Leopold Legacy

ALDO LEOPOLD – His Legacy – Part 1

Three miles up a dirt road from the paved end of Kingston Main Street is the boundary of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness. Step over that imaginary line and you are suddenly in the eastern half of the area set aside on June 23, 1924 as our nation’s first designated Wilderness area. Almost 100 years later it is still a very wild area. 

The wilderness areas within the Gila National Forest encompass 760,000 acres or 1,187 square miles. The western half retains the original name of the “Gila Wilderness,” the eastern portion was named the “Aldo Leopold Wilderness” in 1980. In 1922 Aldo Leopold, along with Fred Winn, Supervisor of the Gila National Forest, facing the impacts of increased human encroachment into wild areas of the Forest,  proposed the establishment of a wilderness area within the Gila National Forest.  In discussing what qualities an area needed to possess to be worthy of a wilderness designation, Leopold said the following, “It should be a continuous stretch of country, preserved in its natural state, open to lawful hunting and fishing, big enough to absorb a two weeks pack trip and kept devoid of roads, artificial trails, cottages and other works of man.”

Who was this man who pushed to have this wild land protected from the ravaging ways of progress?

Aldo Leopold was a man of many interests. He said, “there are two things that interest me the most: the relationship of people to people and the relationship of people to the land”. It was his own relationship to the land that is revealed in his well-known book, A Sand County Almanac. He is considered by many to be the father of wildlife and restoration ecology, and is arguably the most influential conservationist of the 20^th century.  He was a forester, a philosopher, an educator, a writer, and an outdoor enthusiast. Among his most influential ideas is that of the “land ethic”, which calls for an principled, concerned relationship of people with nature. 

Born on January 11, 1887, Aldo Leopold grew up in Burlington, Iowa where his childhood home was perched high on a bluff above the Mississippi River. The wild and rich riparian lands wrapping the mighty Mississippi were a perfect setting for a young naturalist with a thirst for learning about the natural world. He spent hours observing, journaling, and sketching his surroundings.

His father, Carl Leopold had a quiet way of teaching respect and love for the natural world mainly by giving others the opportunity to make their own discoveries and the wonders and joys that resulted. There were always stories to be read, be it a new set of muddy tracks along the streams edge, or a punky log with the top knocked off revealing a lunchbox of tasty insects, or even a flight of geese about which to marvel as they made their way south for the winter. Those early experiences gave Leopold a strong framework to develop his thinking about a land ethic. Carl was a sportsman pioneer in his own way; he observed the impact that spring hunting had on the migratory waterfowl and pushed to have the rules for hunting during the breeding season changed. 

Upon graduating from the Yale School of Forestry, Aldo eagerly pursued a career with the newly established U. S. Forest Service in the Arizona and New Mexico territories. In 1909 at the young age of 22 years old, after attending several Forestry training camps, he took a train from Albuquerque to Holbrook in the Arizona Territory. Heading south from Holbrook he spent the next two days riding stagecoach. The road to Springerville gave Aldo his first glimpse of Escudilla Mountain to the southeast and the alpine capped White Mountains to the west. The volcanic cinder cones, clad with high desert grasses fascinated him as they approached the little town at the end of his journey. He was primed for the adventure he knew lay before him for this was still a time of wild lands. There were very few roads through the rugged forests and canyons and the Forest Rangers of that day road horses everywhere they went.

He was in his new job for three months when an incident happened that ultimately changed his way of thinking about predators. In A Sand County Almanac, he tells a story called “Thinking Like a Mountain”. I’ll let you have the pleasure of reading his words but in that story, he recalls an incident that occurred on the rimrock bluffs high above the Black River in eastern Arizona. Leopold and his crew had emptied their rifles into a wolf pack at the rivers’ edge and had experienced a dying wolf and a “fierce green fire” that he saw blaze then fade and die in her eyes. He says, “I was young and full of trigger itch. Back then we thought that fewer wolves meant more deer and that no wolves meant a hunters’ paradise”.

In a letter to his mother written in late September, 1909 he only mentioned “the killing of two wolves” but apparently the incident left him feeling that there was something he did not understand. Something he would later note that was “known only to the wolf and the mountain.” It took him many years to realize the importance of predators to the natural world, but in time he was advocating their right to be part of the natural community.

This incident was one of the more important life experiences that helped shape his thinking about the Land Ethic. Leopold said, “If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good whether we understand it or not. If the biotic community over the course of eons has created something beautiful and works well, then who but a fool would discard seemly useless parts. Why to keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution to intelligent tinkering.”

That wolf he helped shoot and watched die was one of those cogs. What happened to the wolf pack of young pups that had greeted her and then fled back into the rocky talus piles? Did they survive? What balance of the deer population that would have been checked by predation by this wolf pack was lost?  A piece of balance in the natural world was removed because of ignorance.  Leopold said, “the last word in ignorance is that of a man who says of a plant or animal, what good is it?” From the way he wrote about the incident more than 35 years later, it is likely that he reflected back and realized that he was guilty himself of saying, “What good is it.”

The southwest in 1909 was still a place with few roads piercing square miles of wild lands. The Apache and the Gila National Forests were only established four years earlier in 1905. The National Forest Service was a young and small organization at that time, so promotions were rapid. The Head Forester of Region 3 was Arthur Ringland and he had been watching Leopold’s progress and felt it was time for a promotion. In April of 1912, at the age of 24, Leopold took over the post of Supervisor for the Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico.  

He spent a month in Albuquerque during which time Ringland decided how he wanted to use Leopold’s talents. There was a entertaining night life there in city which had been wholly lacking in Springerville, and Leopold was enjoying it. There he met Estella Bergere. Once Leopold decided he wanted something, he had dogged determination, and so it was with Estella. She came from an affluent, well known sheepherding family deeply rooted in New Mexico. Leopold had competition in courting Estella with a young Albuquerque lawyer. 

In the end, Estella gave in to Leopold’s’ persistence, and on October 12, 1912 they were married in the Cathedral of St. Francis in Santa Fe. Before his wedding day, Leopold moved the Carson National Forest Supervisor’s headquarters from Antonito, Colorado to Tres Piedras, New Mexico. With an allotment of $650 in building funds, Leopold designed and built a new home for the Supervisor and for his soon to be bride.  They fondly named their new home Mia Casita.  This home still stands at Tres Piedras.

This was a milestone in Leopold’s life. He could stand on the porch of the home he built and bask in contentment enjoying one of the prettiest views on the continent, knowing he was the first Forest Supervisor from his graduating class, and he had the deep love of his life by his side. In his words, “He was enjoying the best of all worlds.”

ALDO LEOPOLD – His Legacy – Part 2

When Aldo Leopold arrived on the Carson National Forest on May 12, 1911, he found a forest much different than the Apache he had come to know so well. Where the Apache National Forest had been wild and mainly unexplored, the Carson had been heavily used for years by the sheep and cattle ranchers. Though the two forests had been established on the same day, July 1, 1908, the Carson National Forest had not been managed well. Arthur Ringland, the District 3 Forester, assigned Harry C. Hall as the new Forest Supervisor, with Aldo Leopold as his Assistant Supervisor, and the new team was put in charge of the Carson to “put the house in order.”

The Carson National Forest sprawled across two mountain ranges and covered over nine thousand square miles. Supervisor Hall and Leopold felt that the Supervisor’s current location in Antonito, Colorado was too remote to operate from, so they moved the office south thirty miles to Tres Piedras.
The sleepy old railroad town of Tres Piedras takes its name from the three high hills of granite that rise from the grasslands and pine forest and stand tall over the scattering of buildings.  From their new location, Supervisor Hall and Leopold went to work. These were still times when the frontier life could be rough and wild. The sheepherders were the biggest problem the new office faced, as they had pretty much done whatever they wanted and had not been called on it — until now. Many of the meetings Leopold went to, to explain the new rules for grazing permits, found him packing his six-shooter for safety. 

The massive overgrazing Leopold observed on the Carson laid the foundation for his later thinking on erosion and the effects of livestock on the arid Southwestern lands. By 1900 the Carson rangeland was supporting 220,000 head of cattle and over 1,750,000 head of sheep. It was the heartland of the sheep grazing operations.

One of the questions I am often asked when doing a performance is, “How did Leopold deal with his wife Estella’s sheepherding family and his job of enforcing stricter grazing rules on public lands?” I respond by saying, “He was diplomatic and careful with his new relatives.” Leopold’s message to others was to strongly refuse to discuss politics and warned that “the first man who tries to spoil things for me through politics gets his block knocked off.”

The reality of the time was that most of the big sheepherding families knew that changes needed to be made. The land was quickly deteriorating from the years of overgrazing. However, there were still pockets of stockmen who resisted the new rules. After one of the more heated meetings, Leopold declared, “By God, the Individual Allotment and every other reform we have promised is going to stick – if it takes a six-shooter to do it.”  Once the pockets of resistance were dealt with, the new Forest policies were in place and started working well.  
Another aspect of Leopold’s life that started in earnest during his time on the Carson National Forest was his writing. He started a newsletter for the Forest, the Carson Pine Cone, and became its chief editor, reporter and illustrator. The Pine Cone’s stated purpose was to “scatter seeds of knowledge, encouragement, and enthusiasm among the forest employees and create interest in their work. May these seeds fall on fertile soil and each and every one of them germinate, grow and flourish. This is one of the most beautiful forests in the country and we should strive to make it one of the best organized and conducted forest in the country.”

In March of 1912, Supervisor Hall transferred to Oregon to be nearer his home and Forester Ringland appointed Leopold as Acting Supervisor to take Hall’s place. These were busy times for Aldo with the whole forest now his to get into good working order. The policies that he and Hall had implemented were starting to show positive results. He wrote home, “This is such a delightful turmoil of a world.”
On August 10, 1912, Leopold was appointed full Supervisor of the Carson National Forest, the first in his Yale class. After the October 9, 1912 wedding of Aldo Leopold and Estella Bergere at the Cathedral of St. Francis in Santa Fe, his Supervisor duties were waiting so they skipped their honeymoon and journeyed north by railroad to their new home in Tres Piedras. Leopold had been funded six-hundred fifty round, large silver dollars to build a new Supervisors quarters which he had designed with Estella’s help. Fondly named “Mia Casita” by Aldo and Estella, the craftsman style home nestled in the pines at the base of one of Tres Piedras weathered granite hills that towers above the surrounding landscape and still stands today looking out over the Rio Grande valley towards the mountains above Santa Fe.

Estella was a practical young woman. She was said to be unpretentous, playful, self-motivated, independent minded, and an always gracious lady. She was teaching first grade in a Santa Fe school when Aldo began courting her. Though she did not know how to cook or cut hair, she learned quickly. Those first few months of married life forged a marriage which the Leopold children later referred to “as the most loving marriage as they had ever seen.”
Maria Alvira Estella Bergere was born on August 24, 1890 in Las Lunas, New Mexico. Her father, Alfred M. Bergere was born in Liverpool, England, the son of Franco-Milanese father and Venetian mother. He was a musical prodigy studying piano when he left Europe at the age of sixteen.  He eventually worked his way from New York City to the Southwest where he met Don Solomon Luna, one of the most prominent and powerful sheep men in the New Mexico Territory. Two years later he married Don Luna’s widowed sister, Eloisa Luna Otero. 

Don Alfredo had four consuming interests in life: music, finance, politics and his large family. There was always music in the Bergere home, and he was a key player in bringing classical music to New Mexico. As a businessman he was a relator, sheep owner and insurance executive. A strong Republican, he held several key positions in the state party. As to the large family, Alfred and Eloisa had nine children with Estella being the second oldest.

Eloisa’s side of the family is rich in historical stories. The family name of Luna dates back to 1091 when the Spanish king bestowed the name De Luna and a coat of arms on her ancestor, a young and daring naval captain.  He attacked the Moorish fleet in the light of a quarter moon and won a major battle, gaining favor with the Spanish king.

The family was deeply involved with the nobility of Aragon, Castile and Segovia over the centuries. Eventually Eloisa’s ancestor, Don Tristan de Luna y Arellano of Castile sailed to the new world with Cortez who was married to his cousin. Don Tristan became a storied conquistador, serving as second in command under Coronado on his epic expedition through the southwest in 1540. He went on to become the governor of the Spanish Florida colony in 1559. 
The Luna family became established in New Mexico in the late 1600’s after acquiring a land grant of eighty-thousand acres between the Rio Grande and the Rio Puerco. This became the seat of one of the largest sheep empires in West. Estella’s grandfather, Antonio Jose Luna, drove several large flocks of sheep to the hungry miners during the gold strikes in California and made an immense fortune from that venture.

By the time Aldo started courting Estella, her family had become the largest and most powerful of the sheep ranching concerns in the west. Her uncle Don Solomon played a major role in ensuring that New Mexico became the forty-seventh state on January 6, 1912. The Leopolds and the Bergeres became even more entwined when Aldo’s younger brother Carl married Estella’s sister Dolores. So, when Estella quickly settled into the lifestyle of a US Forest Service family at Mia Casita, she brought with her a rich Southwestern heritage.

It was seven months later, after standing on the porch of Mia Casita basking in the glow of enjoying the best of all worlds, that Aldo left on a trip that would change his life drastically. On April 7, 1913 Aldo left Tres Piedras to settle some disputes on the Jicarilla portion of the Carson National Forest. To get to that portion of the forest required a train ride north to Antonito, Colorado then west to Chama, and then a ferry, a stage and finally a hired horse to finish the trip.

Leopold spent five days in cold wet weather riding the area to calm and settle the disputes mainly over the location of the designated sheep driveways. Many of the herders were taking their own routes which weren’t approved by the Forest Service. Leopold spent the nights sleeping out in the high-elevation country and on April 16^th, he was sleeping in a wet bedroll when a hailstorm hit. The storm lasted for two days of hail, rain and snow. The arroyos were flooded and when he finally started back to Tres Piedras on the 20^th, he decided to ride his horse across the Jicarilla Reservation, all the way to the train at Chama instead of the roundabout way he had come. 

During the trip back, Leopold got lost in the dark, and ended up spending the night with an Apache Indian. His knees had swollen up so badly that he had to slit his riding boots. He was able to take a stagecoach to Chama, where he caught a train and eventually showed up the morning of the April 23^rd at the Supervisor’s Office in Tres Piedras. Ray Marsh, Leopold’s Assistant Supervisor who had been in charge of the office while Leopold was away, was stunned to see his boss and friend return with his face, hands, arms and legs all swollen. Over Leopold’s protests that there was nothing seriously wrong, Marsh put him on the next train 2 days later to Santa Fe and saved his life.

In Santa Fe the doctor diagnosed him with a case of Acute Nephritis or Bright’s Disease. During the trip, his kidneys had failed, and so for eight days, he worked and rode with toxins building up in his body. He was confined to his bed for six weeks and for a man who thrived on being active outdoors and in charge of running a Forest, he “was chaffing, restless for something to do.”

After one year of unpaid leave, Leopold had to be officially “separated” from the Forest Service. It was another six and a half months before his doctor would allow him to go back to work. Ray Marsh had been appointed the Forest Supervisor on the Carson. Arthur Ringland, the District 3 Forester had been trying to find a position for Leopold since he did not want to lose him. Finally, on October 4, 1914, after packing up the rest of their belongings from Mia Casita, Aldo and Estella and their one-year old son, Starker, moved into a small house on South Ninth Street in Albuquerque. 

Aldo Leopold, now 27 years old, went back to work for the Forest Service as the office manager for the Forest Service Office of Grazing. A desk job, but at least he was back to work.
*** Note: Much of the information included in this section was found in Curt Meine’s 1988 book, Aldo Leopold – His Life and Works.

ALDO LEOPOLD – HIS LEGACY PART 3

When Aldo Leopold stood on the porch of Mia Casita and gazed contently out over the great valley of the upper Rio Grande, he had no idea his life and world were about to completely change. He was basking in the glow of accomplishment, the first Supervisor from his class and his newly pregnant, love of his life by his side. 

The attack of Acute nephritis took a man who was extremely active and forced him into being a cautious invalid. It was sixteen and a half months before his life righted course with being reinstated by the Forest Service, but Leopold was never one to be idle. He read voraciously during that time and began the practice with Estella of reading to each other. 

One of the books that had the greatest impact on Leopold during that time was Our Vanishing Wildlife by William Temple Hornaday. It was among the first books wholly devoted to the conditions endangering the wild game populations. The book focused Leopold’s thinking on the importance of Game Protection, a topic that would be forefront in his thinking for the next several decades.

With all of his imposed invalid time, he managed to write and edit the Pine Cone Newsletter and a few pieces on his thoughts about the qualities of a Forest Service employee. He wrote, “We are entrusted with the protection and development, through wise use and constructive study, of the timber, water, forage, farm, recreative, game, fish and aesthetic resources of the areas under our jurisdiction. I will call those resources, for short, “The Forest”. Our agencies for this development are: first, the Forest Users; the second, our own energies, labor and example; and third, the funds placed at our disposal. It follows quite simply, that our sole task is to increase the efficiency of these three agencies. And it also follows that the sole measure of our success is the effect which they have on the Forest. In plainer English, our job is to sharpen our tools, and make them cut the right way.” 

He also felt strongly that the details of administration and policy details often took precedence over the real work in the Forest itself. He thought that the person in the best position to gauge the success of the Forest was not the Forester in Washington, nor the district forester in Albuquerque, nor even the forest supervisor, but the individual forest ranger, the man on the ground. As scattered as our National Forests were throughout the United States, he felt the person with the best view of life on the forest was the ranger who worked the land every day and didn’t spend their time in the confines of an office. Only their best judgement and input could ensure success in a broad-scale conservation effort.

One other topic that is seen throughout Leopold’s early thinking is the need to manage the land well. But his main goal here was not the preservation of every cog and wheel, that thinking came later, but that of game management. He still pushed the need for predator elimination and it was only in the early 1930’s that he started to shift his thinking and realized that predators played an important part of the natural world. One of his “Pine Cone” commentaries from January 1914 commented on a story the newsletter carried about Ranger Elliot Barker killing four bobcats and four mountain lions over a few days. Leopold’s comment was, “some shooting”.

It was during this hiatus in Leopold’s career that an event occurred causing great joy in both families: on October 22^, 1913, Estella gave birth to their first child, Aldo Starker Leopold. It was still another four months before the doctor would allow Leopold to travel back to New Mexico. He wrote to Regional Forester Ringland that his health was improving but was “slow as all get out.”

On September 14, 1914, Leopold was finally reinstated back with the forest service. In the sixteen and a half months of being on medical leave, his world had shifted from contentment on the porch at Mia Casita overlooking the broad upper Rio Grande valley and being the Carson Forest Supervisor to a more sedate role as Assistant Director in Region 3’s Office of Grazing. But his chaffing at idleness was over. He was back to work.

ALDO LEOPOLD – HIS LEGACY PART 4

The southwestern lands of Arizona and New Mexico were home to Aldo Leopold from 1909 until 1924. After that time period, he moved his family to Wisconsin. Those fifteen years gave him much of the experience from which he drew to write his two best known pieces, Game Management and The Sand County Almanac.

His earliest experiences as a ranger on the Apache National Forest, and then on to becoming the Forest Supervisor of the Carson National Forest, gave him a good, solid grounding in the ecology of the southwest. After he recovered from his sixteen-and-a-half-month bout with acute nephritis, Leopold rejoined the Forest Service in October of 1914. Those months spent away from the active life he so craved, gave him the time to look back and reflect on what he had learned. 

Leopold spent the next nine months in the Region 3 Office of Grazing in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Though he chaffed at being confined to an office, it was there that he honed his skills as an office manager, skills which he drew upon a great deal, later in his life. He also became very aware of the impact of livestock on the land. The concept of “carrying capacity,” the number of livestock the land could endure without being permanently damaged, became interwoven in his thinking for the rest of his life. This nine-month period also gave him more time to recover from his illness and primed him for new adventures.

June of 1915 found Leopold at the southern edge of the Grand Canyon. He was given the responsibility of developing the recreational policy for governing the eleven National Forests, Region 3 managed. His first assignment was to untangle the mess that the recreational uses at the Grand Canyon had become. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt had given America a challenge, to “Leave the Grand Canyon as it was.” He said, “You can not improve upon it, not one bit. The ages have to work on it and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you as one of the great sights which every American, if he can travel at all, should see. Keep the Grand Canyon as it is.”

Instead, what Leopold found just a decade later, was a circus of gaudy electrical signs, vendors loudly proclaiming their wares, and unsanitary conditions from untreated waste and garbage.  These abuses masked and detracted from the incredible natural wonder visitors had traveled to see. Leopold immediately began working on a plan with the Tusayan Forest supervisor Don Johnson. This became the first operating plan to guide how the Forest Service dealt with recreation use at the Grand Canyon.

Another part of his new job was to coordinate the fledgling Fish and Game program within the Forest Service. This would become an area where Leopold would devote a good deal of his time over the next ten years. He began by looking at areas with the potential to become National Wildlife Refuges. The Forest Service at this time had not designated any lands as refuges.

In 1903, in an effort to control plume hunting, President Theodore Roosevelt created the first official wildlife refuge at Pelican Island in Florida. In 1906, he designated the Grand Canyon Game Preserve, later becoming the Grand Canyon National Park, as one of the first National Game Refuges. Leopold felt strongly that game refuges were needed to further game preservation policy. So in June of 1915, he submitted a request for Stinking Lake in northern New Mexico to become a National Wildlife Refuge. Interestingly, this was the same lake he had passed when he was stricken with his bout of acute nephritis.

Leopold was now well on his way to publishing his first handbook for the Forest Service. In September 1915 he finished the Game and Fish Handbook. The Forest Service had never had this kind of publication before, and it was well received. His early thinking on Game Management was now starting to show. In his Handbook introduction on the biological value of wildlife, Leopold states, “North America, in its natural state, possessed the richest fauna in the world. It’s stock of game has been reduced by 98%. Eleven species have already been exterminated, and twenty-five more are now candidates for oblivion. Nature was a million years, or more, in developing a species…. Man, with all his wisdom, has not evolved so much as a ground squirrel, a sparrow or a clam.”

He also stated that, “The breeding stock must be increased. Rare species must be protected and restored. The value of game lies in its variety as well as its abundance.” Interestingly though, he barely mentioned predators in the Handbook, and certainly not the need to preserve them. His thinking about the important role of predators in the natural world would evolve later in his life.

At this point with the Forest Service, his mission was to focus on “game protection”. On the evening of October 13, 1915, Leopold listened to a fiery lecture by the renown conservationist William T. Hornaday. His book, Our Vanishing Wild Life, had greatly impressed Leopold.  After hearing the great orator, who was said to have had a biblical voice and a countenance to match his zeal, Leopold found his own convictions and thinking about game protection inflamed; supported by the Forest Service, he started on a campaign trail to further the cause.

In January 1916, Leopold was sent out on a speaking tour of New Mexico. His goal was to help local sportsmen build cooperative associations to protect wildlife on the national forests. He was very successful in his mission. He found very strong support with the local hunters. This was the result of their reaction to an unusual situation found in New Mexico hunting grounds; a European Barony style where the large landowners had most of New Mexico’s game locked up for their own personal use.  The evolution of the reasons for this will be discussed in the next installment of Aldo Leopold: His Legacy as will his final years in the Southwest.

***NOTE: The bulk of the data this section is based on, came from Curt Meine’s book: Aldo Leopold – His Life and Work.” Data from Louis S. Warren’s book: “The Hunter’s Game” was also referenced.

ALDO LEOPOLD – HIS LEGACY PART 5 

Our story ended last time with Aldo embarking on a speaking tour of New Mexico to drum up support for a New Mexico Game Protection Association or GPA. In January of 1916, he began the statewide tour in Silver City. He met with Miles W. Burford, who had formed a group of one hundred hunters, fisherman, local ranchers and miners. The Sportsmen’s Association of Southwestern New Mexico was Leopold’s first group to whom he pitched the idea of a statewide collation of GPA’s. From Silver City, he traveled to Rincon, El Paso, Alamogordo, up to Cloudcroft, east to Carlsbad, then on to Roswell and back to Albuquerque.

He was surprised by the welcoming reception that had met him at each stop. The reasons for the willingness of people, who had in the past, been against working with the Forest Service, are deeply buried in New Mexico’s past.

Leopold was also convinced that without Federal intervention, American wildlife and the hunting associated with it, was doomed. What he saw in New Mexico was a dwindling pubic access to hunting grounds. New Mexico had allowed it’s wealthiest and most powerful landowners to privatize the states wildlife. For a nominal fee to the state, those landowners, acquired title to the wildlife on their property. 

They had what resembled a European barony, their own private hunting grounds. The largest of these private land blocks was the Maxwell Land Grant in Northeastern New Mexico. Its boundaries were determined by the Supreme Court in 1887. The grant contained 1.7 million acres of fine grasses, good timber, minerals for mining and perennially flowing rivers. 

The Dutch owners of the grant broke up the properties into large tracts to sell. They hired local businessmen, lawyers and politicians to sell the parcels and in turn, this group became quite wealthy and powerful in Santa Fe. They even developed power connections in Washington, D.C. The group became known as the Santa Fe Ring and several members went on to become state governors in the late 1890’s. By 1916, when Leopold was touring the state, the Santa Fe ring still wielded a lot of political might.

Statehood for New Mexico in 1912, brought a stronger focus on those large land holdings. The state did not have funds to create and maintain wildlife refuges on state lands, so they relied on the large landowners to adopt conservation measures. This led to a series of laws that eventually prevented the average citizen from hunting on public lands. The control of hunting and fishing in New Mexico became the right of the very wealthy landowners and their friends.

This set up a strong groundswell of support for the GPA ideas Leopold was promoting. Since he represented the US Forest Service and a lot of federal land in New Mexico, the public gathered behind him. Leopold referred to the National Forests as the “Last Free Hunting Grounds of the Nation”. He felt that incorporating wildlife management into National Forest policy was the only way to protect and preserve wildlife which in turn, preserved free hunting on public lands.

The New Mexico Game Protection Association (NMGPA) held its first convention in early March, 1916 in Albuquerque. Through Leopold’s efforts, throughout the state to generate a common interest in preserving wildlife and free hunting and fishing, more than one thousand new members attended.

The NMGPA established three main goals. The first was law enforcement. This meant taking the control of game warden appointments away from the political arena. Second was the establishment of game refuges on the National Forests. The third was predator control. They proposed the “wise control”, meaning extermination of wolves, mountain lions, coyotes, bears, bobcats, foxes and birds of prey. The prevalent thinking at that time is summed up by this Leopold quote from his essay titled “Thinking Like a Mountain”. He said, “I was young then, and full of trigger itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves meant a hunters paradise.” The centuries of cultural indoctrination and almost complete lack of scientific information on the role of predators in natural systems combined into a common observation from both stockmen and sportsmen, “That varmit takes my food.”

After his role in creating the NMGPA, Leopold refocused on his Forest Service duties. In 1915, Congress had passed the Term Permit Act, which authorized the Forest Service to approve private recreational facilities on suitable forest lands. His duties included the siting, mapping and surveying of these lots and had him back on the road. This time mainly in Arizona. He continued his push for GPA’s and helped establish the first in Arizona in the towns of Flagstaff, Springerville, Tucson and Payson. Always concerned about uncontrolled hunting practices, he convinced a group of soldiers in Nogales, to stop using the endangered Bighorn Sheep in the Patagonia Mountains for target practice. This non-stop traveling was taking a toll on Leopold and he suffered a minor reoccurrence of Acute Nephitis. This sent him back to Albuquerque, concerned for his future health.

By 1917, the First World War was raging in Europe. When the United States entered the conflict in April of that year, the abilities of the Forest Service became greatly curtailed. One of the greatest needs were for foresters to harvest the woods of France for lumber needed to build barracks, trenches and aircraft. The Forest Service lost many of their rangers and administrators as they went overseas to “do their duty.”

This brought most of the ongoing Forest Service projects to a halt. One other major change was the order from Washington to “stock the ranges with cattle to their fullest capacity.” There was a major push to produce more food for the war effort and increasing the number of cattle was part of the plan. Unfortunately, by the time the cattlemen had increased their herds, the war was over. Weather conditions also were rough the following few years for livestock. With the loss of market for beef driven by the war effort, financial over extension to increase their herds and poor range conditions, many ranchers lost their lands. Another result of this government request was the resulting overgrazing on lands already damaged. 

Though the Forest Service employees were working hard to fill in for the many empty positions, Leopold continued with his duties which included implementing the Grand Canyon Working Plan. He also continued his work with the GPA’s in New Mexico. He had been concerned in recent years by the changes in hunting. Newer equipment had changed the attitude of many sportsmen. Leopold had grown up on the lessons of fair play. He saw the rules of sportsmanship as the only reasonable response to technological innovations that had outstripped their reasonable application. For Leopold, hunting was not just about the game bagged at the end of the day but deeply included watching wedges of geese and flock of mallards fly over the sandbars on the Rio Grande. It was his love for the outdoors, for the cottonwoods and willows, the winds and waters, the sandstone rims and the sandy bottoms of the river valley that drew him to the wilds. To Leopold, hunting was an expression of love for the natural world.

He was approached in late 1917 and offered a new job. His family now had grown to three children and this opportunity brought a substantial raise in pay. It meant leaving the Forest Service but in January of 1918, Leopold started a new adventure as Secretary of the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce.

***NOTE: The bulk of the data this section is based on, came from Curt Meine’s book: Aldo Leopold – His Life and Work.” Data from Louis S. Warren’s book: “The Hunter’s Game” was also referenced.

ALDO LEOPOLD – HIS LEGACY PART 6

In January of 1918, Aldo Leopold began a new job. As Secretary of the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, Leopold brought strong skills in organization and public relations. He had struggled with the decision to leave the Forest Service, but he had a growing family to take care of. Also, he was only looking at this as a temporary job until the soldiers returned from the war and the Forest Service projects could resume. But as was Leopold’s way, he threw himself into his new responsibilities.

In 1918, Albuquerque was a growing city of around 15,000 and to quote Leopold was  “spiritually alive”. Leopold soon had several projects he promoted. One area that he sought to change was the divide he saw between the businessmen and everybody else. He said, “To remedy this unnecessary cleavage in our population, the trade, craft and labor organizations should be represented in the Chamber of Commerce. I know of not one project of our Chamber in which the farmer, the carpenter, and the brick mason is just not as vitally concerned as the banker or the merchant.”

Leopold was also concerned with the “Americanizing” of the city by not embracing its New Mexican cultural blend of Hispanic and Pueblo architecture. He proposed hiring a city planner to guide the growth in a manner that would create pride in their heritage. Leopold envisioned an Albuquerque city plan that would provide for the gradual acquisition of a system of open space and parks to be within easy walking distance of every home in the city. Of this system, the Rio Grande Park would be an integral part of the plan. He actually started this planning along the river when he was still working for the Forest Service in 1917. He saw the park as “being primarily for the man without a car.” He noted that “the man with a car does not need it. Just a trail along the bank and clean woods and waters. All shooting should be prohibited. There are herons, beaver, muskrats, songbirds and killdeer there now, and with proper protection there would soon be ducks, snipe and other wildlife.” This was quite a departure from his earlier thinking about hunting but showed his growing concern for the overall health of wildlife habitat. His vision for the open space park system along the river is still a viable piece of Albuquerque and the Rio Grande River. If you visit the river today, you’ll find a well-developed trail system running through the Rio Grande park, Aldo Leopold Forest and the Rio Grande Nature Center. His planning lives on.

One of his more ambitious projects was to drain the Rio Grande Valley, creating more agricultural land. In the summer of 1918, he helped organize a conference to publicly discuss this project. In the press release he sent out, Leopold said, “If we don’t drain, then what? The handwriting is on the wall. A rising water table, a rising crop of salt grass, alkali, and mosquitos, and an agricultural area gradually approaching zero. If we do drain, then what? One of the richest valleys in the West – every acre worth $200, and if properly farmed, paying a profit on that evaluation.”

In 1918, this draining a wetland for agricultural use was considered progressive conservation; the wise management of a natural resource to provide a common good. As Leopold did many times in his life however, he later, radically changed his thinking about a topic. For example, he was an avid promoter of predator control and yet in his latter years, came to realize the importance of predators in the natural ecology, hence his statement, “The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, what good is it? If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” 

He also wrote that “indiscriminate wetland draining is a primary factor in the destruction”. This was a major reversal of his earlier thinking. Leopold showed the unusual ability to change his mind. He often took years to do this, but this allowed him to adjust his thinking when confronted with new information. 

It was during this time away from the Forest Service that he first really started publishing articles that expressed his views. They were his early attempts to chart a future course for the conservation of wildlife in America, and to explain his view of the role of wildlife in modern society.

In October of 1918, Albuquerque and all of New Mexico was experiencing something similar to our current situation with COVID-19. The so-called Spanish Flu had been hitting the East Coast hard and eventually made it to the southwest. By November, over 15,000 New Mexicans had fallen ill and perhaps a thousand had died. 

This was happening in Albuquerque while Leopold was working for the Chamber, but curiously, I have not found any reference from Leopold’s writings about this. Albuquerque was not hit as hard as some of the surrounding towns. They only had 923 confirmed cases and 167 deaths. Their city government enforced several measures which sound very familiar to us in 2021: all public gatherings were prohibited, mask use was encouraged and quarantined homes were identified by signage.

When 1919 arrived, Leopold found himself near the end of his obligation to the Chamber and with the Forest Service regaining its workforce from the end of the war, he was anxious to rejoin the Service. On August 1, 1919, Leopold rejoined the Forest Service as the Assistant District Forester in Charge of Operations. 

These were times of rapid changes in our country. Leopold went in a short ten year period, from being a greenhorn Forest ranger to Forest Supervisor and now, the number two position on the district. Our next Legacy story has him traveling on inspection tours of all eleven national forests in District 3, spread out through Arizona and New Mexico.

***NOTE: Much of the data this section is based on, came from Curt Meine’s book: Aldo Leopold – His Life and Work.”. Some information about the open spaces in Albuquerque came from the City of Albuquerque website. Information about the Spanish Flu in New Mexico came from the article by State Records Administrator Rick Hendricks. Ph.D titled, “The Spanish Flu Pandemic 1918-1920.

ALDO LEOPOLD – HIS LEGACY PART 7

Life after the war and the Spanish Flu, held a sense of renewal for the thriving little city of Albuquerque, New Mexico. On August 1, 1919, Leopold left his short but productive stint at the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce and rejoined the US Forest Service. He came back to a promoted position, far above where many felt he had the experience to be, but he was the new Assistant Forester in Charge of Operations. This made him second in command of Forest Region 3 with its eleven national forests to operate and manage.

After only a few months in the new position, the District Forester of Region 3, Paul Redington, left the region and was replaced by a man who thought Leopold was not the right man for the job and told him so. Frank C. W. Pooler even had another position lined up in another region for Leopold to take. Aldo dug his heels in and said no thanks. His family and so many of his ongoing projects were in Albuquerque and New Mexico.

Typical of Leopold, he went after his new position with great passion to do his best and on Christmas Eve, 1920, District Forester Frank Pooler wrote to Leopold this note:

In the closing days of my first year as District Forester, I want to express my appreciation for the loyal assistance you have given me and for the perfectly splendid way in which you have run your office. It was not an easy thing to take up Operation work when you did, with a change of District Foresters in the air, but you have overcome these difficulties in a way that has unqualifiedly won my fullest confidence….. It is with a great deal of personal satisfaction that I can write to you in this way at this time. 

The next few years gave Leopold a deep understanding of the conditions that existed on Forest lands. He became very concerned about the soil erosion he saw increasing on most forests, the Prescott and Carson National Forests being two of the worst. In December of 1923, he completed a Watershed Handbook, a guide to teach field personnel how to diagnose and respond to watershed problems. It was a culmination of his observations from his inspection trips throughout Region 3. The range control policy before, had been short-sighted. It held that the range could be stocked with as much livestock as possible, as long as there was forage enough to feed them and that heavy grazing helped reduce the fire hazard.

In his Handbook, Leopold changed that approach. He proposed that the number of allowed livestock be controlled by the overall condition of the watershed itself and not seasonal observations. It was a change of policy thinking from managing cattle to managing the forest and range as a whole. He stated that “The stockman must realize that grazing his livestock on public lands is a privilege and with that privilege comes the responsibility to treat the land with love and respect.”

His observations from his inspection tours of the eleven Region 3 forests, had given him a much larger view of the overall ecological conditions existing in the Southwest. Leopold was now in a position to challenge some of the policies he saw as creating these conditions and needing to change. He said, “The destruction of soil is the most fundamental kind of economic loss which the human race can suffer.”

Leopold was now very aware at how fast the wild lands were disappearing. He had seen the devastating effects that overlogging and overgrazing had caused on Arizona’s Blue River. Even by the time he had first visited the Blue in 1909, the lush grasses for ranching and the deep soils for thriving farms were gone, washed away in a short decade of unregulated land use.

The automobile was being seen, deeper and deeper into the wild country. He stated, “To those devoid of imagination, a blank spot on the map is a useless waste, to others, the most valuable part. I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. For of what avail are forty freedoms, without a blank spot on the map to pursue them.”

He had been considering the need for wild land recognition as early as 1913 but it was on a conference trip to Denver in 1919 that he started discussing the idea of preserving wild lands to his colleagues. He met with Arthur Carhart, a twenty-seven year old Landscape Architect, the Forest Services first “Beauty Engineer”. They shared kindred concerns and Leopold encouraged Carhart to write out his thinking. In a memo to Leopold, Carhart wrote, “There is a limit to the number of lands of shoreline on the lakes; there is a limit to the number of lakes in existence; there is a limit to the mountainous areas of the world, and in each one of these situations there are portions of natural scenic beauty which are God-made, and the beauties of which of a right should be the property of all people. These areas, in order to return the greatest value to the people, not only of the Nation but of the world, ought to be protected from the marring features of man-made constructions.”

The meeting with Carhart seemed to galvanize Leopold into acting on this need. He began looking at the lands within the 11 National Forests in Region 3 for a suitable area. He considered wilderness to be, “A continuous stretch of country, preserved in its natural state, open to lawful hunting and fishing, big enough to absorb a two-weeks pack trip, and kept devoid of roads, artificial trails, cottages or other works of man.” He also realized that “It will be much easier to keep wilderness areas than to create them. In fact, the latter alternative may be dismissed as impossible.

On his 1922 inspection tour of the Gila National Forest, Leopold had a meeting planned with his good friend Fred Winn, Supervisor of the Gila National Forest. They had planned to look at a portion of the forest, Leopold thought met his criteria for wilderness. On May 22, 1922, Leopold met Winn at the Kingston Ranger Station. Their plans though, were changed by nature. The Gila National Forest was tinder dry as the seasonal rains had not arrived yet, and was being overwhelmed by wildfires. In a ten-day period, forty-one fires had broken out. Both men were kept fully occupied with managing the fire crews. The stories of how quickly they moved men and materials around the Black Range and Gila Forest interior mountains, is testament to the condition of the trail system in those days and the condition of the horses and riders.

The Black Range Crest trail which linked the fire lookouts at Hillsboro Peak and McKnight Mountain along with telephone wire to each, was just being completed. Eventually, on June 20, Leopold met with Winn and his staff in Silver City where they drew out the boundaries for the proposed Gila Wilderness Area. It was an area of deep canyons and very rugged, wild lands encompassing over 750,000 acres. 

While in Silver City, Leopold observed first-hand another example of human impact on the land. Between overgrazing of the grasslands above the town and heavy timber harvesting to supply the mines, the situation was set for a catastrophe. The first, hit in 1895, and the last, in 1903, as heavy rains created flooding which replaced Main Street with a fifty-five foot deep chasm now known as “The Big Ditch.” Backdoors on businesses became front doors as the town recovered.

After Leopold returned to Albuquerque from this trip, he put together the proposal for the Wilderness Area. The plan met with enough opposition from within the Forest Service though, that he dropped the idea for the time being. Meanwhile, he made an inspection trip to the Prescott National Forest in Arizona where he refined his ideas on another critical area of concern. 

Fire fuels had been studied in-depth, but with Leopold looking at all of the Region 3 forests and the fire behaviors he had seen, he was specifically charged with looking at the overgrowth of shrubs: manzanita, mountain mahogany, shrub oaks and others. What he came up with was a remarkable new view which would change policy direction for fire control, forest management, and range management. There was an eleven-year drought cycle pattern which had never been considered in range management policy but had a severe impact on the land. He was starting to realize that fire had an important role in forest ecology, but was not ready to say that natural fires were a good thing. This overall view had revealed the connection of fire to grazing to vegetation change to erosion. 

Over the next year, Leopold continued to refine his thinking in the areas of wildlife management, fire control, erosion and the need for wilderness areas. In March of 1924, he along with Morton Cheney, completed the Recreational Working Plan which when approved, would establish a 755,000 acre wilderness area within the Gila National Forest.

Leopold’s western sojourn was about to come to an end. Forester Greeley in Washington D.C. requested that Leopold take on the Assistant Director position at the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin. Reluctantly, the Leopold family, Aldo, Estella, Starker, Luna, Nina and little Carl all made the move from the southwest they knew so well. It was only four days after the family left Albuquerque, that Regional Forester Pooley, signed the paperwork officially creating the Gila Wilderness Area.

Aldo Leopold went on to teach at the University of Wisconsin, becoming the first professor of Game Management in the country. In 1935, they bought the now renown ”Shack” property near Baraboo, Wisconsin, which the Leopold family over the next thirteen years, restored back to a healthy land. He went on to put together many of his writings into a book he had titled “Great Possessions”. 

On April 21, 1948, a grass fire broke out on his neighbor’s property. The Leopold family turned out to fight it, and it was while fighting this fire, that Aldo Leopold at age 61, died of a heart attack. Just one week before, he had received word that his book was going to be published. It was and came out in 1949 under the now familiar name of “The Sand County Almanac.”

This Leopold Legacy series was a focus on Aldo Leopold’s incredible life and work while living in Arizona and New Mexico from 1909 to 1924. His experiences in the southwest shaped much of his latter thinking which appeared in his now, well-known book. His concern for the land was clarified with his essay, “A Land Ethic” which has become the guiding principle for conservationists who followed Leopold’s philosophy. We who live in this land of the Southwest, are fortunate to have had such a brilliant thinker call the mountains and grasslands of Arizona and New Mexico, home.

Thank you,

Steve Morgan

Aldo Leopold Living History
If you find yourself wishing to know more about this remarkable man, there are many books written about him, but the most comprehensive work is Curt Meine’s biography called Aldo Leopold – His Life and Work. I used many different sources for these articles, but the bulk of my knowledge came from referring to Meine’s book over and over. If you are interested in learning more about Aldo Leopold or if you have Nature Stories you wish to share, please contact Steve Morgan at aldoleopold1909@gmail.com. Thank you.