Aldo Leopold’s Lasting Legacy: From Dust Bowls to Conservation

You're listening to Perspective on WFHR, 1320 AM, 97.5 FM.

I'm Melissa Kaye bringing you news in our community.

During this interview, I am again talking with Jean Mansavage, retired federal historian from the Department of Defense agencies in Washington, D.C., active local historian, and Wisconsin master naturalist.

Thank you for joining me again, Jean, to share more with us about Aldo Leopold and his book, A Sand County Almanac.

Thank you for having me, Melissa.

Yes, it's a pleasure to talk with you again.

Before we dive into Aldo Leopold's life, could you again give us a brief overview about what the book is about and how it's organized?

Sure.

San County Almanac is nonfiction, obviously, and it's a book that blends Aldo Leopold's personal observations and reflections

of his land that he owned on the Wisconsin River New Baraboo.

And it also talks about his conservation philosophy and natural history of the area where we live in Wisconsin.

It's divided really into three different parts.

The first is monthly essays.

112 essays one for each of the months of the of the year that he looks at and observes all the seasonal changes among the trees and the the wildlife on his property and The second part he looks more at broadly at different North American landscapes and observes how they've been degraded by human development and the last section includes the perhaps his best-known essay called the land ethic that

argues that we have to view the land as a community to which we belong and not just as a resource to be exploited.

And this book is sold more than two million copies and has been translated into 14 different languages and by many environmentalists is considered there in air quotes their Bible.

Yes, a book that is

referenced often and read by conservationist.

So let's dive into Leopold's early life.

Tell us a little bit about his background.

So Leopold is a midwesterner.

By birth, he was born and grew up in Burlington, Iowa.

He was born in 1887.

So at a time when the frontier was closing, so he observed a lot of changes in the landscape as a kid.

He learned different sportsman's ethics.

from his dad, and he learned about not hunting too many animals at once.

He learned about bag limits and seasonal hunting.

And then he loved, because he loved the outdoors so much, he decided that he wanted after school, younger years of school, he studied forestry at Yale University.

And it was really the only place in the country that you could become a forester was at Yale.

And after he graduated, he had a 19 year career with US Forest Service.

And most of his time was spent in the Southwest in New Mexico and Arizona, where he learned a lot about the problems of over hunting and what carrying capacity of the land is in terms of

how much wildlife could be sustained on the land?

Right, looking primarily at overpopulation of deer because of the hunting of predators and the taking away of predators.

And in 1924, he moved to Wisconsin and he worked for the U.S.

Forest Products Laboratory in Madison and was also a private consultant.

In 1933, he became the chair of game management at the University of Wisconsin and then

in 1939 they created a whole new department of wildlife management of which he was the chair.

Okay so quite the illustrious background and and what brought him back here to the Midwest area in into Wisconsin.

Another big part of this what fascinates me about his life is he actually purchased a

a home that they call

it a cottage.

Not even

a cottage.

They call it the shack.

So

I mean, take from that what you will.

But that was in 1935 that the Leopold family purchased the shack.

Tell us about that.

So the shack is literally, it was an old chicken coop.

So when, that still had chicken poop of several feet deep in it.

That was the only structure that was left on this

overused sand farm along the Wisconsin River.

The house had burned down.

The foundation for that old house is still on the property.

But the only thing that was left was this old chicken coop.

And they purchased this land in 1935.

He, with his wife, Estella Berzeri, formerly of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and five children, all of whom obtained advanced degrees in different forms of...

of the biological sciences.

And the only thing that they did to the property, it was the only standing structure, but they added a bunk area as well as a fireplace and an outhouse that they nicknamed the Parthenon.

The Parthenon.

And it's really the setting where the family banded birds and planted thousands of trees and just observed nature.

And it was really the catalyst for Leopold's writing.

But tell me a little bit about why he chose to buy this piece of property in that place.

So I am a Leopold evangelist.

I've read the book probably a dozen times and it was probably on my 10th reading that I picked up on something that I never had seen in those first all prior readings.

So he comes out and states in the Almanac that it was the farmers of big flats, Wisconsin.

In other words, that township just south of Rome.

and our lakes here in Wisconsin, who inspired him to do so.

This came about because he had worked with these individuals, these farmers in big flats during the Great Depression.

He worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps where they were trying to move farmers off of what they called sub-marginal land.

In other words, the sandy soils that really couldn't produce much for these farmers to make a living just off the land.

these folks didn't want to leave their land.

And he could not for the life of him understand why if they were offering them money to leave this land and put them on better soil, why they wouldn't leave.

And he said, well, to understand why, I'm going to buy myself a sand farm.

So the sand farm is the shack down near Baraboo.

OK.

And then he worked hard to figure out why.

As I said, he and his family planted thousands of pine trees, they reestablished little prairie areas, and they basically restored, they started to learn how to restore the land.

And that was their experimental plot down there.

Okay.

So one of the things you said that happened during the 30s, we've heard about the dust bowl that happened out in...

the middle of the country, but Wisconsin itself had its own dust bowl.

Believe it or not, yes, as I said, Leopold worked with the CCC here in Wisconsin and he witnessed the results of horrible soil erosion that happened during our dust bowl.

He also worked with planting shelter belts, which if you drive down 39 and you look both east and west, you'll see these lines of pine trees that run parallel to the interstate.

And some of those mature pine trees were actually planted back in the 30s to help stop the wind and also to help capture some of the precipitation to help.

keep the soils in place.

But we, yes, we had our own dust bowl right here in central Wisconsin in basically the areas that I've described as the central sand plains.

In May of 1934, we had our own huge dust storms for two days and a night.

There were clouds of dust that reached a mile high.

We had temperatures that were hitting over 100 in May.

And in April and May, we only had about 35% of the normal precipitation.

And this is after a year of other drought conditions.

And it was just as bad of a dust storm as what people saw down in the panhandle of Texas and Oklahoma.

And some of these soils that blew out during this dust storm even reached Washington, DC.

Wow.

And what happened is that when all this dust

In soil blue, there were even drifts of sand that were as tall as a human being.

So six-foot drifts of sand, and it killed all the young vegetation, all the new plantings that had been put in the ground that spring, which led to starvation of livestock.

They had to ship in grains and forage for different animals.

They were able to replant some things later in June because the precipitation started again, but everything was behind.

One of the most visual aspects of this for me is there's a historian by the name of Michael Gough who wrote about this and he said that the sand was so deep on the roads, especially in Adams County, that they actually use snow plows to take the sand off the roads.

Oh my goodness.

Wow.

That's crazy.

Well, let's take a brief break here to hear from our sponsors.

I'm Alyssa Kaye.

I'm talking with historian Jean Mansavage, and you're listening to Perspective on 1320 a.m.

97.5 FM WFHR.

Welcome back.

I'm Melissa Kay, and you're listening to Perspective on WFHR 1320 AM, 97.5 FM.

I'm Melissa Kay, and I'm talking with local historian Jean Mansavage.

She's also a Wisconsin master naturalist.

And when we left off Jean, we were talking about the Wisconsin Dust Bowl.

But let's go back a little bit to Aldo Leopold and his land ethic.

Sure.

It's the idea that most people...

best know Leopold for is the land ethic.

And this is, it's known among primarily conservationists and ecologists for articulating a concept that developed over the course of Leopold's entire career.

Very simply put, it says quit thinking about decent land use as solely an economic problem.

Instead, examine each question in terms of what's ethically.

and aesthetically right, as well as what's economically expedient.

Simply put, a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.

And it's wrong when it tends otherwise.

And again, this was developed over the course of his entire career.

And there were a few experiences right here in our own backyard, including that dust bowl, those dust bowl experiences.

that influenced the development of this land ethic concept.

And along with the land ethic concept are the animals and the things living on the land.

So sandhill cranes were part of this almanac as well.

There was a whole essay he wrote on this, correct?

Yes, one of the essays in the second part of the almanac is called Marshland Elegy.

And in it,

Leopold warns that sandhill cranes could soon become extinct in Wisconsin, believe it or not.

It doesn't seem like it now, but they were.

Right.

I mean, back then, because we had drained the wetlands, we were hunting them as game.

We had fewer than 25 breeding pairs left in this state.

And that was in 1937, yes?

Yes.

Thank you.

30s, 40s, yes.

There weren't the same kinds of wildlife surveys that we do today, so it was a little bit less exact.

Rough estimate.

Yes, yes.

But one location where those cranes remained at the time was at Sandhill Game Farm in Babcock.

It's now the Sandhill State Wildlife Area.

And this is a place where Leopold's friends and fellow conservationists, Hazel and Wallace Grange, had purchased

nearly 9,500 acres of abandoned tax-delinquent wasteland, what they like to call it.

But the granges, they restored those wetlands by plugging the ditches and restoring the habitat for the cranes.

They also experimented with forest management.

and demonstrated how proper stewardship could actually boost wildlife populations.

And I think I told you this story during the 1930s and through the 50s that granges actually shipped live deer, rabbits, and game birds to southern and eastern states where a lot of these animals had been extirpated.

Wow.

So one is the best example I know of is by 1900 believe this or not this this is this just blows my mind knowing how many deer we have in our area but the estimated nationwide white deer population had dropped to between three and five hundred thousand animals down from an estimated thirty million deer before European colonization.

That's a huge drop.

There hadn't been hunting seasons.

There weren't bag limits.

And they had destroyed the habitat.

And the explosion of the number of people here.

Exactly.

So the Granges were sending all this wildlife to help repopulate.

Many of the areas where they've been wiped out exactly exactly and they spent the next 25 They spent 25 years restoring and running the game farm and in 1962 when they retired it They sold it for pennies basically to the state Asking that it be used as a wildlife demonstration and education area

and it still is to this day.

That is amazing another area is the the early prairie chicken research happening

in the Buena Vista Wildlife Area.

Right, 10 miles east of Rapids, right?

I'm sure if you've driven W, you've seen the little kiosk for the prairie chickens.

Leopold worked with the two of his graduate students, Francis and Frederick Hammerstrom.

who developed grassland management plans that actually saved the greater prairie chicken from extinction in Wisconsin.

And that animal, that bird, is still on the federal endangered species list.

And I know there's recently been some concern with the solar farm.

There's a very large solar farm over right next to that wildlife area now, and has caused some consternation among conservationists.

And not just the conservationists, but some of the people who still ranch.

cattle out there and I know as a kid I actually used to help on some of the ranch land out there and the running of cattle and the need for the grasslands for the cattle it actually complementary to the type of habitat that those prairie chickens need.

So you have to measure all of the possibilities about what the land can handle and what is best for the broader environment not just

Our energy needs.

Yeah.

No, that is a very good point Well as we're talking about birds, let's move on to the passenger pigeon.

I have a special place in my heart for pigeons And but this this is a very interesting fact and when you told me this I was just blown away

So the reason this is related to Leopold is he actually wrote an essay in the Leop in the

San County Almanac about the passenger pigeon because obviously we all know that the the bird went extinct.

Little known fact, the last wild passenger pigeon in Wisconsin was shot near Babcock.

Wow.

And the fact that they went extinct by 1914 is something that's just hard to believe.

Passenger pigeons once accounted for between 25 and 40 percent of

the entire US bird population.

There were three to five billion, with a B, passenger pigeons in this country.

But market hunters, again, and the cutting down of the chest, the loss of the chestnuts eventually, but also the cutting down of oak trees, took away their habitat as well.

But primarily the market hunters were shooting them by the hundreds of thousands and shipping them to the east coast for restaurants.

there was no concern for not taking them during the right season so that the young could replace those that were being killed, and we lost the entire species.

And there's actually, down near Prairie to Sheena, while losing State Park, there is actually a monument to the passenger pigeons.

And Leopold spoke at the dedication of this monument, and it's the essay that makes up the heart of...

His presentation was the essay that was in the Almanac.

Wow.

Well, one point that you have made as we've talked about this off air is the importance of this book, Aldo Leopold's book, a Sand County Almanac, and how it can help us to look at our landscape differently.

and talking about a new view of how to see the landscape.

I think the things that I have mentioned today about the natural history, as well as different aspects of the book that Leopold has written, have allowed me and I think many others to view our landscape here in central Wisconsin through a whole different lens.

And as Leopold wrote just a paraphrase, once you see things differently,

and you learn to appreciate it because we've got an incredible ecosystem here.

And once you appreciate it, then you'll think twice about degrading it, throwing garbage or putting down pesticides or any of the other things that can really hurt what supports not only our agriculture, but our wildlife and our way of life.

And quite honestly, I wish that I had known all these things as a kid growing up.

because I would have had a very different perspective on the land that I've always called home and that I'm now back to living on.

Wonderful.

I'm Melissa Kaye.

I've been speaking with Jean Mansavage, retired federal historian from the Department of Defense agencies in Washington, D.C., coming back to her home area here and becoming an active local historian and Wisconsin master naturalist.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today, Jean.

Thanks again for having me.

And thank you to listeners joining us for news in our community on Perspective, 1320 a.m.

975 FM WFHR.