leanstaff—usually just Terbilcox himself. e time would soon come, however,for the foundation to expand its reach by increasing the size of its staff.Such help eventually came in the late 1970s from an unexpected but famil-iar source.


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4 Growth in Research and Education Programs

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Although land management and landowner out-reach were the central undertakings of the Leopold Memorial Reserve inits early years, Frank Terbilcox also included research and education in hisinitial work. Such initiatives, however, had been limited to tours for schoolgroups, lectures around the area, and radio-tracking studies of deer. ischanged in late 1976 when Nina Leopold Bradley and her husband,Charles (Charlie) took up residence in a newly constructed home and sci-ence study center located on a portion of reserve land leased to them bythe Head Foundation.1 In 2009 Nina explained their decision to retire onthe reserve: “Charlie . . . was a geologist and taught at Montana State Uni-versity and after we were married he said ‘I want to retire early enough sowe can do a major project.’” When two of his projects did not work out,Nina asked him about retiring on the reserve. Her husband liked the ideaso much that they acted on it and began building a retirement house afterreceiving approval from other reserve participants. ey arrived before itwas complete, but that was not a problem, since the Bradleys lived at theshack while they built their new house. To construct it, they used as sup-port beams some of the pine trees near the shack that Nina had planted inher youth.2 e home was artfully built into a hillside looking out over ademonstration vegetable garden, pond, and restored prairie.

As part of their commitment to the reserve, the Bradleys did more thanbuild their own retirement house there. ey also incorporated into itsfloor plan an office and greenhouse space so that graduate research interns

could work at the reserve while participating in a new summer fellowshipprogram. During this expansionary phase of the reserve’s history, Nina andher siblings—Starker, Luna, Carl, and Estella—further emphasized theimportance of research and education by founding the Aldo LeopoldShack Foundation in 1982.

Fostering Ecological Research on the Reserve

e Bradley Study Center, as Nina and Charlie Bradley’s house andresearch facility came to be known, kept them as busy as any full-time job.e Bradleys’ expertise in botany and geology and their remarkable talentfor inspiring others to become involved in conservation helped the HeadFoundation significantly increase the number of research and educationprograms on the reserve. Pleased by these developments, Frank Terbilcoxwrote in his journal “how fitting it is to have a Leopold . . . come homewith her husband Charlie Bradley to build a home and working laboratoryfrom these hand-planted pines. . . . ere is much that could be said aboutthe Lab, the Clivus [composting toilet] system of sewerage disposal, thephoto lab, wood burning furnace, solar panel, greenhouse, root cellar, etc.All add up to a wonderful addition for the reserve.”3 Terbilcox and othersat the Head Foundation were clearly excited to have additional on-site sup-port for expanding the reserve’s mission.

e decision to build the Bradley Study Center did not occur withoutsome contentious moments, however. Although the Leopold family ownedthe sandhill near the shack where the Bradleys first wanted to build, ReedColeman and Nina’s siblings Estella and Luna did not agree with the pro-posed location. Nina Bradley later concurred that the original sandhill sitewould have been a poor one, even though her father had originally sug-gested it: “Dad had always said that he wanted to build up on the sandhill.And I was with him when he said ‘is is where you’re going to build.’ Sowhen Charlie and I came back, this is what we had planned. . . . [But]Reed was right on target, it would have been a mistake to build too nearthe shack.”4 Leaving the shack area undeveloped, as it was during herfather’s time there, was more important to family, friends, and a growingnumber of visitors from around the state and country than the Bradleyshad originally realized.

After construction of the Bradley Study Center at a location just down

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the road, there was little evidence of any remaining ill will between ReedColeman and the Bradleys about the chosen building site. e HeadFoundation supported the efforts of the study center by contributingfinancially to the new summer graduate fellows program and to scholar-ships for area high school teachers and students who demonstrated excel-lence in the area of conservation. It also provided funding for the firstcohort of six summer research fellows, who began work in June 1978 byconducting groundwater, vegetation, and bird studies.

Graduate fellows and other researchers under the supervision of theBradleys wrote at least seventy reports between 1978 and 1993, andresearch on the reserve continues to this day. Early research reports by thegraduate research fellows focused on comprehensive surveys to documentthe composition of ecological communities. ese studies included surveysof plants, birds, mammals, and insects.5 A 1980 report by Charles Luthin,for example, noted eleven distinct plant communities on the reserve, amongthem wet meadow, wet-mesic prairie, dry prairie, wet floodplain forest, anddry upland forest. Luthin’s detailed vegetation map provided baseline infor-mation that was later utilized by fellow Konrad Liegel in an ambitious his-torical study that compared Luthin’s vegetation map with reconstructedvegetation maps tracing presettlement conditions. Another research fellow,Lisa Goodman, conducted a survey of insects, preserving more than 5,000specimens from eight orders. Studies by Michael Mossman and JonathanReed between 1978 and 1980 recorded bird and mammal species on thereserve. With assistance from Luthin, the two recorded 124 bird species.Mossman also conducted small-mammal surveys and compared the popu-lations of thirteen recorded species to their estimated population levels dur-ing Aldo Leopold’s time, based on notes in the shack journals.

Other research fellows focused on abiotic aspects of the reserve ecosys-tem, some of which involved more in-depth protocols in the areas of nutri-ent and energy cycling. Betty Socha completed her master’s thesis on theglacial geology of the Baraboo area in 1984, and Martha Green wrote a1991 report on the hydrogeology of the reserve. Dennis Keeney, a profes-sor of soil science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and his studentDick Cates studied nitrogen emissions by plants in prairie eco systems.Another UW–Madison faculty member, William Karasov, a professor ofwildlife ecology, oversaw a series of studies by his graduate students LisaHan and James Munger on animal energetics. As detailed maps and


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The Bradley Study Center

During construction, summer 1976. (Charles Bradley)

Just after construction. (Charles Bradley)

research studies grew in number and scope, they were increasingly incor-porated into management decisions regarding the control of invasivespecies, seed harvesting of prairie plants for restoration projects, floodplainmanagement, and decisions about controlled burns. is was especially the case in the 1990s, when landscape-scale management practices wereadopted.

rough their dedication to the fellows program, Charlie and NinaBradley mentored dozens of conservationists who have gone on to performimportant work, both regionally and nationally. Beginning in the summerof 1978, the Bradleys also hosted weekly Monday evening “shack semi-nars.” Featuring guest speakers on ecology and conservation topics, theseseminars revived a tradition that Aldo Leopold had started with his owngraduate students. Guest speakers for the shack seminars and visitors to thereserve across the years included a host of local and regional experts in arange of fields from environmental ethics to ecology and land manage-ment, as well as nationally known environmental speakers such as WendellBerry, David Brower, Kathleen Dean Moore, and Wes Jackson.


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Nina Bradley presents the Leopold Teaching Award to Steven Tucker of BangorHigh School, 1988. (Pat Peckham)

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Nina Bradley assisting research fellow Margaret Brittingham

Mist-net study for catch and release of birds, 1983. (Charles Bradley)

Taking a bird's bloodsample to studyparasites, 1983.(Charles Bradley)

e shack seminars were not dry talks about ecology and conservationthat simply featured a presentation of the findings of scientific or policyresearch. at would have been impossible with the combination of livelypersonalities leading the effort. According to Nina Bradley, a deeper senseof community formed among those who participated:

I think one of the things that is missed, as we were growing into all this,was what absolute fun we were having. We were having simply a great time.We would have Monday night seminars, a speaker, and everyone wouldbring his musical instrument. I remember one night it started to rain at theend of the seminar, so we all moved into the shack. . . . Baird Callicott hadhis bass fiddle, we had a violin, Jim Bachhuber had his violin, we had a dul-cimer, several guitars, and of course Charlie [Bradley] played wonderfulguitar, and we sang and that whole shack was just vibrating. But on top ofthis, we were beginning to understand the whole land mechanism as westudied all these various aspects. So it was a time of great happiness and joy,which is not just science—it was just a wonderful way of life.6

Creating such a sense of community is an important reason thatresearch continues to thrive on the reserve well after the Bradleys officiallyretired from their position in 1988.7 Nina Bradley’s sentiments about thepersonal connections that developed among those involved with thereserve were reiterated by former summer fellows. Baraboo native MichaelMossman, for example, was awarded summer fellowships in 1978 and1979, and he conducted comprehensive surveys of bird and small- mammal populations under the supervision of UW–Madison professor ofwild life ecology Stanley Temple. Mossman first visited the Leopold Memo-rial Reserve in high school in 1969, “for Gerald Scott’s tenth grade Bio logyclass, which relied heavily on field trips to the abundant and diverse natu-ral areas around Baraboo.”8 Reserve tours for Mossman’s class were led byFrank Terbilcox. Recalling his graduate school years, Mossman recountsthe power of his summer fellows experience:

Following the example of Charlie and Nina, our little group of fellowsworked hard, and had fun together. Even now, I feel indebted to Charlie’sactive, good-natured, inquisitive attitude, which was contagious, and toNina’s understanding and appreciation of family in both a literal and figurative sense. Together, the pair of them guided us not only in our


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studies but more so in our attitude toward our work, this place, and eachother. ey were a good team, and they instilled this in our little com-munity. . . . e gatherings, the field work, the writing, the days poringthrough Shack Journals in the dreary UW library basement, wove us intoa family tradition that, I think, extended back to the original concept ofthe Shack, maybe further. ese traditions are important, and they don’thappen on their own. As the years go by, I appreciate more and more theeffort and insight of folks like Nina and Charlie that allow these to growand thrive.9

After working abroad following his 1982 summer fellowship, anothersummer fellow, Dick Cates, a native of Spring Green, Wisconsin, laterreturned home and bought part of his family’s farm: “I developed the farmaccording to the ethic that I learned about through Aldo Leopold and thenCharles and Nina Bradley. I run a pasture-based operation that has noplowing and is grass-based beef farming. I have a nice business and familylife.” Cates notes how this type of farming is good for the land as evidencedby “trout and water cress in our streams” and “happy cattle.” His son “lovesthis farm” and he “might continue it through the next generation.”10

e conservation biologist Rick Knight, also a summer fellow underStan Temple, recalls how the experience has shaped his work in the Collegeof Natural Resources at Colorado State University, as well as his personalrelationships:

It’s not an exaggeration to say that my two years as a fellow at the reservecharted the path that I continue to follow. First, Charlie and Nina werethe best imaginable role models. . . . Second, one thing that came alongwith living in the Shack and spending every day on the reserve was thisnever-to-be-forgotten feeling that Aldo Leopold was with me, alongsideof me, offering both his company and his advice. Clearly not a “rational”feeling but so strong that I can feel it even today, thirty years later. ework that I have done while in Colorado and at Colorado State Universityhas all been shaped by this interest in the relationship of people to landand people to people. And this, of course, was the maxim of Leopold andhis children. e belief that conservation that works is conservation thatworks both for people and for land came from those two years, such wasthe power of working on the Leopold farm and the magnetism of Charlieand Nina.11


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Shack seminars and visitors to the reserve

David Brower (center) with John and Beth Ross, 1977. (Charles Bradley)

Roger Tory Peterson (center) and wife Virginia speaking with Frank Terbilcox, 1977.(Charles Bradley)

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Susan Leopold (daughter of Carl Leopold) presenting on her fellowship project, “Painting onthe Leopold Memorial Reserve,” summer 1980. (Charles Bradley)

Wendell Berry, 1985.(Charles Bradley)

For Mossman, Cates, Knight, and many other summer fellows, the oppor-tunity to conduct graduate research on the Leopold Memorial Reserveprofoundly influenced not only their career path but also their daily inter-actions with people and with land.

Fond memories aside, however, there was still room for improvement interms of integrating research findings and land management on the reserve.In the years following the implementation of the Bradleys’ research fellowsprogram, several proposals brought attention to the need for a more scien-tific approach to land management. In a May 1977 document, the reserve’smanagement committee suggested that work be done to “determine goalsfor all areas of the Reserve” and to “draw up a map delineating these variousgoal areas” including “hydrology, soils, [and] topography- geology.”12 In a1982 proposal, Leopold’s son Starker generally supported Bob Ellarson’soriginal 1969 management plan, but he also outlined the importance offurther expanding the research and education components of the reserve’s


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Reserve management committee meeting with (l-r) Frank Terbilcox, Bob Ellarson,Kathy Ela, Charlie Bradley, Toby Sherry, and Nina Bradley, spring 1977. (CharlesBradley)

management plan. He proposed more scientific research and visits by col-lege faculty and students in the environmental sciences in order to foster animproved understanding of the reserve’s ecology. He also recommendedbuilding a separate workspace for graduate students who were conductingresearch.13 Both of these reports favored more scientific research that wouldbe explicitly used to help guide conservation practices on the reserve.

New Directions for the Reserve’s Nonprofit Organizations

Beyond the changes brought on by the establishment of the Bradley StudyCenter, an important realignment in the nonprofit oversight of the reservetook place in the early 1980s. To promote more clearly its affiliation withAldo Leopold, the L. R. Head Foundation changed its name in 1982 tothe Sand County Foundation. Because of Leopold’s well-known book ofessays, A Sand County Almanac, the new title made the foundation morerecognizable as one devoted to conservation. It also presaged their shiftearly in the next decade toward a national and global reach in ecologicalland stewardship.

In the early 1980s, the Leopold family trust also reached a crossroadsas it decided what to do with the shack property. Some family memberswanted to donate the land to Aldo Leopold’s home institution, the Uni-versity of Wisconsin–Madison, which would have opened it up to moreresearch and a greater number of visitors. Others wanted to keep the sitein the family and thus more private. According to Nina Bradley, “Starkerwas at the helm of this [decision], and his idea was to give the shack andthe area to the University of Wisconsin for research, or however they coulduse it. en three or four of the nieces and nephews got together and said‘No, no thank you, we don’t want to do that.’ So at that point they decidedon establishing a foundation.”14

Bradley’s daughter Trish Stevenson described how she and her cousinSusan Freeman approached Starker about their feelings on keeping theland in the family: “We took Starker out in the prairie and we were reallynervous and we said, ‘We really don’t want our inheritance to go to theuniversity.’ And he didn’t know that there were younger family membersthat cared that much.” Leopold’s daughter Estella has also testified to thefact that younger family members were instrumental in pushing the family


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elders to consider forming a family foundation: “I think the whole ideathere was instigated by these young people, that we ought to have our ownfamily group running it as a foundation.”15 ose who advocated keepingthe land in private hands felt strongly that the shack still served an impor-tant purpose for the family, and this argument convinced Starker and hissiblings not to donate it, a decision that profoundly shaped the manage-ment of the land and public visitation to the shack. Because the Leopoldskept the land in family hands and still used it for personal visits, they con-tinued their policy of restricted public access to land that had by this timebecome quite famous.

e five children of Aldo and Estella Leopold thus decided in Decem-ber 1982 to establish a separate nonprofit organization, the Aldo LeopoldShack Foundation (ALSF). Its landholdings were restricted to the 200acres of the reserve owned by the Leopold family. Many of the objectivesof the ALSF complemented those stipulated in the bylaws of both theHead Foundation and the Leopold Memorial Reserve Agreement; it artic-ulated, for instance, the ALSF’s goals “to establish and maintain a wildlifesanctuary and nature preserve” and to “promote the study of wildlife ecol-ogy and land conservation and rehabilitation.” In its early years, the ALSFcharted its own course for navigating the process of jointly managing thereserve with its more experienced and better-financed counterpart, theSand County Foundation. It initially focused on helping the Sand CountyFoundation support the work of Charlie and Nina Bradley as the directorsof research and on managing publications requests and royalties related toAldo Leopold’s writings, this being the new nonprofit’s major source ofincome during its first decade. As participants in the original Leo poldMemorial Reserve agreement and as the board of directors of the Leo poldShack Foundation, Leopold’s children also continued to provide land-management input to the Sand County Foundation. Day-to-day manage-ment of all reserve land, including that owned by the ALSF, however, wasleft to Frank Terbilcox of the Sand County Foundation.

Although their missions were similar at the outset, the new founda-tion’s overall guiding principles were definitely not identical to those of theSand County Foundation. In particular, the ALSF focused more explicitlyon the science, philosophy, and legacy of Aldo Leopold and less on theimportance of conservation on private property. e ALSF’s articles ofincorporation emphasized the interests of Leopold’s children. As its first


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board of directors, they all had advanced degrees or extensive expertise inecology. e primary goals of the new foundation were (1) “to promoteeducation and scientific research . . . designed to produce a sharper, deeper,broader, wiser vision of land and its use, and which may serve as a labora-tory for the study of the wildlife and ecology of the area”; (2) “to promotefor educational purposes the continued publication and public awarenessof the scientific and literary works of Aldo Leopold”; and (3) “to perpetu-ate through such educational and scientific activities, the philosophies ofconservation and custodianship of natural resources and to promote thepractice of rehabilitation of land in order to return it to an approximationof its original pre-settlement condition, as such concepts were developedthrough the words and deeds of Aldo Leopold throughout his lifetime.”16

ese objectives demonstrate the degree to which the Leopold familyfoundation planned to focus on research and education and to base all ofits activities on Aldo Leopold’s writings on land health, ethics, and conser-vation philosophy.

e Leopold children thus encouraged use of the reserve for scientificresearch that offered insights into what Aldo Leopold called “the landmechanism” and “land health.” To them, Leopold’s dictum “to keep everycog and wheel is the first precaution in intelligent tinkering” was of theutmost of importance.17 Extending this metaphor to ecology, as Leopoldinvited his readers to do, the first step in such tinkering is to identify eachpart of an ecosystem, understand how it functions, and then begin to putit in the context of every other cog and wheel in the system. e work ofthe Bradleys through their study center and of Starker, Luna, Carl, andEstella Leopold in writing management reports and contributing as boardmembers of the Leopold Foundation indicated a clear preference for usingthe reserve as a center for ecological education and research efforts to fosteran ecological conscience and land ethic.

By contrast, Reed Coleman of the Sand County Foundation, with abackground in business, emphasized the importance of the reserve as amodel for conservation on private land as an alternative to governmentland ownership. He saw a key part of the reserve’s mission as being anexample of how to practice conservation for individuals and companieswith land holdings. His foundation brought executives of companies tothe property for seminars on land management and involved representa-tives from both science and business on the Sand County Foundation


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Board. To him, an important guiding principle is Leopold’s rhetoricalquestion in “e Land Ethic”: “At what point will governmental conser-vation, like the mastodon, become handicapped by its own dimensions?”18

With so much new activity, it took time for the ideas proposed by thetwo foundations, graduate researchers, and the reserve’s land manager totranslate into more coordinated action. Management proceeded much theway it had since its founding, with continued prairie restorations, pondconstruction, timber-stand improvements, and food-patch plantings.19

is was reflected in Bob Ellarson’s next management plan, a proposal inSeptember 1983 that contained few major changes. e more vocal inputof the Leopolds after the formation of the Aldo Leopold Shack Founda-tion, however, led Ellarson to include explicit references to the writings ofAldo Leopold in the new document and to follow the lead of the BradleyStudy Center by proposing an expansion in the scope of the reserve’sresearch program. Ellarson’s 1983 report asserted that the reserve should


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Executive seminar on ecological forest management sponsored by the Sand CountyFoundation at Champion International Paper, Inc. property in Michigan’s UpperPeninsula, 1999. (Sand County Foundation)

be “a fitting memorial to Aldo Leopold.” In another change, he replacedthe 1969 management goal of “aesthetic appreciation, recreation, and eco-nomic endeavors such as farming and forestry” with the more scientificgoal of developing research programs investigating “biological, hydrologi-cal, geological, climatic, and other physical parameters.”20 Five years ofgraduate research on the reserve, as well as a sharpened focus of the twofoundations that now oversaw conservation practices there, influenced thenew goals that Ellarson articulated in what would be his final report.

The summer research fellows program begun in 1978 and overseenby Nina and Charlie Bradley provided the stimulus for a more activeresearch and outreach program on the Leopold Memorial Reserve, a legacythat endures to this day. Research fellows fostered a new understanding ofthe reserve’s geology, hydrology, species diversity, and land-use history thatwould later be incorporated into land-management decisions. At weeklyshack seminars, the site began to serve as a local hub for discussions aboutconservation and ecology as research fellows and guest speakers sharedtheir insights with each other and the public. e late 1970s and early1980s set the stage for the reserve to expand its influence, from serving theinterests of participating landowners and a few residents to being an incu-bator of ideas on a regional and national scale.


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5 Conservation’s Next Generation

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In the 1980s, cooperative conservation at the LeopoldMemorial Reserve had become well established. e Sand County and AldoLeopold Shack Foundations focused on restoration, scientific research, edu-cation, and outreach. Together, these efforts promoted ecological land man-agement infused by the philosophy of Aldo Leopold. But at a national level,leading researchers had developed a new, broadened vision for conservationbiology and landscape ecology. ese advances eventually affected theLeopold Memorial Reserve, placing it within a larger regional setting thatextended beyond the local context of its existing land-management and sci-entific research programs.1 For two young foundations that were still find-ing their niche as environmental nonprofit organizations and that were out-growing their initial operations in the process, this transition was notpainless. e two decades leading up to the new millennium involved con-flict between the foundations, as well as between some of the reserve’s orig-inal founders and new staff and consultants.

Nearing his 1993 retirement, for example, Frank Terbilcox found hisvision for the reserve challenged by adherents to a landscape approach. Terbilcox had left a significant signature on the land within the LeopoldMemorial Reserve. He had expanded Aldo Leopold’s use of controlledburns, prairie restorations, and food-patch plantings, implementing themthroughout the reserve at targeted locations. He also led the effort to addseveral artificial waterfowl ponds. Many years later, the Aldo LeopoldFoundation ecologist, Steve Swenson, observed appreciatively of Terbilcox

that “virtually everything we do now, he was doing as a one-man band backthen. He really is part of that second generation of conservationists outhere.”2 As Swenson implied, not only had the Leopold Memorial Reservebeen greatly affected by the custodians of the land after Leopold, but thereserve was also transitioning to a third generation of conservationists.

Changes in Land Management Philosophy

A set of independent scientific reviews of the management strategies of thereserve triggered changes in its conservation practices. In June 1988 fiveecologists from around the country conducted the first outside review ofthe Leopold Memorial Reserve. e intent of the analysis was to system-atically assess whether the reserve had achieved its objectives.3 e princi-pal author of the review, the University of Wisconsin–Madison limnologistJohn Magnuson, wrote in the introduction of the team’s report that “thetime is right for the Reserve to develop a master plan for research and man-agement to build on its superb history of success and accomplishment.”4

In its report, the external review team quickly pointed out the strengthsof existing operations at the reserve. ey supported the prairie restora-tions that had been a key part of the property’s management since Leo -pold’s early experiments in ecological restoration. e work of Terbilcox,the Bradleys, and the reserve’s management committee in the realm of out-reach and research was also affirmed. Tours that were hands-on andshowed aspects of land management—for example, by directly demon-strating or involving participants in prairie restoration and native-plantseed collection—had already been part of Terbilcox’s tour program for sev-eral years. e report commended the Bradleys for their summer graduatefellows program and shack seminars, which had been successfully operat-ing for a decade. With its affirmation of these efforts, the review teamidentified aspects of the reserve’s conservation mission that they believedshould remain a part of its future plans.

e research review team’s report, though, also suggested several newdirections for the reserve. ey recommended that a tighter link be estab-lished between management and research by factoring management ques-tions into research projects and having research results drive managementdecisions—all of which were part of an iterative process that had by thistime become known in the field as “adaptive management.”5 In one

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example of this practice, the review team successfully argued that foodpatches be discontinued in favor of providing more sites for native-plantrestoration. is was based on research that had shown that the ongoinguse of food patches favored game species and that the surplus food pro-vided by patches offset the reductions in the deer herd brought about byregulated hunting.6 e review team maintained that a greater exchange ofideas among scientists, managers, and administrators in this and otherareas would improve an already strong foundation of research and man-agement. Finally, the group echoed Starker Leopold’s 1982 call for an inde-pendent facility to house a research program.

e reviewers’ most notable break from past management plans, how-ever, was the recommendation that more attention be given to landscape-level research and management across longer time frames. is, theyargued, would place the reserve in the context of larger-scale processes suchas ecological relationships “between forests and grasslands, forests andmarshes, or aquatic and terrestrial systems,” “spatial patterns of plants andanimals,” and “how these patterns change with management, weather, orbiological interactions.” Attention to these patterns and processes, they


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An example of a food patch, a practice discontinued after 1988. (Frank Terbilcox)

argued, demanded that the reserve’s staff link their work more explicitly tothe ecology, conservation, and management of surrounding lands.

e independent reviewers’ suggestion that landscape-level emphasisbe incorporated into the management of the reserve was not surprising inlight of the fact that a prominent ecosystem ecologist, Gene Likens fromthe Institute for Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, was on thereview team. Likens was internationally known for helping lead a pioneer-ing study of the Hubbard Brook Watershed in the White Mountains ofNew Hampshire.7 Findings from his research had influenced federal policyregulating air emissions after his team had provided clear scientific evi-dence in the late 1980s linking acid rain with damage to forests and lakesin the northeastern United States.8 As the case of acid rain indicates, agrowing number of ecologists and policy makers had embraced landscape-scale thinking.

Tensions in Conservation Philosophy and Practice

e landscape management approach differed drastically from the prac-tices that Frank Terbilcox had been using for two decades. ese changeswere especially trying for him because it came on the heels of the SandCounty Foundation’s hiring of the ecologist Brent Haglund in November1988 to fill the position of president. Haglund, who had received his doc-torate in ecosystem ecology at the University of Georgia under the notedecologists Eugene Odum and Frank Golley, was an ardent supporter oflandscape-scale conservation practices.9

Terbilcox, on the other hand, approached land management and con-servation at the level of small tracts within the reserve. For fire manage-ment, for example, he was accustomed to small, low-intensity controlledburns that could be executed by one or two people and that did not burnentire restoration plots at one time. In response to a large oak-savannarestoration project for which Haglund had secured funding, Terbilcox,never shy about expressing his views, wrote: “To completely wipe out ourEdge effect . . . and destroy our ruffed grouse, woodcock and low-nestingbird habitat under the name of oak savanna restoration is unconscion -able.”10 In a response, Haglund diplomatically acknowledged their differ-ence of opinion, stating his regret that Terbilcox had “this current occasionto be displeased with my work for Sand County Foundation’s programs”


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before concluding that “there has never been anything other than respectand admiration for both your love of the land and your demonstratedcommitment to leave your land, and all other parts of the Reserve, betterthan you found it.”11 ese and other disagreements led to tensionsbetween the two men, which resulted in a difficult transition from oneleadership team to another.

It would be surprising, however, if such tensions had not emergedbetween enthusiastic reserve participants applying their own visions to theongoing conservation work unfolding there.12 e picture was furthercomplicated by the fact that conservation actions were not led by one per-son at the head of an organization, but rather by two nonprofit founda-tions with regular input from their staffs and boards of directors. is illus-trates just one of the challenges of cooperative land conservation—thatthere may not be a single vision because many stakeholders are involved.

Among the individuals closely connected with the Leopold MemorialReserve in the 1990s, the disagreements went beyond questions about thescale of land management to broader discussions about conservation phi-losophy. An article written in 1992 by Reed Coleman and his brotheromas in Philanthropy generated considerable debate between the Cole-

Crew being trained in conducting a controlled burn, 1989. (Charles Bradley)

man and Leopold families and their respective foundations about the roleof government in conservation. In the article, the Colemans first describedtheir personal connection to Aldo Leopold as they reminisced about timespent in the outdoors: “Our boyhood days afield with ‘Uncle’ Aldo andour father, omas Coleman, were most often short on fish and game forthe bag, but were always long on conversation about conservation.” eyrecalled “relaxed dialogue” on such trips about a “Leopold Land Ethic”that was based on “sound, voluntary environmentalism that depends onprivate ownership and stewardship.” ey then criticized “current environ-mental policy” that involved “government appropriation of the individual’sobligation to improve the land,” continuing that, were he alive, AldoLeopold “would be appalled by the command-and-control approach envi-ronmentalists advocate today.”13 e president of the Aldo Leopold ShackFoundation board, Gordon Stevenson, promptly brought the article to theattention of the foundation. Stevenson and others disagreed with the Cole-mans’ portrayal of the environmental movement. Carl Leopold wrote toReed Coleman that “since his death forty-five years ago, many people haveopined what Aldo Leopold would say about current affairs, but there aresome among us who, having heard what Dad had to say, would not agreeto such guesses.” Leopold argued that his father “was clearly not opposed togovernmental involvement in conservation” even if he would have agreedwith the Colemans’ viewpoint that “private stewardship was essential.”14


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Changes in land cover on the reserve since the 1840s, indicating a shift from oaksavanna to forest. (Sand County Foundation)

A dispute also arose in the early 1990s on a more personal issue, theownership of the Bradley Study Center, and this matter further strainedrelations between the two foundations. According to the original 1976agreement, the Sand County Foundation owned the structure, and theterms of occupancy stipulated that it would return to that foundation afterthe Bradleys no longer lived there. e document specified that it be usedby the Sand County Foundation as “a center for research and study in con-junction with the land in the Leopold Memorial Reserve.”15 Later, in themid 1990s, the Bradleys and other members of the Leopold family decidedthat they wanted to purchase the study center and the five acres of landsurrounding it in order to provide a base of operations for the AldoLeopold Shack Foundation. e board of directors of the Sand CountyFoundation, which already had long-term plans to use the structure for itsown programs, did not agree to this proposal.

An outgoing Sand County Foundation board member, Kate McMahan,identified this as a key source of growing tensions between the two foun-dations. In her final thoughts after fifteen years in a leadership role, shewrote in 1995 that “the Board cannot let the rift continue to widenbetween the two foundations and must allow both positions to be fullyarticulated before the entire Board . . . [in order] to find a win-win solu-tion for these two foundations which theoretically have so much in com-mon and which should be strong allies.”16 Disagreement nevertheless sim-mered between the two sides over the study center. At one point theLeopold family even looked into pulling out of the original reserve agree-ment, but they decided against this course of action after considering itsfull implications. Development on broken-up reserve parcels no longerbound by the reserve agreement could irrevocably alter the landscapearound the shack. e matter of the Bradley Study Center was finallyresolved in 2004, when the Sand County Foundation sold the building tothe Aldo Leopold Foundation while retaining ownership of the land.17

An Expanding Mission for the Reserve

Even though the two foundations were at odds in the 1990s about theirvision for conservation, and they further diverged over the study center,these years were productive for both. e Sand County Foundationbrought outside scientific review teams to the reserve every three years,


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and, under the leadership of Brent Haglund, it further expanded its proj-ects to other parts of the state, country, and world. In one example, theSand County Foundation sought to use its Quality Hunting Ecology pro-gram as a model for conservationists in Wisconsin and other states thatwere dealing with deer overpopulation. To promote the program, thefoundation hosted a 1996 national seminar that focused on ways toimprove safety, habitat quality, and recreational experiences for hunterswhile respecting landowner rights and responsibilities.18

e Sand County Foundation also began working with landowners inother states and countries to implement conservation practices on privateproperty. One program involved collaboration on rangeland conservationpractices among ranchers in the western United States and rangeland man-agers in Africa. A Sand County Foundation newsletter from the late 1990sreported that the expansive project’s purpose was to use stakeholder dis-cussion sessions to identify key ecosystem monitoring issues in locations“as diverse as African savannas and rivers and the rangeland and mountainsettings of Colorado and New Mexico.”19 Clearly, the foundation hadmoved beyond the Leopold Memorial Reserve property that had served asits focal point for the previous three decades.20

e Sand County Foundation financed its growth by more aggressivelysecuring grants from sources such as the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foun-dation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the National Fish and WildlifeFoundation. e Department of Defense provided another funding sourceby supporting an Upper Midwest oak-savanna restoration project.21 isinvolved the Sand County Foundation and several other entities workingat sites such as the Leopold Memorial Reserve and the Fort McCoy mili-tary base, an hour northwest of Baraboo. Extensive conservation researchwas already occurring on the 60,000-acre landscape of Fort McCoy in partbecause it is home to one of the largest remaining populations of theendangered Karner Blue Butterfly.22

In the meantime, the Aldo Leopold Shack Foundation, under the lead-ership of board president Gordon Stevenson, also experienced a period ofgrowth in staffing and activity in the mid-1990s. e incoming presidentof the board, Estella Leopold, later reflected that “we had a little familygroup and we had a lot of [research] fellows . . . and we had Daddy’s land.But as for outreach, yes, we had some friendly visitors and all, but thething is that we didn’t have a staff and we didn’t have [a] policy about


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Sand County Foundation projects

Kevin McAleese, executive vice president of the Sand County Foundation, next to a sign at thePine Island Wildlife Area that identifies a cooperative venture with the Wisconsin Departmentof Natural Resources on the Quality Hunting Ecology Program, late 1990s. (Sand CountyFoundation)

From left to right, Reed Coleman, Sand County Foundation chairman, with SCF director TomBourland and president Brent Haglund at the Forbes Trinchera Ranch in southern Coloradofor a landowner seminar on ecological monitoring, 1999. (Sand County Foundation)


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visitors . . . we were just entertaining friends.”23 In an attempt to expandits reach, the board hired former research fellow Charlie Luthin as its firstexecutive director in 1995, and in the same year it streamlined the organi-zation’s name to the Aldo Leopold Foundation. At about this time, theAldo Leopold Foundation, like the Sand County Foundation, worked toincrease the size of its budget by turning to new funding sources, includingthe David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Town Creek Foundation,and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.24 Luthin revived the seminarprogram, which had been inactive since the Bradleys’ retirement in 1988,and established a summer intern program that closely resembled theBradleys’ earlier Leopold Fellows Program. e foundation decided toincrease the size of its board of directors from seven to thirteen and soughtnon–family members in order to bring a wider diversity of perspectives toits decision-making processes. Starting in 1996, tours of the Leopold shack,formerly conducted by Terbilcox (of the Sand County Foundation), wereled by staff of the Aldo Leopold Foundation.

Informal collaborations with sister organizations such as the AldoLeopold (formerly L. R. Head) Nature Center and a national nonprofitorganization called the Leopold Education Project (LEP) likewise deep-ened as part of Estella Leopold’s vision for new outreach efforts. e LEP,which was established in 1991 to develop lesson plans for teachers inter-ested in integrating the ideas of Aldo Leopold into K-12 curricula aroundthe country, first cohosted with the Aldo Leopold Foundation a teachers’conference in 1996 in Madison. It disseminated LEP lesson plans and pro-vided a forum for participants to share their insights, and the conferencehas continued every summer since.25

In 1999, Wellington “Buddy” Huffaker took over as the Aldo LeopoldFoundation’s executive director, and he oversaw the continued growth ofthe organization. e foundation’s reputation for effectively implementingprairie restorations led, in the same year, to collaboration among twentylandowners in restoration work on blufflands along the lower WisconsinRiver. Project participants attempted to restore prairie habitat in a steeplysloped, unglaciated portion of southern Wisconsin not far from AldoLeopold’s original work in Coon Valley.26 Greater expertise working witha diverse array of landowners positioned the foundation to take on a lead-ership role two years later in a large federally funded conservation program

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Restoration projects overseen by the Aldo Leopold Foundation

International Crane Foundation ecologist Jeb Barzen and Aldo Leopold Foundation ecologistBuddy Huffaker IV preparing prairie seeds for planting at the Bradley Study Center, 1996.(Aldo Leopold Foundation)

Volunteers sowing seeds at a prairierestoration on the Leopold MemorialReserve, fall 1996. Bud Huffaker III inforeground. (Aldo Leopold Foundation)

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Steve Swenson, foundation ecologist, providing instructions to a blufflands restorationgroup, fall 1999. (Aldo Leopold Foundation)

Lawrenceville School student Lindsey Edwards helping conduct a controlled burn under thesuper vision of Leopold Foundation ecologist Steve Swenson, 2002. (Aldo Leopold Foundation)

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The opening of the Leopold Center

Installation of pipes for geothermal air circulation, 2006. (Aldo LeopoldFoundation)

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Completed Leopold Center, 2007. Note solar panels on roof and rain-catchment featurebetween the two buildings. (Aldo Leopold Foundation)

Buddy Huffaker (right), executive director of the Leopold Foundation, leading a tour of theLeopold Center for the staff of Rachel Jacobsen (next to Huffaker), assistant secretary for Fish,Wildlife, and Parks, Department of the Interior, 2012. (Aldo Leopold Foundation)

called Farming and Conservation Together (FACT). is program en cour -aged farmers in the Baraboo area to be involved in “conservation programsin the area which would simultaneously support agricultural activities.”27

With each new endeavor, the scope of the foundation’s activities reached alarger network of program participants interested in conservation.

e Aldo Leopold Foundation’s expansion continued with the 2007construction of the 12,000-square-foot Leopold Center on newly acquiredproperty on Levee Road a mile east of the shack. e facility, whichreplaced its former headquarters in downtown Baraboo, features offices,classrooms, meeting spaces, an exhibit hall, and a library that allow thefoundation to regularly host conferences and other events that call atten-tion to its mission. e buildings and surrounding grounds emulateLeopold’s principles of living lightly on the land: it has been ranked at thehighest level, platinum, by the US Green Building Council’s Leadership inEnergy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.28 e site has solarpanels, a rain garden to reduce stormwater erosion, flushless toilets, andgeothermal heating and cooling. As a result of greater public visibility viathis inviting facility, the Aldo Leopold Foundation has attracted many newvisitors beside those who had traditionally travelled to the shack.

The arrival of the twenty-first century marked the culminationof a sustained period of growth in programs that put into practice the con-servation philosophies of the Sand County and Aldo Leopold Founda-tions. eir guiding principles had evolved from the work of Aldo Leopoldat the shack property, the Riley Game Cooperative, and several other sitesover the course of his career. anks to the efforts of participants at thereserve beginning in the late 1960s, the land’s open vistas remained, andits plant and animal communities flourished after several decades of eco-logical restoration, research, and education projects. e significance of theshack property in conservation history radiated to other locations, and italso brought many visitors to the reserve from around the globe, especiallyafter the opening of the Leopold Center in 2007. ose traveling to thereserve sought to understand the beauty of this unassuming landscape,where Aldo Leopold synthesized many of his ideas about conservation,land health, and environmental ethics.


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Conclusion

The Legacy of the Leopold Memorial Reserve

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From the earliest days of Aldo Leopold’s experi-ments in ecological restoration on his Sauk County farm, he providedformative stewardship experiences for the eventual founders of the Leo -pold Memorial Reserve. e reserve’s initial participants, led by the nextgeneration of the Leopold and Coleman families, based their managementdecisions on Leopold’s concept of land health as they worked together toconserve and restore landscapes around the shack. At the time of thereserve’s formation in 1967, the number of participants included five fam-ilies who owned 900 acres among them, with later land acquisitionsexpanding the reserve to more than 1,600 acres. Management and pro-gramming, often a one-man job during its early decades, was later overseenby two foundations with several staff members between them.

Looking to the future, however, the stewards of the Leopold MemorialReserve face challenging questions that accompany the evolution of theproject. How will the succession of land ownership for the remaining par-ticipants be navigated? How will the staffs from both foundations adapt tonew developments in conservation and ecology? Can the two organizationsjointly develop a vision for the reserve’s future? ese and other questionsinspire the reserve’s next generation of conservationists to continually growin their understanding of the human–land relationship.

Although the opening of the Leopold Center signals a new receptive-ness to visitors and a renewed commitment to conservation on the Leo -pold Memorial Reserve, not all parts of the reserve are protected equally

into the foreseeable future. Since its founding, all of the participants haveremained in the agreement or sold their property to one of the founda-tions. ere have been moments where commitment has faltered, but theintegrity of the reserve has ultimately been maintained, and this longevityis a testament to Leopold’s original vision and that of the reserve’sfounders.1 Because of the uniqueness of this agreement, however, transi-tions between generations among the reserve’s remaining landowners willpresent a challenge. Will future generations of each family be as committedto participation, or will they have other ideas for using or selling the land?2

is is less of a challenge for conservation areas that are established in per-petuity. But a commitment among neighbors reinforced by a right-of-first-refusal agreement has kept the reserve recovering in land health and avail-able for scientific study, guided tours, and limited recreational use fornearly fifty years. All of these outcomes reinforce Leopold’s vision ofincreased responsibility among private landowners.

If Aldo Leopold’s projects at Riley or Faville Grove are any indication,it can be difficult to retain interest in cooperative conservation on privateland beyond a generation. At those two sites, historical markers are postedalong nearby bike trails or roads about these past projects, but the cooper-ative spirit has waned and the land has gone back to individually managedproperties. In a 2003 interview, John Riley, a participant in the RileyGame Cooperative (and a great-grandson of Richard Riley, the founder ofthe community of Riley), traced the collapse of the cooperative to Leo -pold’s unexpected death. While it was licensed as a game cooperative untilthe early 1960s, it was never the same without Leopold. After he died, “itjust fizzled. He was the only one from town who really worked to keep itgoing.”3 Obviously, for cooperative management of land to persist acrossgenerations, its existence cannot rely so heavily on the dedication and per-severance of just one person.

Fortunately, though, the presence of the two foundations at theLeopold Memorial Reserve means that the site is better positioned to avoida similar fate. It thus appears from a comparison of these cases of cooper-ative conservation on private lands that collaboration with a nonprofitorganization or another more enduring entity may be an important factorin perpetuating the enterprise. In a promising turn of events, Frank andColleen Terbilcox sold their 300-acre property to the Leopold Foundationshortly before Frank’s death in June 2011. Although this required extensive

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and sometimes tense negotiations, the Terbilcoxes nevertheless continuedthe practice of having one of the foundations purchase land from the par-ticipants and neighbors.4 is followed a precedent established by previouslandowners many years before the Terbilcoxes sold their land, when theAnchor, Kammerer, and VanHoosen families sold land to the SandCounty Foundation. e continued practice of landowners passing prop-erty to the foundations bodes well for the longevity of the reserve.

Aside from the foundations’ important work in open-spacepreservation, land management on the reserve has also changed in responseto new developments in the fields of conservation biology and ecology.Early generations of conservationists—specifically individuals like AldoLeopold and Frank Terbilcox—were grounded in an increasingly scientificview of conservation, but their management practices involved tools thatoften required a small-scale approach to controlled burns, prairie plant-ings, deer-herd reduction, and other aspects of managing land health.Whether intentional or not, this practice tended to isolate particular parts

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Former Riley Game Cooperative site, including Military Ridge bike trail built on anold railroad line, 2013. (Stephen Laubach)

of an ecosystem, such as controlled burns on small parcels of land or foodpatches for a single species like deer.

By the 1980s, the term “conservation biology” emerged in the conser-vation literature as a name for a new subfield within conservation, and itprovided a framework for a more science-based, large-scale approach toland use. is shift went beyond a simple exercise in semantics; the termaccurately described an interdisciplinary field that began with a more inte-grated scientific approach to the preservation of biological diversity. Con-servation biology also offered new insights about the importance of humanneeds in developing a coherent philosophy of sustainable resource use andprotection.5 It combined knowledge and insights from the physical andbiological sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. e newlyemerging fields of landscape ecology and conservation genetics contributedto this new synthesis, allowing greater consideration of interconnectedpopulations and processes at regional scales.

Recognition of the need to involve local communities in conservationin ways that resembled Aldo Leopold’s community conservation projectsin the Southwest and in Coon Valley also led to increased attention to thehuman dimension of conservation through the expansion of outreach andeducation initiatives. is outlook departed from an approach to conser-vation that had been favored from the 1960s through the 1980s—settingaside natural areas by conservation groups without fully considering theland-use interests of the people living or working there.6 e historianSusan Flader observes that “the rediscovery of cooperative conservationreally came along sometime in the late 1980s or into the 1990s.” In contrastto the more exclusive efforts of earlier decades, recent cooperative conser-vation organizations rally around places in closer proximity to people;Flader lists as examples “stream teams that are protecting streams” and“watershed groups that are trying to talk to landowners in a particularwatershed.” Such groups have grown beyond just a small set of landown-ers. Instead, Flader notes, they are “organizing at the community level towork together to protect a particular place that they all love.”7

is kind of community-wide cooperative conservation bears astronger resemblance to Leopold’s 1930s Coon Valley project than to theLeopold Memorial Reserve. As Leopold knew, such efforts must go beyondsimply signing an agreement and managing the land with relatively littleinput by participants and neighbors. In the case of the reserve, the Anchor

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and VanHoosen families were part of the original agreement but were lessinvolved in management decisions. For cooperative conservation to workwell, the ideas of all participating landowners, as well as interested mem-bers of the surrounding community, should be sought.

ese and other developments in conservation are reflected in theevolving approaches of the lead participants in the reserve project. Begin-ning with the reserve as one of the original undertakings in the vicinity ofMadison, the Sand County Foundation now oversees projects that linkindividuals from around the world who actively promote the ideas of AldoLeopold in conservation practices on private land. e Aldo LeopoldFoundation has devoted resources at its new Leopold Center with the pur-pose of bringing visitors to the reserve. It has done so in hopes of inspiringa national dialogue about Leopold’s land ethic and the human–land rela-tionship; this is facilitated in other locations by its internationally releasedbiographical film about Aldo Leopold, Green Fire, and the Land Ethic

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A meeting of the Tanzania Natural Resource Forum to discuss the managementand monitoring of grazing land and wildlife, 2004. (Sand County Foundation)

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Leaders Program offered at the Leopold Center and at sites around thecountry. Last, the Leopold Memorial Reserve is now part of the 15,000-acre Leopold–Pine Island Important Bird Area. is partnership betweenthose overseeing the bird area reflects expanding notions of habitat con-nectivity, including the realization that habitat management requires peo-ple to acknowledge that wildlife doesn’t recognize artificial boundaries suchas property lines.8

In considering the reserve’s history, Reed Coleman explained that thereserve was the original inspiration for the Sand County Foundation butthat the foundation has moved beyond it for much of its work. “eLeopold Memorial Reserve as it exists now,” Coleman stated, “is the tinylittle piece of yeast in the sourdough bread that has now spread to all thelands that Sand County has any influence over: watersheds, ranches, farms,fisheries. So the original idea, as the Leopold Memorial Reserve has movedon, doesn’t really occur on the Leopold Memorial Reserve anymore for awhole lot of reasons.” He still sees a place, though, for continued collabo-

Map of Leopold–Pine Island Important Bird Area showing the Leopold MemorialReserve and other tracts. (image developed by Dylan Moriarty, UW–MadisonCartography Lab, with assistance from Jen Simoni, Aldo Leopold Foundation)

ration with the Aldo Leopold Foundation in incorporating ideas fromwhat they have learned at other sites: “We can bring some of that back . . .[and] we can work with the Leopold Foundation to do [that] together.”9

More than twenty years after the first research review and forty-five yearsafter the reserve’s formation, Coleman sees the Sand County Foundation’sexperiences on the reserve as an important but early step in its evolutiontoward advocating private-land conservation projects on a larger scale.While the Sand County Foundation has moved beyond the reserve insome respects, however, this location’s rich history as the site of Leopold’searly experiments in ecological restoration ensures the reserve’s continuedrelevance in that foundation’s present work.

Taking into account the increased size and scope of the LeopoldMemorial Reserve project and the two foundations that began there, thereis room to explore how the reserve property contributes to the nationaldialogue on conservation. Nina Bradley, like her father, found it humblinghow much more there was to learn even about this one piece of land.“Well, maintaining land turns out to be a big, big project,” she said in2009, nearly seventy-five years after her family first bought the shack prop-erty, adding, “You don’t just let it happen.” A priority of hers for the reservecontinued to be “learning more and more about a small piece of land.” Inarticulating her hopes for the future of the Leopold Memorial Reserve,she said, “I would like to have the message on a more national basis . . .perhaps using the Leopold Reserve as a model of how you can reconnectwith the land.”10 Susan Flader, drawing on her experience as chair of theLeopold Foundation Board between 2003 and 2006, concurred: “We feelthat . . . our work on the concept of land health and what it means in prac-tice is something that we can best explore on our own land and in cooper-ation with our neighbors in this landscape that our staff understands. Andwe’re also trying to understand it better, of course, by encouraging evenmore scientific research and monitoring. But we’re much better able todevelop these ideas in this place, and then in the landscapes that arenearby.”11 Bradley and Flader have shared aspirations for how the AldoLeopold Foundation can reach a national audience, with the reserve play-ing a larger role in directly initiating a sustained dialogue about conserva-tion, land health, and ethics.

ere is no doubt that the visibility of the Leopold Memorial Reserveand its contributions to land conservation have recently begun to reach a

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broader audience. Evidence for this comes from the growing list of out-reach and education programs offered by the Sand County and AldoLeopold Foundations, as well as from visitation rates to the LeopoldMemorial Reserve. On the basis of conservative estimates, annual visitshave quadrupled, from 1,500 tours in the late 1990s to over 6,000 toursafter the Leopold Center opened in 2007.12 e foundations are thereforefacing questions that accompany greater recognition, such as how to bal-ance public access with land preservation. e reserve was founded primar -ily out of a desire to halt encroaching development that would forever alterthe landscape around the Leopold shack. Visitation to the reserve has beencarefully restricted since its early days, with the location kept secretthrough deliberate attempts to prevent it from being shown on maps orrecognized by roadside historical markers. is has been done in the inter-est of protecting it from vandalism, illegal hunting, or overuse.13 e open-ing of the Leopold Center in 2007, however, signaled a new receptivity tovisitors. Measures have been taken to try to minimize the damage done byheavy traffic, such as more formal procedures for visiting the reserve. Forexample, the once haphazard parking at the shack’s entrance and un -planned visits to the reserve have been replaced with parking one miledown the road at the Leopold Center, where visitors are given a touroverview. ere are also more frequent group tours of the shack led by thestaff of the Aldo Leopold Foundation. And in a new openness to hikingon the property, the Leopold Foundation opened a trail network aroundthe Leopold Center in the fall of 2012, shifting the focus for visitors fromthe shack itself to landscapes around the shack.14

In addition to changes in conservation practices on the LeopoldMemorial Reserve, other questions remain about fundamental priorities ofthe reserve’s multiple participants. On the very land that played a signifi-cant role in the conceptual development of Aldo Leopold’s views on con-servation, his children emphasize quite different dimensions of the landethic than Tom Coleman’s son, Reed, does. Coleman has expressed a strongpreference for private-sector solutions to the challenges involved in main-taining land health. e Leopolds are more focused on invoking the ideasof their father in the areas of research, land management, and ethicsregardless of stakeholder affiliation. While these contrasting views are notthe only ones expressed by staff or board members of these foundations, itis clear that they have left a large imprint on their organizations, starting

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with primary authorship of the articles of incorporation for each as well asthe funding sources and programs that they pursue.

Given the differing approaches of the participants in the LeopoldMemorial Reserve project, it is obvious that Leopold’s writings can beinterpreted in multiple ways. Does this mean that a land ethic can poten-tially mean all things to all people and that its significance is thereforediminished?15 Not necessarily. Debates over the direction of activities onthe Leopold Memorial Reserve reveal a lively discourse about core valueson cooperatively managed land, not a belief that his words can be used toespouse just any conviction about conservation. Leopold embraced the“threshing out” of differences as he promoted conservation that integratedscience, economics, and ethics in the interest of restoring landscapes andcommunities. Fortunately, both foundations overseeing the reserve con-tinue to be motivated by these important ideals of Aldo Leopold. In thisrespect, the power of Leopold’s land ethic lies in its ability to guide people

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Anna Hawley, education assistant for the Leopold Foundation, leading a group tourof the reserve and the shack for a group of middle school students from Madison,2008. (Aldo Leopold Foundation)

from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives toward common ground,if not complete agreement, in their commitment to conservation projectsinvolving multiple stakeholders.

Following its initial introduction to the world as the central set-ting for A Sand County Almanac, the land that now composes the LeopoldMemorial Reserve has served as a source of inspiration for those who seekan improved human relationship to the Earth. On the eve of the centen-nial anniversary of Aldo Leopold’s 1887 birth, Charles Bradley asked, “Hasthe Leopold Memorial Reserve helped the Nation—or for that matter, anyindividual—toward acceptance of the Land Ethic as a way of life?”16

Bradley himself struggled to answer his own question, and a quarter of acentury later, applying the idea of a land ethic to on-the-ground decisionsremains an elusive task. On the reserve, one could argue that this land, wellon its way to recovery from the scars of poor agricultural practices, is anexcellent example of the land ethic in action.

Yet Bradley’s question invites one to think beyond the boundaries ofthe reserve, to land-use decisions taking place across the country where theresults are not as encouraging. If phenomena such as the growing deadzone in the Gulf of Mexico or the rapidly declining aquifer levels in theGreat Plains states are any indication, it is safe to say that ideas central tothe land ethic need to reach a far wider circle of citizens before they areaccepted “as a way of life.”17 Such wounds to land and sea may appear tobe large regional issues outside the control of any one person, but they arealso the collective result of a myriad of individual and local decisions.

While there is thus still much work to do, there is also reason for hope.Participants in the ongoing Leopold Memorial Reserve project have playedan important role in initiating a conversation about a land ethic that is ofnational significance. Reserve collaborators have taken steps to reach amuch broader segment of the population than just a few neighbors in cen-tral Wisconsin in order to better influence land-use decisions at the local,state, national, and international levels. e story of the Leopold MemorialReserve is a work in progress, then, but its participants have successfullychallenged each other and an increasing number of conservation partners,program participants, and visitors to act in ways that preserve and enhanceland health.

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105

Looking ahead

Sand County Foundation–partnered program to improve monitoring and harvestingof sea urchins in southern California, 2007. (Sand County Foundation)

A Land Ethic Leaders group debarking sustainably harvested trees from the Leopoldshack area, 2012. (Aldo Leopold Foundation)

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Maintaining participant involvement across gen-erations has long been a central challenge to cooperative conservation. Asthis manuscript was being completed, it became apparent that generationalshifts would test the existence of the Leopold Memorial Reserve as well.As noted in the conclusion, the owners of the largest remaining individu-ally owned reserve tract, Frank and Colleen Terbilcox, negotiated the saleof their 300-acre property in the spring of 2011 to the Aldo Leopold Foun-dation. is crucial tract, with its sweeping vista as one gazes to the south-east from the shack, was essential to the reserve’s integrity. It carried a heftyprice tag, however. In response, the Aldo Leopold Foundation, supportedby donors Phill and Joan Pines, aggressively sought out private funding,but it also used matching state and federal money to cover a third of the$1.5 million needed for the purchase.1 Raising that amount of money insuch a short time would have otherwise been difficult to accomplish.

e financing of this transaction brought its own set of complicationsthat led to another challenge to the future of the Leopold MemorialReserve. With a commitment to conservation by private rather than gov-ernmental means that dates back to the original reserve agreement, theSand County Foundation concluded that the change in ownership struc-ture following the purchase of the Terbilcox property was problematic.2 Asa result of this development, the Sand County Foundation reexamined itsplace in the Leopold Memorial Reserve agreement, as the Aldo LeopoldFoundation had done two decades earlier. In this case, the Sand County

Foundation decided to commit its resources to a different approach to ful-filling its central mission of advancing a land ethic among landownersacross the country. A key part of this internal evaluation was the realizationthat engaging with private landowners did not require the foundation toown land. e Sand County Foundation thus announced in June 2013that it was seeking “a conservation-minded buyer” to purchase nearly athousand acres of land.3

Such events reveal the ever-changing circumstances in which cooper-ative conservation takes place, and they suggest that sustaining the Leo -pold Memorial Reserve is an elusive goal. Amid new conservation prac-tices, generational shifts in ownership, and an evolving landscape ofnonprofit stewardship at the site, the ability of participants to adapt tonovel circumstances will again be called upon to carry on the reserve’sconservation legacy.

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Notes

Manuscript sources include records of the Aldo Leopold Foundation andthe Sand County Foundation, as well the Aldo Leopold Archives of theUniversity of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center (available online athttp://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections/AldoLeopold). As this manuscriptwas being completed, the Aldo Leopold Foundation and the Sand CountyFoundation records were being relocated and some had been renamed onmultiple occasions. Every effort was made by the author to provide themost recent location of these sources. In December 2013, the SandCounty Foundation donated reserve-related materials to the University ofWisconsin–Madison Archives for long-term preservation. e LeopoldFoundation is in the process of finalizing the location of historical docu-ments at its reserve headquarters.

Oral history interviews with Nina Leopold Bradley, Reed Coleman,Howard Mead, and Frank Terbilcox were conducted by Mark Madison,the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) historian, and Stephen Lau -bach, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Interviews with Susan Flader,Estella Leopold, and Trish Stevenson were conducted by Stephen Laubach,University of Wisconsin–Madison. Recordings and transcripts are locatedat the USFWS National Digital Library (http://digitalmedia.fws.gov/cdm/landingpage/collection/document).

Introduction

1. Details about the March 1965 dinner and 1930s–1940s trips to the shackare from separate interviews with Reed Coleman, Howard Mead, and Frank Ter-bilcox by Mark Madison and Stephen Laubach on 28–30 October 2009, andfrom phone conversations with Coleman and Mead by the author on 17 May2011. e Leopold family, as the fifth family, did not formally sign the agreementuntil June 1968 but were involved in all discussions.

2. ere is much scholarship on the history of conservation that informs thisbook. A few examples include Meine, Correction Lines; Flader, “Building Conser-vation”; Maher, Nature’s New Deal; Armitage, Nature Study Movement; Hays, Con-servation and the Gospel of Efficiency; Reiger, American Sportsmen; and Knight andLandres, Stewardship across Boundaries.

3. Land trusts protect over 47 million acres of land in the United States. SeeChang, 2010 National Land Trust Census Report, available at http://www.landtrustalliance.org/land-trusts/land-trust-census/2010-final-report. While land trustsare a fast-growing area of land conservation, total acreage in land trusts is stilldwarfed by holdings at the federal and state levels. e US Forest Service, forexample, manages 193 million acres (see http://www.fs.fed.us/), and the NationalPark Service oversees 84 million acres (see http://www.nps.gov/faqs.htm). Formore information on land trusts see Brewer, Conservancy.

4. Lubowski et al., Major Uses of Land. Others put the number as high as 85percent. Information on the acreage in land trusts was also provided by BrentHaglund and Stanley Temple in conversations with the author on 5 December2011.

5. Meine, Aldo Leopold.6. From an unpublished 1944 essay by Aldo Leopold, “Conservation: In

Whole or in Part?” in Flader and Callicott, River of the Mother of God, 310–19. Inan example of a reserve ecologist using Leopold’s concept of land health severaldecades later, Dr. Alan Haney, paraphrasing Leopold, explained in 1995 thathealthy lands “maintain stability, recycle nutrients, absorb and release water, buildand protect soil, and develop and maintain appropriate habitats for componentspecies.” Sand County Foundation Newsletter, Summer 1995, Sand CountyFoundation (hereafter, SCF), cabinet 1, drawer 2, “Newsletters and Brochures,1971–2004.”

7. For more on these projects, see Meine, Aldo Leopold, and Flader, inkingLike a Mountain.

8. Information on the history of the Riley Game Cooperative is from Meine,Aldo Leopold, 281–82, and from Silbernagel and Silbernagel, “Tracking AldoLeopold.”

9. From a 1934 Field and Stream article, “Helping Ourselves,” in Flader andCallicott, River of the Mother of God, 203–8.

10. For more on the difficulties, but also the benefits, of cooperative conserva-tion, see Freyfogle, Land We Share, 171–74.

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11. e first quotation, which is from a book review Leopold wrote in 1937,is from Meine and Knight, Essential Aldo Leopold, 186. e second quotation, alsofrom Meine and Knight (187), is from an unpublished draft document written in1940.

12. For an eloquent narrative focusing almost exclusively on the Leopold fam-ily’s contributions to the reserve’s formation, see Mills, chap. 5, “e Leopolds’Shack,” in In Service of the Wild.

13. Later, in 1967, the Department of Game Management changed its nameto the Department of Wildlife Ecology to reflect a broadening in the field beyondan interest in economically valuable game species. After merging with the Depart-ment of Forestry in 2007, it is now called the Department of Forest and WildlifeEcology.

Chapter 1. Settlement and Changing Land Health in the Central Sands Area

1. Leopold, Sand County Almanac, 9.2. Ronald J. Mason, “Paleo-Indian Tradition.” See also Lange, County Called

Sauk, 6–9; and Birmingham and Eisenberg, Indian Mounds of Wisconsin.3. Birmingham and Eisenberg, Indian Mounds of Wisconsin, 71, 74; Lange,

County Called Sauk, 9.4. Information on the geology of the Leopold Reserve is from Steinhacker,

Sand Country of Aldo Leopold, 12–15; Ross and Ross, Prairie Time, 44–52; andClayton and Knox, “Catastrophic Flooding.”

5. Quotation from the State Conservation Commission of Wisconsin, Bien-nial Report, 89. Van Hise is well known for his book e Conservation of NaturalResources in the United States, the first college textbook on conservation.

6. Birmingham and Eisenberg, Indian Mounds of Wisconsin, 81, 96, 109.Additional information on Man Mound Park can be found in Meine, “View fromMan Mound.”

7. Hall, “Red Banks, Oneota, and the Winnebago.”8. Birmingham and Eisenberg, Indian Mounds of Wisconsin, 162, 164–67.

“Ho-Chunk” will be used in this book as well.9. Green, “Examining Protohistoric Depopulation.”

10. Cole, History of Sauk County, 103. William Cronon writes more generallyabout the relationship between the rise of global markets and the commodifica-tion of resources in Changes in the Land.

11. Tanner, Wisconsin in 1818, 289–90.12. Zanger, “Red Bird”; Prucha, Military Posts, 5–9.13. Kinzie, Wau-bun, 58–79.14. Jackson, Black Hawk, 101. Emphasis in original.15. Merrell, Pioneer Life in Wisconsin, 393; Carol I. Mason, Introduction to Wis-

consin Indians, 289–90.16. Information on the Land Ordinance and Northwest Ordinance Acts of

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1785 and 1787 and their application in Wisconsin is from Meine, CorrectionLines, chap. 9, and Meine, “View from Man Mound,” 24. For a description of thecondition of the Leopold Memorial Reserve area at the time of the land survey, seeLiegel, “Land Use and Vegetational Change.”

17. 1845 surveyor account of J. E. Whitcher for external survey of SaukCounty, sections 32–36, T13N and R7E. Available online through the WisconsinBoard of Commissioners of Public Lands and the University of Wisconsin– -Madison Digital Collections Center at http://libtext.library.wisc.edu/SurveyNotes/. e term “third rate” was used by surveyors to refer to land with limitedpotential for agriculture as compared to first-rate land, which had prime agricul-tural potential. Information about the agricultural potential of land is from a con-versation with landscape historian Rob Nurie on 25 May 2011.

18. Agricultural data for 1860, 1870, and 1880 are from the United StatesBureau of the Census, located in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society,“United States Census Schedules for Wisconsin—Productions of Agriculture,”series 1676 (box 7, shelf 4/33/P5), 1677 (box 7, shelf 4/33/P6), and 1678 (box 7,shelf 4/33/O6), respectively. Data is also available from 1850 in series 1675 (box2, shelf 4/33/O4). Copies of warranty deed records showing the year of purchaseby the Baxters were originally obtained by Konrad Liegel from the Sauk CountyRegister of Deeds; copies of Liegel’s report are located in the Aldo Leopold Foun-dation (hereafter, ALF) archives, shelf “Graduate Fellows.” ese records showthat the property had been owned by seven other landowners starting with J. A.Noonan in November 1849. Most of these periods of ownership may have beenspeculative since they were often brief, with one as short as nine months. e Bax-ters, however, lived on this property between 1858 and 1912.

19. Muir, Story of My Boyhood, 63.20. Staines, “Agriculture of Sauk County.” 21. Durbin, Wisconsin River, 217–20. e city of Wisconsin Dells was origi-

nally named Kilbourn, hence the name of the dam. e Kilbourn Dam was recon-structed in 1909 and generates 10 megawatts of power.

22. Leopold, Sand County Almanac, 17.23. e end of Wisconsin’s wheat craze in the 1860s is documented in Lange,

County Called Sauk, 67–68.24. Ibid., 67.25. e construction of dams accelerated all along the river at this time, up to

the construction of the twenty-sixth dam in 1950, the Castle Rock Dam. Becauseof the number of dams on it, the Wisconsin is often referred to as “the nation’shardest working river.” See Durbin, Wisconsin River, 133–35, 217–20. In the shortterm, dams provided farmers with more tillable land at river’s edge, but a less wellunderstood impact was the loss of habitat on undeveloped land for flood-adaptedtree species, such as swamp white oak. Only in the 1990s did the negative eco-logical impacts of dams begin to receive attention. For examples of studies on thistopic in the Leopold Memorial Reserve area led by Drs. Monica Turner and Emily

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Stanley of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, see Gergel, Dixon, and Turner,“Consequences of Human-Altered Floods”; and Freeman, Stanley, and Turner,“Analysis and Conservation Implications.”

26. After 1880, all agricultural data were collected by the state rather than thefederal government. e data for the Alexanders are from the Wisconsin Histori-cal Society archives, Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, “Annual Enumerationof Farm Statistics by Assessors,” microform, 1924–35. State agricultural censusdata from before 1922 were destroyed by fire.

27. Beeman and Pritchard, Green and Permanent Land, 10–11; Fitzgerald,Every Farm a Factory, 17–20.

28. For more on industrial-scale farming, see Fitzgerald, Every Farm a Factory,chap. 4. Tax information is located at the Wisconsin Historical Society in the SaukCounty Treasurer Tax rolls (microform), 1935, reel 19, AP 98-0075.

29. Fitzgerald, Every Farm a Factory, 18.30. Goc, “Wisconsin Dust Bowl.” For books about the Dustbowl, see Worster,

Dustbowl; and Egan, Worst Hard Time.31. Alexander was one of five siblings. Details about his life between 1933 and

1936 are from his obituary in the Baraboo News-Republic, 10 January 1936. isas well as other documents from the time of his death are included in his probaterecords in the Sauk County Historical Society. Many thanks to the dedicated staffof the Society, especially former director Sue Teska, who diligently searched forAlexander’s probate records before discovering that they had been erroneouslyfiled. ey are now placed in the correct location.

32. Warranty deed located in the Sauk County Register of Deeds. JacobAlexander to Aldo Leopold. Deeds: vol. 154, p. 422. Sauk County, Wisconsin.Township 13 North, Range 7 East. Copy of Konrad Liegel report located in ALFarchives, shelf “Graduate Fellows.”

33. Publications by these leaders include Sears, Deserts on the March; Bennett,Elements of Soil Conservation; and Rodale, Organic Front.

34. Beeman and Pritchard, Green and Permanent Land, 71.35. Leopold, Sand County Almanac, 9.36. For Leopold’s advocacy on behalf of the Gila Wilderness Area and for

information about his work studying game populations, see Meine, Aldo Leopold,196–226, 268. For a consideration of his changing attitude toward predators, seeFlader, inking Like a Mountain.

37. For more on Leopold’s views toward conservation on private land, see Frey-fogle, Land We Share, 135–51.

Chapter 2. Sowing the Seeds of the Leopold Memorial Reserve Idea

1. Leopold’s daughter Nina Bradley talks about her brother Carl missing theprom in Ness, “Return to the Shack.”

2. Scott Peters of Cornell University has written extensively about the history

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of the land-grant university system and about the place of a land-grant system ina democracy. See “Reconstructing a Democratic Tradition.” For a contemporaryaccount of cooperative conservation involving ranchers and the USFS, see Sayre,Working Wilderness.

3. Journals kept by the Leopold family at the shack reveal yearly spring plant-ings, controlled burns, and wildlife monitoring notes starting with their firstspring there in 1935. See the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections,http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections/AldoLeopold; keyword search “shackjournal.”

4. Estella Leopold and niece Trish Stevenson, interview by Stephen Laubach,9 May 2011.

5. Many of Leopold’s approaches to land management are outlined in his1933 text, Game Management. By 1948 he had expanded his views beyond utili-tarian terminology such as “game management” to something more akin to whatis now referred to as ecological restoration. For scholarship on the ecologicalrestoration of plant communities, see Higgs, Nature by Design, chap. 2; Mills, InService of the Wild, esp. chap. 5, “e Leopold’s Shack”; and Apfelbaum andHaney, Restoring Ecological Health. For scholarship on restoring wildlife popula-tions, see Morrison, Restoring Wildlife.

6. Susan Flader, interview by Stephen Laubach, 9 May 2011.7. Maher, Nature’s New Deal, 10–13.8. Pinchot, Breaking New Ground, 505.9. Leopold, Sand County Almanac, 204.

10. Callicott, “Conceptual Foundations,” especially 200–205. After a small ini-tial printing, readers began purchasing later editions of the Almanac in large num-bers during the environmental movement of the 1960s. Sales continue to bestrong, and it has sold over two million copies in eighteen languages.

11. Meine, Aldo Leopold, chap. 6.12. Worster, Nature’s Economy, 271–74 and 284–90; Flader, inking Like a

Mountain, 6–35.13. Leopold, Sand County Almanac, viii.14. Shack journal records were so detailed that Leopold’s daughter Nina used

them in a journal article comparing the timing of plant and animal events in the1930s and 1940s with those from the 1970s to 1990s. See Bradley et al., “Pheno-logical Changes.”

15. ALF, cabinet 1, drawer 1, “Shack Journal, 1956–1957.” is journal wasused until 1977.

16. Nina Bradley, interview by Mark Madison and Stephen Laubach, 29 Octo-ber 2009. As indicated in shack-journal entries, Leopold’s wife Estella regularlyvisited the shack until her death in January 1975 and was very involved in deci-sions about the property.

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17. ALF, cabinet 1, drawer 1, “Shack Journal, 1956–1957,” entry dated 28 June1959.

18. Ibid., entry dated 23 June 1963.19. For more on the complicated relationship between road construction,

tourism, and conservation, see Sutter, Driven Wild.20. Reed Coleman, interview by Mark Madison and Stephen Laubach, 28

October 2009.21. Ibid.22. As of 2014, a floral business at this location is still in operation in Baraboo

under the name Wild Apples.23. SCF, cabinet 2, drawer 4, “Articles of Incorporation.”24. Information about the ALNC from http://aldoleopoldnaturecenter.org/.

Visitation rates for the 1980s are from the Autumn 1985 Sand County Founda-tion newsletter.

25. Leopold, Sand County Almanac, 213.26. Howard Mead, interview by Mark Madison and Stephen Laubach, 30

October 2009.27. John VanHoosen, phone interviews by author, 12 and 19 April 2011.

Many thanks to John for generously sharing his time and for sending photos foruse in this publication.

28. All agricultural data is from “Annual Enumeration of Farm Statistics byAssessors,” microform, 1905–1973, for Sauk County, Town of Fairfield, Wiscon-sin Department of Agriculture, located in the archives of the Wisconsin Histori-cal Society.

29. Reed Coleman (28 October 2009) and Frank Terbilcox (29 October 2009),interviews by Mark Madison and Stephen Laubach.

30. Reed Coleman, email message to author, 13 April 2011.31. Property title records in SCF, cabinet “LMR,” folder “Anchor Property:

Leopold Reserve.”32. Copies of the original 1967 agreement are available online along with other

resources on the reserve’s history, including rare video footage of Aldo Leopold, athttp://www.stephenlaubach.com/living-a-land-ethic. Hard copies of the reserveagreement can be found in numerous locations in the archives of both founda-tions. See SCF, cabinet “LMR,” folder “Leopold Reserve Beginnings.” e right offirst refusal agreement was a separate document that was signed either just beforeor at the same time as the LMR agreement was signed, depending on thelandowner. See, for example, SCF, cabinet “LMR,” folder “First Right of Refusal:Terbilcox Property.”

33. e $200 annual payment has been maintained, with some interruptions,through the years. See Reed Coleman to Russell VanHoosen, 5 March 1992, andBrent Haglund to John VanHoosen, 25 February 2002, SCF, cabinet “LMR,”folder “Misc. VanHoosen Documents.”

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34. Document “Leopold Memorial Reserve Agreement: Addendum No. 1,” 13June 1968, in SCF, cabinet “LMR,” folder “LMR History.”

35. After helping set up the reserve, Howard Mead took a more behind-the-scenes role in the project, but he remained involved as a board member of theHead (later, Sand County) Foundation through 2004.

Chapter 3. Implementing a Management Plan

1. e Madison-Kipp Corporation manufactures precision-machined parts forvehicles. It supported the L. R. Head Foundation as part of its efforts in corporatecommunity relations. Information about Madison-Kipp Corporation from SCF,cabinet “LMR,” section “Leopold Reserve Beginnings,” folder “Philosophy: HeadFdn.,” document “How We Will Be Organized,” 14 June 1972, p. 4, “Head Foun-dation Presentation.”

2. ALF, shelf “Leopold Memorial Reserve,” binder “Leopold MemorialReserve: Correspondence, Meeting Summaries, and Reports, 1968–1992.”

3. For an example of a contemporary of Ellarson’s recommending a formal per-mitting and harvest system to control damage by overbrowsing, see Teague, Man-ual of Wildlife Conservation, 85–89. Note that several of the book’s illustrations areby Charles W. Schwartz, the illustrator of A Sand County Almanac. For a local per-spective, see Bersing, Century of Wisconsin Deer, 13–15.

4. Frank and Colleen Terbilcox originally purchased their property in 1958 andbegan working with the Sauk County Soil Conservation District at this time, con-structing their first waterfowl pond in 1959 with guidance and partial fundingfrom the district. SCF, cabinet 1, drawer 2, hanging folder “Personal Files,” folder“Frank Terbilcox.”

5. An example of a wildlife manager recommending pond construction is inTeague, Manual of Wildlife Conservation, 78; 85–89. A local example on the topicis in March, Recommendations for Pond Development.

6. For more on the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, see the fol-lowing link on the website of the US Fish and Wildlife Service: http://www.fws.gov/birdhabitat/NAWMP/index.shtm. For an example of more recent approachesto waterfowl habitat management that involves water level manipulations ratherthan artificial pond construction, see Cross, Waterfowl Management Handbook,leaflets 13.4.6, “Strategies for Water Level Manipulations in Moist-soil Systems,”and 13.4.8, “Options for Water-level Control in Developed Wetlands.”

7. Newsletter of the Aldo Leopold Foundation, Winter 2003, ALF, cabinet 2,drawer 3, “ALF Newsletters, 1991–2007.”

8. Terbilcox to Coleman, 5 February 1968, ALF, shelf “e Leopold MemorialReserve,” binder “Reserve History, 1968–1991.”

9. Howard Mead, interview by Mark Madison and Stephen Laubach, 30 Octo-ber 2009. An example of Terbilcox’s excitable personality occurred in a 27 Sep-tember 1968 work report to Coleman, in which he wrote “Well I’ll be D___!Some nice fellow broke another shutter on the Shack. . . . Next weekend I’ll be

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inside with a surprise. . . . I’ll see what a crack across the knuckles will do whenthey put their hand in.” In a sudden change of tone, he wrote in the next sentence,“Attended the Wisc. [Badgers football] game in Aft.” Fortunately, there is no evi-dence that such a crack across the knuckles ever occurred. 27 September 1968work report, ALF, shelf “e Leopold Memorial Reserve,” binder “Reserve His-tory, 1968–1991.”

10. Starker Leopold to Frank Terbilcox, 2 January 1969, ALF, shelf “eLeopold Memorial Reserve,” binder “Reserve History, 1968–1991.” StarkerLeopold was in regular contact with Coleman and Terbilcox about the reserve. Aprofessor in zoology and conservation at the University of California–Berkeley,Starker was the principal spokesperson for the Leopold family regarding manage-ment of the reserve until his death in August 1983. For 1963 report, see A. StarkerLeopold et al., Wildlife Management.

11. Newhouse, “Foundation Provides Mecca.” For an article for a nationalaudience, see “Wisconsin Nature Reserve.”

12. Terbilcox referred to working with the Johnsons regularly in his workreports between July 1973 and March 1978. ALF, shelf “e Leopold MemorialReserve,” binder “Reserve History, 1968–1991.”

13. Terbilcox to Coleman, monthly report, 30 November 1972, ALF, shelf“e Leopold Memorial Reserve,” binder “Reserve History, 1968–1991.” Severalyears later, in the 1990s, the director of real estate for Wisconsin Power and Light(WP&L), John Laub, persuaded the company to donate the thousand-acre sitenear Devil’s Lake State Park and Merrimac that WP&L (renamed Alliant Energy)still owned to a new nonprofit organization, the Riverland Conservancy, for con-servation purposes. Information on WP&L, the Sand County Foundation, andthe Riverland Conservancy from an article written by Gordon Govier and emailedto the author by Sand County Foundation president Brent Haglund. Printed copyof article included in a 26 February 2004 email from Govier to Haglund in SCF,cabinet 1, drawer 2, hanging folder “Personal Files,” folder “Brent Haglund.” Formore on the Riverland Conservancy, see http://www.riverlandconservancy.org/.

14. Meine, Correction Lines, chap. 3.15. Terbilcox to Coleman, monthly report, 4 November 1973, ALF, shelf “e

Leopold Memorial Reserve,” binder “Reserve History, 1968–1991.”16. Estella Leopold to Reed Coleman, 15 June 1972, ALF, shelf “e Leopold

Memorial Reserve,” binder “Leopold Memorial Reserve: Correspondence, Meet-ing Summaries, and Reports, 1968–1992.”

17. Flader, inking Like a Mountain, 1–4.18. Terbilcox to Coleman, monthly report, 30 November 1972, ALF, shelf

“e Leopold Memorial Reserve,” binder “Reserve History, 1968–1991.” In hisNovember report the following year, Terbilcox reported the same number ofhunters and about the same ratio of bucks killed relative to does (15 to 1). Overthe years, his November reports on the number of deer killed always showed atleast twice as many bucks as does killed, and usually much higher. In later

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decades, reserve managers attempted to reverse this ratio so that more does thanbucks were killed in order to reduce herd size. Reserve managers eventually uti-lized indirect measures to assess the reserve’s carrying capacity for deer, like theregeneration of indicator deer-forage plant species such as white pine and pasqueflower, to determine if the herd size needed to be reduced more aggressively. It isunclear exactly what methods were used to estimate and manage for carryingcapacity until the late 1970s, when aerial population estimates were done usinghelicopter fly-overs. Information on population estimates from November 1975and 1976 monthly reports by Terbilcox, ALF, shelf “e Leopold MemorialReserve,” binder “Reserve History, 1968–1991.” Information on population sizeand carrying capacity estimates from the Sand County Foundation executivevice-president Kevin McAleese, phone conversations with author, 8 August and21 December 2011.

19. Flader, inking Like a Mountain, 1–7.20. For more on this topic, see Flader, inking Like a Mountain, chap. 5; and

Meine, Aldo Leopold, chap. 19.21. Ramde, “Governor Signs Repeal.”22. Van Deelen et al., “Effects of Earn-a-Buck.” See also Waller and Alverson,

“White-Tailed Deer.”23. Brent Haglund to author, note, 8 March 2011.24. Terbilcox to Coleman, monthly report, 31 December 1973, ALF, shelf

“e Leopold Memorial Reserve,” binder “Reserve History, 1968–1991.” Empha-sis in original. is sentiment also expressed in a 31 January 1980 letter fromFrank Terbilcox to Toby Sherry, also in “Reserve History, 1968–1991.”

25. For more on this aspect of Leopold’s career, see Flader, inking Like aMountain, chap. 5; and Meine, Aldo Leopold, chap. 19.

26. Leopold, Sand County Almanac, 6.27. Reed Coleman, interview by Mark Madison and Stephen Laubach, 28

October 2009. Also see March 1971, August 1973, July 1975, and July 1977reports by Terbilcox to Coleman in ALF, shelf “e Leopold Memorial Reserve,”binder “Reserve History, 1968–1991” for disagreements about the managementof Levee Road. e July 1977 report goes into detail about seeking approval forRustic Road status. e latter may have actually addressed the town’s liability con-cerns since Sauk County assumed responsibility for Levee Road’s upkeep underthe provisions of the program.

28. e possibility of seeking tax-exempt status was mentioned by Terbilcox ina letter to the secretary of the Head Foundation, George Burrill, dated 29 January1973, but this was never formally explored. See ALF, shelf “e Leopold Memo-rial Reserve,” binder “Reserve History, 1968–1991.” In 2005, however, a doublingin the assessed value of the foundation’s land triggered a request for a property-taxexemption. An article in the local newspaper quoted the town’s chairman, EugeneLarsen, as noting that before 2005, “the Foundation has paid property taxes for

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many years as part of a good neighbor policy” (Bridgeford, “Foundation WantsException”).

29. Frank Terbilcox, interview by Mark Madison and Stephen Laubach, 29October 2009. Records from Terbilcox’s notes, however, suggest that his motivesfor helping his elderly neighbors may have been more pragmatic. On at least threeoccasions, he indicated that he was laying the groundwork for the Head Founda-tion to buy their property. See notes from January 1972, January 1974, and April1977, ALF, shelf “e Leopold Memorial Reserve,” binder “Reserve History,1968–1991.”

30. In one undated document, most probably written by Coleman in the early1970s, the author wrote, “e Foundation will be testing and experimenting withthe use of the Reserve Agreement and First Right of Refusal as a means of pro-tecting areas of significant natural or historic value.” SCF, cabinet “LMR,” hang-ing folder “Leopold Reserve Beginnings,” folder “Philosophy: Head Fdn.,” docu-ment “Louis Rollin Head Foundation Objectives and Operating Methods.”

31. To learn more about the Spring Green Preserve and Waubesa Wetland Pre-serve, see http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/northamerica/unitedstates/wisconsin/placesweprotect/spring-green-preserve.xml and http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/northamerica/unitedstates/wisconsin/placesweprotect/waubesa-wetland-preserve.xml.

Chapter 4. Growth in Research and Education Programs

1. As a gift to the Head Foundation, and also as a charitable donation taxwrite-off, the Bradleys paid for the structure and donated it to the foundation.e foundation thus retained rights to the building’s use after their time livingthere. See 4 July 1976 agreement signed by Reed Coleman and Nina and CharlieBradley stapled to a document written by Brent Haglund, “Chronology ofBradley/Sand County Foundation Actions draft of 3 June 1996,” SCF, cabinet“LMR,” folder “Bradley/SCF Chronology.”

2. Nina Leopold Bradley, interview by Mark Madison and Stephen Laubach,29 October 2009.

3. Terbilcox to Coleman, monthly report “e Bradley Lab,” February 1977,ALF, shelf “e Leopold Memorial Reserve,” binder “Reserve History, 1968–1991.”

4. Nina Leopold Bradley, interview by Mark Madison and Stephen Laubach,29 October 2009. Disagreement by Estella and Luna noted in a work report fromFrank Terbilcox to Reed Coleman dated August 1974 and in a letter with no datebut with “March 1975” annotation by Coleman at top, ALF, shelf “e LeopoldMemorial Reserve,”, “Reserve History, 1968–1991.”

5. SCF, bin “Graduate Fellows Reports.” For a complete list of research proj-ects on the reserve, see http://www.stephenlaubach.com/living-a-land-ethic.

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7. e author vividly remembers lunchtime visits in the summer of 1999 withthe Bradleys and a group of young interns and research fellows while conductinghis master’s research on the reserve. Nina Bradley, a respected elder of the conser-vation movement, drew strength from the youthful idealism of such visitors to thereserve, while summer interns were enthralled by her stories about family visits tothe shack and by her lifelong commitment to conservation.

8. Michael Mossman to author, email, 5 September 2011.9. Ibid. See also Swenson, Steele, and Mossman, “Big Vision for a Broad

Landscape.”10. Dick Cates, phone conversation with the author, 10 August 2011. To learn

more about Cates’s farm near Madison, including setting up a visit, see http://catesfamilyfarm.com.

11. Rick Knight to author, email, 10 August 2011. For two examples of bookswritten or edited by Knight, see Meine and Knight, Essential Aldo Leopold; andMeffe et al., Ecosystem Management.

12. From “Outline of ings Discussed at Reserve Management CommitteeMeeting—May 19, 1977,” ALF, shelf “e Leopold Memorial Reserve,” binder“Leopold Memorial Reserve Action Plans/Actions Taken pre-1988.”

13. e idea of a separate facility on the reserve became a reality twenty-fiveyears later with the completion of the LEED-certified Leopold Center in 2007 bythe ALF. By that time, however, the board of the ALF decided to focus more onoutreach than on research, which is reflected in the facility’s design. For more onthe Leopold Center, see the end of chapter 5.

14. Nina Bradley, interview by Mark Madison and Stephen Laubach, 29 Octo-ber 2009

15. Estella Leopold and Trish Stevenson, interview by Stephen Laubach, 9 May2011.

16. ALF, cabinet 2, drawer 3, “Articles of Incorporation.”17. Leopold, Sand County Almanac, 190.18. Ibid., 213. For an example of outreach to executives, see the L. R. Head

Foundation newsletter, Spring 1979, SCF, cabinet 1, drawer 2, “LRHF and SCFNewsletters, 1971–2004.”

19. e claim that land management remained similar in the 1980s to that ofthe original 1969 plan is supported in a summary by Frank Terbilcox for a 25March 1985 Sand County Foundation board meeting. ALF, shelf “e LeopoldMemorial Reserve,” binder “Reserve History, 1968–1991.”

20. From “A Plan for the Management of the Natural Resources of the LeopoldReserve,” 9 September 1983, ALF, shelf “e Leopold Memorial Reserve,” binder“Leopold Memorial Reserve Action Plans/Actions Taken pre-1988.”

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Chapter 5. Conservation’s Next Generation

1. For a comparison of conservation and the new conservation biology, seeMeine, Correction Lines, chaps. 1–3. For a brief overview of landscape ecology’shistory, see Turner, Gardner, and O’Neill, Landscape Ecology, chap. 1.

2. Swenson quoted in Bromley, “Reaping What He Sowed.”3. Independent reviews of Sand County Foundation activities have continued

every three years since the original 1988 review.4. John Magnuson, “Sand County Foundation: Research Review of the

Leopold Memorial Reserve,” June 1988, ALF, shelf “e Leopold MemorialReserve,” binder “Leopold Memorial Reserve Correspondence, Meeting Sum-maries, and Reports: 1968–1992.”

5. is process, first outlined by the ecologist C. S. Holling, had achieved sci-entific currency by the time of the 1988 review. For one of the original publica-tions on the topic, see Holling, Adaptive Environmental Assessment.

6. Citing the dated food-patch method advocated by Aldo Leopold in 1933in Game Management, Terbilcox repeatedly emphasized his opposition to remov-ing them in an October 2009 interview. Contrary to staff members from bothfoundations, Terbilcox thought that there were still too few deer on the LMR andthat a food-patch policy needed to be reinstated. Frank Terbilcox, interview byMark Madison and Stephen Laubach, 29 October 2009.

7. For more information about landscape ecology and the Hubbard Brookstudy, see Kingsland, Evolution of American Ecology, 222–27. e Institute forEcosystem Studies was later renamed the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies.For more information about this organization, see http://www.caryinstitute.org.

8. Acid rain was found to form as a result of air pollution from “upstream”industrial Midwestern cities, like Chicago and Cleveland, combining with mois-ture in the atmosphere before falling as rain farther east. Federal policies imple-mented in the early 1990s as part of the Clean Air Act, such as scrubbers onsmokestacks of coal power plants, have helped alleviate the problem. For moreinformation, see Likens and Borman, Biogeochemistry of a Forested Ecosystem,35–43 and 65–71.

9. For more on Odum, Golley, and the emergence of ecosystem ecology, seeHagen, Entangled Bank.

10. Terbilcox to Haglund, 27 October 1997, SCF, cabinet 1, drawer 2, hang-ing folder “Personal Files,” folder “Frank Terbilcox.”

11. Haglund to Terbilcox, 5 November 1997, SCF, cabinet 1, drawer 2, hang-ing folder “Personal Files,” folder “Frank Terbilcox.”

12. Peter Senge uses the term “creative tension” for this scenario. He definesthis as “the gap between vision and current reality” that occurs in what he terms“learning organizations” such as businesses, nonprofit organizations, and schoolsin the process of developing or updating their core ideals and mission. Fifth Dis-cipline 150–55.

Notes

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13. Coleman and Coleman, “Growing with the Leopold Land Ethic.”14. Carl Leopold to Reed Coleman, 16 October 1992, ALF, cabinet 2, drawer

2, “Correspondence with L. R. Head/Sand County Foundation.”15. See 4 July 1976 agreement signed by Reed Coleman and Nina and Char-

lie Bradley, SCF, cabinet “LMR,” folder “Bradley/SCF Chronology,” paper clippedto a document written by Brent Haglund titled “Chronology of Bradley/SandCounty Foundation Actions draft of 3 June 1996.” e earliest recorded requestby the Leopold Shack Foundation to purchase the study center and five acreswas a letter from siblings Luna, Carl, and Estella Leopold to Reed Coleman dated21 August 1994. Responses by Coleman denying the request are in a letter to CarlLeopold dated 30 August 1994 (stapled under the 21 August letter) and an 11 Jan-uary 1995 letter to Gordon Stevenson. In the 11 January 1995 letter, Colemannoted that the study center could not be sold because it was “a very important andcontinuing aspect of the Sand County Foundation programs and projects as theyhave changed and matured over the years.” He concluded, “We fully anticipatethat this will be the case going on into the future as well.” Numerous communi-cations were exchanged over this issue for the next ten years. SCF, cabinet “LMR,”folder “Shack Foundation.”

16. Kate McMahan to the Sand Country Foundation Board of Directors, 16January 1995, email, SCF, cabinet “LMR,” folder “Shack Foundation.”

17. e possibility of withdrawing from the agreement is discussed in a letterfrom Leopold Foundation legal counsel Anne Ross to the foundation’s board pres-ident, Luna Leopold, dated 8 August 1996. ALF, cabinet 2, drawer 2, “Correspon-dence with L. R. Head/Sand County Foundation.” e two foundations restartednegotiations over the sale of the study center in 2000. See Reed Coleman to JerrySmith, 8 September 2000, “Correspondence with L. R. Head/Sand County Foun-dation.” e foundations completed the sale in 2004, when the Leopold Founda-tion paid $225,000 to buy the building while the Sand County Foundationretained ownership of the land it was built on. Sale and dollar figure noted in BrentHaglund to Sand County Foundation Board and other interested parties, 12 April2004, SCF, cabinet “LMR,” folder “Misc. VanHoosen Documents.”

18. Sand County Foundation Newsletter, Winter 1996, SCF, cabinet 1, drawer2, “ LRHF and SCF Newsletters and Brochures, 1971–2004.” See also Reed Cole-man’s “Chairman’s Corner” report in an undated Sand County Foundationnewsletter, most likely the Winter 1998 edition, SCF, cabinet 1, drawer 2, “LRHFand SCF Newsletters and Brochures, 1971–2004.”

19. “Seminar Edition” newsletter of the Sand County Foundation, April 1999,SCF, cabinet 1, drawer 2, “LRHF and SCF Newsletters and Brochures, 1971–2004.”

20. Between its founding in 1967 and the publication of this book, the SandCounty Foundation’s annual budget grew from less than $100,000 to more than$2,000,000. A key part of this growth occurred in the 1990s as the foundationestablished national and international programs. Figures from email correspon-

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dence with foundation staff members Brent Haglund, Kevin McAleese, and HollyPerrotti, 16 July 2013.

21. Information on the project funded by the Department of Defense is fromthe Winter 1994 Sand County Foundation Newsletter, “Sand County Wins LegacyGrant: Begins Work on 100,000 Acres of Oak Savanna Restoration.” Informationabout funding from the Bradley Foundation is noted in the 1999 Sand CountyFoundation newsletter titled “Bradley Fund for the Environment.” All the articlesin the latter newsletter are dedicated to discussing this new funding source. SCF,cabinet 1, drawer 2, “LRHF and SCF Newsletters and Brochures, 1971–2004.”

22. For more on Karner Blue Butterfly conservation at Fort McCoy, seehttp://www.fws.gov/midwest/endangered/insects/kbb/ft_mccoy.html.

23. Estella Leopold and Trish Stevenson, interview by Stephen Laubach, 9 May2011.

24. Details about the Leopold Foundation in the final three paragraphs of thischapter, including funding sources, are from a report by Leopold FoundationBoard Chair Estella Leopold, “Background Papers and 25-year Review,” dated 10October 2009. ALF, cabinet 2, drawer 4, “5-year review (1997), 25-year review(2009).” e Leopold Foundation’s annual budget grew from less than $20,000 inthe 1980s to $993,000 in 2013. e 1990s were the most rapid decade of expan-sion, when their budget grew tenfold, from $24,500 to $277,000. Specific budgetnumbers from email with Leopold Foundation staff members Teresa Searock andBuddy Huffaker on 13 July 2013.

25. For more about the Aldo Leopold Nature Center, see http://aldoleopoldnaturecenter.org/. e Leopold Education Project (http://www.lep.org/) was orig-inally created in 1991 by a high school science teacher in Wisconsin and thenoverseen nationally by the nonprofit group Pheasants Forever. It was incorporatedinto the Aldo Leopold Foundation’s programs in fall 2012. e LEP/ALF confer-ence was first reported in the spring 1997 Leopold Foundation newsletter. ALF,cabinet 2, drawer 3, “ALF Newsletters, 1992–2007.”

26. Aldo Leopold Foundation Summer 1999 Newsletter, ALF, cabinet 2,drawer 3, “ALF Newsletters, 1992–2007.”

27. Aldo Leopold Foundation Summer 2001 Newsletter, ALF, cabinet 2,drawer 3, “ALF Newsletters, 1992–2007.”

28. For more on the USGBC’s LEED program, see http://www.usgbc.org/.

Conclusion

1. One example of an internal dispute over policy occurred in October 1974.At that time, Carl and Eleanor Anchor, former participants in the reserve, had soldtheir property to the Head Foundation but had continued to use the land with per-mission from the foundation. In a letter asking about the earlier sale of his land,Carl Anchor also expressed some frustration with the foundation over restrictionson hunting and horseback riding: “Your attitude has changed to the Anchor fam-ily and neighbors. Why?” In his response, Reed Coleman explained, “Let me assure

Notes

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you that our attitude has not changed either toward the Anchor family or towardthe neighbors. ere are certain restrictions on the use of the lands, however, andperhaps I can refresh your memory on a few of them.” He then went on to remindAnchor about the terms of the reserve agreement, such as rules against horsebackriding. Anchor to Coleman, 24 October 1974 and Coleman to Anchor, 26 Novem-ber 1974, SCF, cabinet “LMR,” hanging folder “Head Foundation documents,”folder “Miscellaneous Correspondence (1965–1975): Head General.”

2. In e Land We Share, Eric Freyfogle argues that for cooperative conserva-tion—which he calls “commons-management regimes”—to succeed, “provisionalso needs to be made to bring in the next generation of users and to accommo-date the shifting needs of current users” (172).

3. Silbernagel and Silbernagel, “Tracking Aldo Leopold.”4. e Sand County Foundation did not exercise its right of first refusal in

the purchase of the Terbilcox property, which will take place in three installments.Another interesting aspect of this purchase is that the Leopold Foundation usedmatching state funds to help purchase the land. is was the first time that pub-lic funds were used for land acquisition in the reserve and was a source of con-tention between the two foundations. Dr. Stanley Temple, Aldo Leopold Foun-dation science advisor and Sand County Foundation board member, conversationwith Stephen Laubach, 28 November 2012.

5. For more on the relationship between conservation and conservation biol-ogy, see Meine, Correction Lines, chaps. 1–3, as well as Meine, Soulé, and Noss,“Mission-Driven Discipline.” Jean-Michel Roberge, Grzegorz Mikusinski, andHugh Possingham question whether the phrase “conservation biology” places toomuch emphasis on the scientific aspects of conservation. eir proposed solutionto this problem is to use phrases such as “conservation research” or “biodiversityconservation research.” ese proposed solutions, however, do not seem to be animprovement over the terminology problem they identify. See Roberge et al., “Hasthe Term ‘Conservation Biology’ Had Its Day?”

6. For more on the tendency in the American conservation movement toideal ize mythical “unpeopled” landscapes, see Cronon, “Trouble with Wilderness.”For another work on this topic, see Vale, Fire, Native Peoples.

7. Susan Flader, interview by Stephen Laubach, 9 May 2011.8. For more about the numerous projects of the two foundations, see their

respective websites, http://www.sandcounty.net and http://www.aldoleopold.org.For more about the Important Bird Areas program in Wisconsin, visit http://www.wisconsinbirds.org/iba.

9. Reed Coleman, interview by Mark Madison and Stephen Laubach, 28October 2009.


11. Susan Flader, interview by Stephen Laubach, 9 May 2011.12. Leopold Foundation records indicate that the number of group tours since

Notes

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the late 1990s has doubled, from 1,500 in 1998 to over 3,000 in 2009. In addi-tion, self-guided tours and public tours made possible by the presence of the vis-itor center have led to an additional 2,000 drop-in visitors and 1,000 public toursin 2009. Data from Leopold Foundation staff member Jennifer Kobylecky toStephen Laubach, email, 2 November 2010.

13. In a 15 June 1972 letter to Reed Coleman, Aldo Leopold’s widow Estellaincluded a visitation plan dated 4 June 1972 that stated, among other things, “Inno case should maps or written directions locating the Leopold Reserve be pub-lished or disseminated.” ALF, shelf “e Leopold Memorial Reserve,” binder“Leopold Memorial Reserve Action Plans/Actions Take: pre-1988.” Later, in aFebruary 1976 manager’s report, Terbilcox mentioned, “e Sauk Co. HistoricalSoc. seems determined to . . . place a plaque . . . designating this area as LeopoldCountry. . . . strongly stated that we didn’t want signs leading the way to theShack.” ALF, shelf “e Leopold Memorial Reserve,” binder “Reserve History,1968–1991.”

14. Susan Flader noted that “the expectation is not that everybody who comeshere would necessarily go to the shack. In other words, there’s something herethat’s much more important; there’s a landscape and a process of ecologicalrestoration with a history that needs to be interpreted. And, it doesn’t need to beinterpreted right there at the shack.” Susan Flader, interview by Stephen Laubach,9 May 2011.

15. In Nature’s Economy, Donald Worster writes of Leopold’s land ethic: “Peo-ple supporting incompatible brands of conservation might all find him an accept-able prophet—until they began to apply the land-ethic idea to concrete situa-tions” (290).

16. Sand County Foundation Newsletter, Autumn 1986, SCF, cabinet 1,drawer 2, “LRHF and SCF Newsletters and Brochures, 1971–2004.”

17. For more on hypoxic dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, seeCrossland et al., Coastal Fluxes. For more on the Great Plains’ Ogallala Aquifer,see Ashworth, Ogallala Blue. For a global perspective on environmental concerns,see Nixon, Slow Violence.

Afterword

1. Financial figures are noted by Brian Bridgeford, “305 Acres Protected.”2. Information about the Sand County Foundation’s reaction to the Terbil-

cox land sale from discussions with Sand County Foundation board member andAldo Leopold Foundation science advisor Stanley Temple, 1 July 2013.

3. Sand County Foundation press release available on request, 27 June 2013.

Notes

125

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133

acid rain, 83, 121n8adaptive management, 81–83Africa, 87agriculture, 19–31, 90, 94Aldo Leopold [Shack] Foundation, xiii, 65,

76–77, 80, 85–95, 100–101Aldo Leopold Legacy Center, xiii, 11, 93, 94,

99–100, 120n13Aldo Leopold Nature Center, 40, 89Alexander, Jacob and Emma, 22–28, 27, 29Anchor family, 42–43, 97–99, 123n1Arboretum (University of Wisconsin), 31, 34,

40Arizona, 10–11artificial ponds, 48, 52, 80–81

Bachhuber, Jim, 70Barzen, Jeb, 90Baxter, William and Caroline, 19–22Beeman, Randal, 25Bennett, Hugh Hammond, 25Berry, Wendell, 68, 73biological diversity, 98–99Black Hawk War, 18the bootlegger, 12, 26. See also Alexander, Jacob

and EmmaBourland, Tom, 88Bradley, Nina Leopold and Charlie, xii, 33, 36,

38, 47, 64–76, 81–83, 101, 104, 120n7Bradley Study Center, xii, 64–75, 77, 79, 86,

119n1, 122n15Brittingham, Margaret, 69

Brower, David, 68, 72burial mounds, 14–15, 15, 16, 16

Callicott, Baird, 70Canada, 48Castle Rock Dam, 112n25Cates, Dick, 66, 71, 74Civilian Conservation Corps, 34Coleman, Catherine, 36, 47Coleman, Reed: Bradley Study Center and,

65–66; childhood shack experiences of, 37,84–85; management issues and, 58–59;photo of, 88; reserve’s formation and, 3–4,10, 42–44; Sand County Foundation and,xiii, 76–77, 100–101, 122n15

Coleman, omas, 30, 30–31, 36, 41, 44, 85conservation: controlled burns and, 30–31, 33,

34, 45, 51, 80–81, 83, 91, 97; ecologicalinnovations and, 80–87, 97, 121n6; farm-ing practices and, 25–26, 90, 94; govern-ment’s role in, 4–5, 35, 84–86; internalconflicts within, 9–10, 83–86, 122n17;prairie restoration and, 31, 34, 50, 54,80–83, 90, 97; private property and, 5–6,29–30, 35–41, 76–77, 106–7; researchprojects and, xii, xiii, 45, 56–57, 60–61,64–77, 120n7; reserve’s management plansand, 45–53; wetlands management and,46–48, 52, 54, 63. See also Bradley StudyCenter; ecology

conservation biology, 98–99

Index

controlled burns, 31, 33, 45, 51, 80–81, 83, 91,97

Coon Valley Watershed Demonstration Project,6–9, 29, 34, 55, 98

cooperative conservation (of land), xii, 80–86,95–96, 98–99, 102–3, 124n2

Curtis, John, 31

dams, 20, 112n25David and Lucile Packard Foundation, 89Dawson, Gar, 40deer herds, 54, 56–64, 87, 97, 117n18Department of Natural Resources (Wisconsin),

42–43, 57–58, 63Devil’s Lake State Park, 54, 117n13Dust Bowl, 23, 25–26

Early Woodland Indians, 14ecology, xii, 35, 45, 64–75, 78–80education: conservation techniques and, 45,

64–75, 81–83; reserve’s outreach effortsand, 54–56, 59, 64–79, 81–83, 99, 103,120n7, 125n12; shack property’s unofficialuse and, 36. See also Bradley Study Center;Terbilcox, Frank

Edwards, Lindsey, 91effigy mounds, 14–15, 15, 16, 16Eisenhower, Dwight D., 36Ela, Kathy, 74Elder, Bill, 47Ellarson, Bob, 45, 47, 48, 54, 62–63, 74, 77–79

Fairfield (Wisconsin), 59, 62farming, 19–28, 30–31, 90, 94Farming and Conservation Together, 94Faville Grove Wildlife Experimental Area, 6–9,

96Federal-Aid Highway Act, 36Field and Stream, 9Flader, Susan, 34, 39, 98, 101, 125n14food patches, 8, 78, 80–82, 82, 121n6Fort McCoy, 87Fort Winnebago, 18, 18Fort Winnebago Indian Agency, 18Fox Indians, 17Fox River, 12–19Freeman, Susan, 75Freyfogle, Eric, 124n2Friends of Our Native Landscape, 56fur trade, 13, 17

game-harvest reporting, 46, 54, 56–63, 117n18

Game Management (Leopold), 41, 114n5,121n6

geology, 14, 66Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, 89Gila Wilderness, 27, 35Golley, Frank, 83Goodman, Lisa, 66“Good Oak, e” (Leopold), 21, 26, 59graduate fellows programs, 64–75, 79, 81,

87–89Great Depression, 23, 25–26Green, Martha, 66Green Fire (film), 99Gumz, Richard, 48

habitat quality, 6, 12, 27, 45, 48, 50–52, 63. Seealso conservation; deer herds; food patches;land; wetlands management

Haglund, Brent, 83, 87, 88Han, Lisa, 66Haney, Alan, 110n6Hawley, Anna, 103Head, Louis R., 40Head Foundation, 40, 42–43, 54–55, 62–63,

65–66, 75–79, 115n1, 123n1. See also SandCounty Foundation

Helland, Bobette, 47Hickey, Joe, xii, 36Ho-Chunk Nation, 17–19hops (crop), 20–22, 21Hubbard Brook Watershed, 83Huffaker, Wellington (“Buddy”), 89, 90, 93hunting. See game-harvest reportingHuron Mountain Club, 6–9

Institute for Ecosystem Studies, 83

Jackson, Wes, 68Jacobsen, Rachel, 93Jefferson, omas, 19Johnson, Samuel C., 54

Kammerer family, 62, 97Karasov, William, 66Karner Blue Butterfly, 87Keeney, Dennis, 66Kilbourn Dam, 20, 22Knight, Rick, 71, 74

Lake Waubesa, 63land: conservation strategies and, 30–31, 57–63;

cooperative conservation and, xii, 6–9,

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27–30, 80–86, 95–98, 102–3, 106–7; cropproduction and, 19–28; land ethic and, xii,35, 41, 99, 104, 106–7; land health con-cept and, 6, 11–13, 31, 55, 76–77, 97; landtrusts and, 5–6, 110n3; Native Americansand, 13–19; utilitarian philosophies and,34–35, 114n5. See also conservation; ecol-ogy; Leopold Memorial Reserve; privateproperty

Land Ethic Leaders Program, 99–100, 105Land Ordinance Act, 19landscape approach (to conservation), 80–81,

83. See also conservation; Leopold, AldoLarsen, Tom, 60Late Woodland Indians, 15–17Laub, John, 117n13Leadership in Energy and Environmental

Design (LEED) program, 94, 120n13Leopold, Aldo: career of, 10–11, 29, 41, 59;

death of, 30, 34–36; philosophy of, xiv,6–9, 11, 27–28, 34–35, 41, 55, 76–77,80–81, 103–4; photos of, 8, 30, 32–33; ASand County Almanac and, xi, 26, 34, 75,104; shack property and, 12, 24, 25,30–31; “e Good Oak” and, 21, 26, 59

Leopold, Carl, 33, 65, 85Leopold, Estella (daughter), 36, 39, 65, 75,

87–89Leopold, Estella B. (wife), 4, 29–31, 36–37,

38–39, 56Leopold, Luna, 32, 35–36, 65Leopold, Nina. See Bradley, Nina Leopold and

CharlieLeopold, Starker, 32, 35–36, 39, 49, 65, 74–76,

82, 117n10Leopold, Susan, 73Leopold Education Project, 89Leopold Fellows Program, 64–75, 79, 81, 87–89Leopold Memorial Reserve: conservation prac-

tices on, 30–31, 45–53, 60–61, 62, 81–86;educational outreach and research and, 45,54–56, 59, 64–79, 81–83, 125n12; forma-tion of, 5–6, 10–11, 29–30, 37–44, 98–99;funding of, 89–90; management of, 45–58,74, 76–83, 95–96; photos of, 5, 53, 100;property ownership and, xii, xiii, 5–6,37–41, 77–79, 101–4, 106–7. See also AldoLeopold [Shack] Foundation; Sand CountyFoundation

Leopold–Pine Island Important Bird Area, 100,100

Levee Road, 59

Liegel, Konrad, 66Likens, Gene, 83Louis R. Head Foundation. See Head Founda-

tionLuthin, Charles, 66, 89Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, 87

Madison-Kipp Corporation, 115n1Magnuson, John, 81–83Maher, Neil, 34“Management of Wildlife in the National Parks”

(S. Leopold), 49management plans (on the reserve), 45–53,

76–77, 79–83Man Mound Park, 16McAleese, Kevin, 88McCabe, Bob, 36McMahan, Kate, 86Mead, Howard, 10, 37, 41–43, 49Mexico, 48Middle Woodland Indians, 15Mississippian civilizations, 16Moore, Kathleen Dean, 68Mossman, Michael, 66, 70, 74Muir, John, 19–20Munger, James, 66

National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, 87Native Americans, 13–19, 26Natural Bridge State Park, 13, 14Nature Conservancy, 36, 63New Mexico, 10–11, 27, 29, 87North American Waterfowl Management Plan,

48Northwest Ordinance Act, 19

oak savanna, 19, 83, 87Odum, Eugene, 83Oneota Indians, 17

Paulson, Reuben J., 7–8, 41Peters, Scott, 113n2Peterson, Roger Tory and Virginia, 72Philanthropy magazine, 84Pinchot, Gifford, 34–35Pine Island Wildlife Area, 88, 100Pines, Phill and Joan, 106prairie plantings, 31, 34, 50, 54, 80–83, 90, 97Pritchard, James, 25private property: conservation projects and,

4–6, 29–30, 41, 87; cooperative conserva-tion and, xii, 4–9, 35–44, 76–79, 95–99,

Index

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102–3, 106, 124n2; corporate citizenshipand, 54–55; governmental conservationand, 84–86. See also Aldo Leopold [Shack]Foundation; Coleman, Reed; Sand CountyFoundation; specific landowners

Quality Hunting Ecology, 58, 87

Reed, Jonathan, 66right of first refusal, 41–44, 63, 96, 115n32,

124n4Riley, John, 96Riley Game Cooperative, 6–9, 27–29, 41, 55,

94, 96, 97River Bend Nature Center, 54Rodale, J. I., 25Rongstad, Orrin, 36Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 7, 34Roosevelt, eodore, 4–5, 34Ross, John and Beth, 72Ross Floral Company, 37

Sand County Almanac, A (Leopold), xi, 26, 34,41, 75, 104

Sand County Foundation, xiii, 40, 54–56,75–80, 83–87, 95, 97, 106–7, 122n15

Sauk County Soil Conservation District, 48,115n4

Sauk Indians, 17–18Scott, Gerald, 70Sears, Paul, 25shack, the: Bradley Study Center and, xii,

64–75, 77, 79, 86, 119n1, 122n15; devel-opment pressures and, 35–41; NativeAmericans and, 13–19; privacy and, xiii,56, 75–79; shack seminars and, 68, 70, 79,81; surveys of, 19–22, 20; visitor pressureand, 56–63

Sherry, Toby, 74Sierra Club, 19, 36Socha, Betty, 66Soil Erosion Service, 7Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufactur-

ers’ Institute, 8, 11Spring Green (Wisconsin), 63, 71Stevenson, Gordon, 85, 87Stevenson, Trish, 75Swenson, Steve, 80–81, 91

Tanner, Edward, 17Tanzania Natural Resource Forum, 99Temple, Stanley, xi–xiv, 70–71Terbilcox, Frank: death of, 96; Head Founda-

tion work and, 62–63; management roleof, 45–53, 55–58, 76–77, 80–81, 83–86,121n6; outreach and education role of, 59,63–64, 89; photos of, 47, 72, 74; propertytransfers of, 106, 116n4, 124n4; reserve’sformation and, 4–5, 10, 37, 41–44

Teska, Sue, 113n31ompson, Dan, xitourism, 36–37Town Creek Foundation, 89Tucker, Steven, 68Turner family, 62

University of Wisconsin, 29, 31, 40, 49, 55, 66,70, 75, 81–83

US Fish and Wildlife Service, 57, 60US Forest Service, 10–11, 27–29, 34–35utilitarian philosophy, 34–35

Van Hise, Charles R., 14VanHoosen family, 42–43, 97–99

Walton Family Foundation, 87waterfowl habitat, 46–48, 52, 54, 63Waubesa Wetlands, 63wetlands management, 46–48, 52, 54, 63Whitcher, J. E., 20Winnebago Indians, 17. See also Ho-Chunk

NationWisconsin: Central Sands ecology and, 12; deer

harvesting in, 56–63, 87; DNR of, 42–43,57–58, 63; geology of, 14, 66; Riley Coop-erative and, 6–9, 27–29, 41, 55, 94, 96;tourism boom in, 36–37; white settlementof, 17–22

Wisconsin Conservation Committee, 56, 59Wisconsin Dells, 20Wisconsin Power and Light, 54–55, 117n13Wisconsin River, 12–20, 22–23, 112n25Wisconsin State Journal, 49Wisconsin Trails, 41

Index

136

Wisconsin Land and Life

ARNOLD ALANEN

Series Editor

Spirits of Earth: e Effigy Mound Landscape of Madison and the Four LakesRobert A. Birmingham

Pioneers of Ecological Restoration: e People and Legacy of the University ofWisconsin Arboretum

Franklin E. Court

A ousand Pieces of Paradise: Landscape and Property in the Kickapoo ValleyLynne Heasley

Environmental Politics and the Creation of a Dream: Establishing the Apostle IslandsNational Lakeshore

Harold C. Jordahl Jr., with Annie L. Booth

Creating Old World Wisconsin: e Struggle to Build an Outdoor History Museumof Ethnic Architecture

John D. Krugler

A Mind of Her Own: Helen Connor Laird and Family, 1888–1982Helen L. Laird

Living a Land Ethic: A History of Cooperative Conservation on the LeopoldMemorial Reserve

Stephen A. Laubach

When Horses Pulled the Plow: Life of a Wisconsin Farm Boy, 1910–1929Olaf F. Larson

North Woods River: e St. Croix River in Upper Midwest HistoryEileen M. McMahon and eodore J. Karamanski

Buried Indians: Digging Up the Past in a Midwestern TownLaurie Hovell McMillin

Wisconsin My Homeurine Oleson, as told to her daughter Erna Oleson Xan

Wisconsin Land and Life: A Portrait of the StateEdited by Robert C. Ostergren and omas R. Vale

Condos in the Woods: e Growth of Seasonal and Retirement Homes in Northern Wisconsin

Rebecca L. Schewe, Donald R. Field, Deborah J. Frosch, GregoryClendenning, and Dana Jensen

Door County’s Emerald Treasure: A History of Peninsula State ParkWilliam H. Tishler

Living a Land Ethic: A History of Cooperative Conservation on the Leopold Memorial Reserve

Documents

Transcript of Living a Land Ethic: A History of Cooperative Conservation on the Leopold Memorial Reserve