From the Associated PRess, via the Duluth News Tribune, by James Carlson
MILWAUKEE - The father of the modern-day science of ecology will be the focus of attention at community events across Wisconsin this weekend, as people gather to read his words and take part in a wide array of nature-based activities.
But what would Aldo Leopold think of our environmental progress in the nearly six decades since he died just before publication of his landmark book, "A Sand County Almanac," in which he called for a new land ethic to guide humans in dealing with nature?
When he died in 1948 near Baraboo, freeways had not yet opened the landscape to faster travel and the Wisconsin deer herd had yet to grow far past 1 million animals, as it did in recent decades. On the other hand, the state's wolf population had virtually disappeared after years of bounty hunting aimed mainly at protecting deer for hunting.
Now freeways whisk travelers to most of the formerly remote spots in the state. The wolf is back as a top predator, and elk roam parts of the north, while game managers work to prevent the fatal chronic wasting disease from spreading in the deer herd.
"I think he would see it as a mixed bag," said Sen. Mark Miller, D-Monona, a co-sponsor of the law, signed a year ago, honoring Leopold on the first weekend of each March.
"We've really done some great things," Miller said, listing improved water quality, restoration of parts of the Great Lakes and efforts to cut air pollution.
But "I'm sure he would have seen the danger signs that we are not confronting," he said. "I don't think, particularly in this country, that we have addressed global warming."
Also, "I think he would have been upset about the way we've allowed invasive species to invade our waterways," he said.
On the plus side, he said Leopold would welcome the return of a wolf population that was wiped out by the late 1950s, and he would cheer the successful project of recent years to create a migratory flock of endangered whooping cranes, wintering in Florida and spending summers in central Wisconsin.
"He would certainly have celebrated that the wolf is back in viable populations," Miller said.
But Leopold, a pioneer in the field of game management, would not have liked to see the deer herd allowed to grow as big as it has, he said, and Leopold also would likely oppose the idea of keeping deer on game farms, where some have had to be destroyed because of animals showing up with chronic wasting disease.
"I think he would not have been happy with the fact that we keep wild animals on game farms as a profit-making kind of enterprise," he said.
Leopold, born in Burlington, Iowa, in 1887, joined the U.S. Forest Service in the Southwest after college and transferred to Madison in 1924. He later was appointed professor of wildlife management at the University of Wisconsin, where he taught until he died in 1948. "A Sand County Almanac" was published the next year.
State Sen. Neal Kedzie, R-Elkhorn, who wrote the bill to establish the Leopold weekend, said he thinks Leopold would be glad about recently passed state laws to protect ground water and wetlands, and to clean up the brownfield areas tainted by past pollution.
"I think Aldo Leopold would be pleased to see the direction Wisconsin is going -- cleaner air, cleaner water," he said.
He said the lake sturgeon fishery of the Lake Winnebago chain is another success story, along with the whooping crane project and the growth in the sandhill crane population.
"I used to go out on a (sandhill) crane count, and to even hear one crane was exciting," he said. "Now you see them by the hundreds."
Kedzie and Miller planned to be among those reading from Leopold's writings Saturday, Kedzie at the Lake Geneva public library and Miller at the Lodi women's club library.
Other weekend events were scheduled at Baraboo, Ashland, Lake Geneva, Sarona, Argyle, Shiocton and Stevens Point.
