Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, home of the
Speaker 1: modern whitetail hunter and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan,
Speaker 1: and today we're exploring the life, legacy and teachings of
Speaker 1: one of the godfathers of modern wild game management and conservation,
Speaker 1: Eldo Leopold, and ultimately discussing why this stuff still matters
Speaker 1: today for hunter's neighblors. All right, welcome to the Wired
Speaker 1: Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light, and today
Speaker 1: we are back for week two of our Conservation Month series. Yep,
Speaker 1: you heard me right, we're talking conservation. We're doing that
Speaker 1: because we only get the benefit of deer on the
Speaker 1: landscape and wild places to explore in the opportunity to
Speaker 1: hunt these really cool critters because a bunch of people
Speaker 1: a long time ago gave a damn about conservation. I'm
Speaker 1: telling you what, I really badly hope that someone forty
Speaker 1: years from now can say the same thing. I really
Speaker 1: want to be one of those people a long time
Speaker 1: ago who gave a damn, and I'm betting that many
Speaker 1: of you do too. So that is why today we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about Eldo Leopold. Now, you might have heard
Speaker 1: this guy's name before, Eldo Leopold, if you have listened
Speaker 1: to this podcast for a long time, or maybe you
Speaker 1: listen to the Meat Eater podcast, or you watch the
Speaker 1: Mediator show, or you read in my book That Wild Country,
Speaker 1: or really, if you've consumed any hunting slash conservation related content.
Speaker 1: His name and his writings and quotes from him are
Speaker 1: widely circulated still today. He's very much still in the
Speaker 1: cultural zeitgeist. I guess you could say, but how much
Speaker 1: do you really know about him? Why do people keep
Speaker 1: quoting him? Why should you care what this guy had
Speaker 1: to say? What's there to learn from him? How is
Speaker 1: this guy who lived more than seventy years ago relevant
Speaker 1: at all to us deer hunters and anglers and outdoors
Speaker 1: people today still now in That's what I want to
Speaker 1: explore today, and by doing so, I'm thinking that we're
Speaker 1: all going to be able to learn a little bit
Speaker 1: more about what we as hunters and outdoorsmen and women
Speaker 1: can do now and in the future to ensure a
Speaker 1: better future for deer, deer hunting, and the rest of
Speaker 1: the natural world. Sky high aspirations, I realized, but why
Speaker 1: the hell not? So joining me today to discuss although
Speaker 1: Leopold and his conservation philosophy are two people. First off,
Speaker 1: some unfamiliar. We've got Doug Dern. You probably know Doug
Speaker 1: if you've watched Mediator or if you listen to this podcast.
Speaker 1: He's a Wisconsin landowner and hunter and a conservation advocate
Speaker 1: who's strongly been influenced by Leopold's message and he was
Speaker 1: now specialized to a degree in spreading that message. Now,
Speaker 1: Doug's gonna help us ground Elder Leopold's legacy in the now,
Speaker 1: in the today of what's what's happening for hunters and
Speaker 1: land managers actually on the landscape. He's doing that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff now, so he's gonna help us kind of
Speaker 1: make this stuff tangible now. Secondly, we're joined by Stanley Temple. Now,
Speaker 1: stan is a senior fellow at the Eldo. Leopold Foundation.
Speaker 1: He's a conservation biologist and he previously was Professor and
Speaker 1: conservation in the Department of Wildlife Ecology at the University
Speaker 1: of Wisconsin Madison. That's the position that was first held
Speaker 1: by Aldo Leopold himself back in the forties. I believe
Speaker 1: now Stanley brings to the table a lifetime worth of
Speaker 1: experience and insight into ELDO's teachings. He's one of the
Speaker 1: foremost experts on Leopold's conservation legacy, and he's been a
Speaker 1: true torch bearer of that philosophy now in the modern day. So,
Speaker 1: my friends, what I'm trying to tell you is that
Speaker 1: this is gonna be good. So sit back, grab a
Speaker 1: cup of coffee or a beer, or or a water
Speaker 1: bottle if you're on the treadmill. Maybe pull up your
Speaker 1: copy of a Sand County Almanac if you have one,
Speaker 1: and let's get into it all right here with me. Now,
Speaker 1: I have Doug During and Stanley Temple. Gentlemen, thank you
Speaker 1: for taking the time this morning and have this call.
Speaker 1: I'm excited about it. This is a this is a topic.
Speaker 1: This is a character we're gonna discuss who is often
Speaker 1: on my mind but doesn't often make it onto a
Speaker 1: podcast like this, where we're usually so focused on, you know,
Speaker 1: how to hunt, how to do specific things in your woods,
Speaker 1: how to improve land, how to find animals, um. But
Speaker 1: there's this whole other layer that I think lives. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's like an umbrella that lives over all of that.
Speaker 1: That speaks to how it is that we have these
Speaker 1: places and these animals in the first place. And I
Speaker 1: think today's topic and and the person we want to
Speaker 1: talk about, Aldo Leopold, has a lot to do with
Speaker 1: the fact we still have these resources and opportunities. Um
Speaker 1: and Stanley, from what I understand, you are one of
Speaker 1: the absolute best people to speak to about Mr Leopold.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, can you quickly give us just an introduction
Speaker 1: to you in your history up to this point and
Speaker 1: and what brought you to a place where you now
Speaker 1: have dedicated your life to speaking and learning about conservation
Speaker 1: and the legacy of All the Leopold. Sure. Mark, My
Speaker 1: first introduction to All the Leopold came when I was
Speaker 1: in high school and happened by chance to read a
Speaker 1: copy of his book, The Sand County Almanac. And Um,
Speaker 1: I was an outdoorsy kid, very much into all kinds
Speaker 1: of outdoor activities, and that book really resonated with UM.
Speaker 1: The opening line especially got me hooked when Leopold said
Speaker 1: there are some who can live without wild things and
Speaker 1: some who cannot, And I was definitely one of the nots.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to pursue a career in in ecology
Speaker 1: and conservation, I went to Cornell University, where I had
Speaker 1: the good fortune of having one of All the Leopold's
Speaker 1: former graduate students as my academic advisor, and he shared
Speaker 1: a lot of All the Leopold Law with me. After
Speaker 1: doing a lot of conservation work around the world, um
Speaker 1: I was recruited at the University of Wisconsin to be
Speaker 1: the third person to occupy the position that All the
Speaker 1: Leopold once held, which was perhaps notable as the very
Speaker 1: first position in academia in the world devoted to this
Speaker 1: new field of wildlife management. After my career in academia,
Speaker 1: in which I mostly focused on how to recover endangered
Speaker 1: species and private land conservation, um I ended up sort
Speaker 1: of furthering my connection with the All the Leopold Foundation
Speaker 1: by becoming a senior fellow and over the last well, actually,
Speaker 1: now it's it's many years, almost fifteen years. Um I've
Speaker 1: been doing this for the Aldo Leopold Foundation, basically outreach
Speaker 1: for them. Uh, I'm curious, why why do you Well,
Speaker 1: let me let me take it back a step. Actually,
Speaker 1: before we go into the y UM I guess we
Speaker 1: should get one quick thing on the table for everybody,
Speaker 1: because there are some folks who again have heard the
Speaker 1: name all the Leopold, but don't know a whole lot
Speaker 1: more about why this man is important, or why he's
Speaker 1: someone that was so influenial to you, or why this
Speaker 1: book you mentioned, the Sand County Almanac, is something that
Speaker 1: so many people still have on their bookshelves and point
Speaker 1: towards why that opening line you mentioned is something that
Speaker 1: resonates with so many people, myself included. Um, so do
Speaker 1: you have like a do you have an elevator pitch
Speaker 1: for Eldo Leopold When someone who doesn't know anything about
Speaker 1: Eldough Leopold walks up to you and says, so you
Speaker 1: work for this foundation? Who is this guy you guys
Speaker 1: keep talking about. Do you have a cliff Notes introduction
Speaker 1: to this man and his legacy to kind of give
Speaker 1: us a foundation to to start from that you could share? Sure? Um,
Speaker 1: All the Leopold's probably best recognized as one of the
Speaker 1: most influential, is not the most influential conservationist of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century and still remains so into He was a
Speaker 1: lifelong outdoorsman, lifelong hunter, birdwatcher whose career touched on many
Speaker 1: of the newly developed ideas about conservation in North America,
Speaker 1: and his life and career span the history of modern conservation,
Speaker 1: and along the way he made and continues to make
Speaker 1: important contributions to that. His three um for Leopold, He's
Speaker 1: probably best known for US and County Almanac, the book
Speaker 1: that he wrote at the end of his life and
Speaker 1: has now been translated into fifteen languages, has sold millions
Speaker 1: of copies and is widely regarded as providing the ethical
Speaker 1: or moral foundations of the modern conservation movement. But it's
Speaker 1: just amazing when you go back and look at his history.
Speaker 1: He was the right person at the right time. His
Speaker 1: life and career, as I said, touched on so many
Speaker 1: important developments and modern conservation, and has a very skillful communicator,
Speaker 1: Leopold was able to make substantial, sometimes paradigm shifting contributions
Speaker 1: to that history. Yeah. And what's what's kind of unique
Speaker 1: to me, or what maybe what just stands out to
Speaker 1: me about Leopold is is that he not only was
Speaker 1: influential at the end of his life with the writing
Speaker 1: of this book, and then also of course with with
Speaker 1: his work at the University of Wisconsin, and game management
Speaker 1: and and that book as well. But the fact that
Speaker 1: he had these two sides of what he did, I
Speaker 1: suppose he had this, he had this writer side, he
Speaker 1: had this wildlife manager and academia side, and then he
Speaker 1: had this whole earlier life in which he was involved
Speaker 1: with the Forest Service and in which he became a
Speaker 1: wilderness advocate and one of the first people to really,
Speaker 1: um you know, speak out for that need for there
Speaker 1: to be wild places preserved. UM. So he kind of
Speaker 1: touched a whole lot of different aspects of of wildlife
Speaker 1: conservation UM across his life. He wasn't just a one
Speaker 1: trick pony, I guess he he touched a lot of
Speaker 1: different aspects of this thing UM, which which is impressive.
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah. That's that's quite important mark when you
Speaker 1: look at he was born in so his early childhood
Speaker 1: growing up, there really wasn't anything of an organized conservation
Speaker 1: movement in North America, and as a boy he was
Speaker 1: witnessed to the consequences of that. UM. He saw the
Speaker 1: extinction of the passenger pigeon, that the near extinction of
Speaker 1: the bison, and those sort of tragic events in our history.
Speaker 1: Obviously had a big impact on him. His father was
Speaker 1: a great outdoorsman and hunter and instilled in his son
Speaker 1: of this idea of behaving ethically when you're in the
Speaker 1: out of doors. Um that career that we've been talking
Speaker 1: about started with the U. S. For US Service, a
Speaker 1: brand new US for US Service. Leopold was one of
Speaker 1: the first generation of recruits to manage the millions of
Speaker 1: acres of newly created national forest. For Leopold, that was
Speaker 1: in Arizona and New Mexico. So this Midwestern kid who
Speaker 1: grew up in Iowa and was educated at Yale University
Speaker 1: finds himself in a completely alien habitat in the wild
Speaker 1: lands of the Southwest. And it was there in the U. S.
Speaker 1: Forest Service that he made some of his important early contributions.
Speaker 1: Especially his contributions in the Forest Service sort of have
Speaker 1: a very important place in the history of that agency.
Speaker 1: Leopold was one of the first to advocate for what
Speaker 1: we now might call ecosystem management, of recognizing the ecological
Speaker 1: limits of an ecosystem and trying to manage that ecosystem
Speaker 1: within those boundaries, making sure you keep all the parts
Speaker 1: in the ecosystem remains resilient. As you said, he was
Speaker 1: also responsible, in no small Park, for the creation of
Speaker 1: the very first wilderness area on public lands in the US.
Speaker 1: He did that forty years before we passed the Wilderness Act,
Speaker 1: and the Helo Wilderness stands as a testament to Leopold's
Speaker 1: passion about protecting wild places and for your audience. In particular,
Speaker 1: when Leopold tried to justify preserving the Halo Wilderness Um,
Speaker 1: it was largely to preserve an opportunity for outdoor recreation
Speaker 1: in a wilderness setting, especially hunting. He described the features
Speaker 1: of a wilderness area as being capable of supporting a
Speaker 1: true wild experience in which you could essentially get yourself
Speaker 1: lost in a wilderness area for a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: on a pack trip. And he was one of the
Speaker 1: founders of the modern wilderness protection movement. And then his
Speaker 1: real passions were never with forestry, they were with wildlife.
Speaker 1: In mid career, he shifts his interests to wildlife um
Speaker 1: becomes one of the really inspirational visionary leaders of a
Speaker 1: movement away from this idea of protecting wildlife to managing wildlife,
Speaker 1: and he introduces what at the time was a completely
Speaker 1: new field in ninety three with his book Game management. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's really a sort of a limiting title. It's really
Speaker 1: about wildlife management in its in its broadest sense. But
Speaker 1: he was one of the first individuals surprisingly who saw
Speaker 1: the connection between ecology and conservation, and his book Game
Speaker 1: Management introduces this idea of science based management of populations
Speaker 1: rather than just sort of passively protecting wildlife, and it
Speaker 1: certainly propelled him to the pinnacle of influence in the
Speaker 1: modern conservation movement. Um after nineteen thirty three, if you
Speaker 1: were professionally involved in wildlife conservation, your job up to
Speaker 1: that point was almost certainly as a game board and
Speaker 1: after ninety three the profession transitioned into wildlife manager, really
Speaker 1: important philosophical and practical transformation. Leopold spent the second half
Speaker 1: of his career at the University of Wisconsin in this
Speaker 1: brand new position that the university had created for him,
Speaker 1: and as was true throughout his life, he was constantly evolving,
Speaker 1: exploring new ideas, and he pretty quickly shifted his primary
Speaker 1: sort of challenging conservation from wildlife management to the issue
Speaker 1: of conservation on private lands and the challenge of how
Speaker 1: you get private landowners to engage in conservation, and that
Speaker 1: ultimately that challenge ultimately led him to what he viewed
Speaker 1: as a solution, which was this idea of ethics, his land,
Speaker 1: ethnic environmental ethics, sort of understanding our place in nature
Speaker 1: and appreciating the ethics of our relationship with nature. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to dive into that specifically before that, Doug,
Speaker 1: when when we speak about that specifically the idea of
Speaker 1: conservation on private land and and some of the things
Speaker 1: that Leopold explored on that front. Uh, that that rings
Speaker 1: to me a lot about what you have dedicated your
Speaker 1: life too. Can you Can you give us a little
Speaker 1: history as to how you came to Leopold and why
Speaker 1: he's become so relevant to you and what you do now?
Speaker 1: I'm sure first I could listen to stand all day
Speaker 1: about Leopold. Um. Uh. And I actually came to Leopold
Speaker 1: in a similar way. I was in high school and
Speaker 1: um in the library and and there's this book on
Speaker 1: the on the counter Santoni Almanac, and UM I read that.
Speaker 1: I began to read the book and got super interested
Speaker 1: in it. And what was so um interesting to me
Speaker 1: about it is that here's this guy was able to
Speaker 1: express m so eloquently the kinds of things that I
Speaker 1: was already experiencing, you know, Mark, you know that I
Speaker 1: managed the farm for my family that's been in our
Speaker 1: family almost a hundred twenty years now, and I didn't
Speaker 1: you know, I began to appreciate at that time the
Speaker 1: lessons that I was learning from my grandfather and my
Speaker 1: my father about how we were taking care of Atlanta. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, and these are two men. My my grandfather
Speaker 1: was born about the same time that Leopold was and
Speaker 1: my dad was born in the nineteen twenties. UM. And
Speaker 1: the Driftless area where our farm is actually only about
Speaker 1: thirty miles from from the Leopold check and the Leopold Foundation. UM.
Speaker 1: Many of the practices that in that second half of
Speaker 1: his life at the university UM that uh he discussed
Speaker 1: and just discusses and explains and encourages, you know, we're
Speaker 1: practiced in our area because you as a little kid,
Speaker 1: you'd ask these questions like how come we planned the
Speaker 1: fields like this? You know, the kind to our strips
Speaker 1: and and UM, well of those soil management and UM
Speaker 1: that was you know, sort of my beginning in it.
Speaker 1: And then over a lifetime of well, lots of ods
Speaker 1: and ends and being around the country. Conservation has sort
Speaker 1: of been a theme through all of it. And now
Speaker 1: and um, I guess the last third of our life,
Speaker 1: I'm really dedicating it towards what's next um on our
Speaker 1: farm and in our area here in the driftless um.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think about Leopold uh in a
Speaker 1: lot of different ways. I was actually coming across the
Speaker 1: other day and I came through Coon Valley and I
Speaker 1: stopped and and contemplated for a minute at the historical
Speaker 1: marker that's there along the highway about the Soil Conservation
Speaker 1: Project first in the name, and that Leopold was part
Speaker 1: of the nineteen nine three the Civilian Conservation Corps. You
Speaker 1: think about everything was going on at that time, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the Depression and in the dust bowl and
Speaker 1: all these things, and you know, here's Leopold because out
Speaker 1: there in front of that and engaging with people. And yeah,
Speaker 1: here's this brilliant man who I don't know who was
Speaker 1: you were saying who already referred to it, But here's
Speaker 1: this brilliant man who you know, it's thinking on this
Speaker 1: high academic level, yet the practical applications of what he
Speaker 1: was talking about really resonated with people. And continue to
Speaker 1: this day. And that's really where my inspiration is, um,
Speaker 1: comes from, is from Leopold and that that kind of application.
Speaker 1: And and how do you see or what is it
Speaker 1: that you see from that message that you think is
Speaker 1: most relevant today to people listening to this, to hunter us,
Speaker 1: to too private land managers who have something that might
Speaker 1: be primarily for hunting. Um, what of his of the
Speaker 1: numerous things he kind of represents, What do you think
Speaker 1: it is that's that's most relevant to what we do.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've figured out, um, is
Speaker 1: that once you establish a philosophy, a personal philosophy, um.
Speaker 1: And I certainly borrowed mind from Leopold, that when you
Speaker 1: start to after that the application of of you know,
Speaker 1: what the specifics are of what you're going to do.
Speaker 1: You know, Leopold said, we abuse the land because we
Speaker 1: regard it as a commodity. When we see the land
Speaker 1: as a community which we belong, we begin to use
Speaker 1: it with love and respect. Um. I kind of boiled
Speaker 1: that down to you know, my my motto, which is
Speaker 1: not ours, it's just our turn. And when I begin
Speaker 1: to look at anything that we're doing on our farmer
Speaker 1: that I talked with people about out I think about
Speaker 1: what happened in the past, what I'm doing now, and
Speaker 1: how that's going to affect the future. UM. And so
Speaker 1: when we start talking about habitat management, UM I talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, conservation, I talked about wildlife habitat versus UM
Speaker 1: deer management or deer habitat management because g good forestry
Speaker 1: and good good wildlife habitat is good for you know,
Speaker 1: deer as well. So it's a bigger community rather than
Speaker 1: UM uh, you know, being very honed in or very
Speaker 1: specific about one m one species. I mean, we can
Speaker 1: concern ourselves with with one species. But I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to look at things and a from a wider standpoint.
Speaker 1: And I think that private landowners who I work with,
Speaker 1: and um and and thoughtful people about hunting and being
Speaker 1: involved with the outdoors, if they keep that a philosophy
Speaker 1: in mind, that the specifics of it UM are easier
Speaker 1: to sort through. And that's one of the things I
Speaker 1: really got from Leopold, and I think that people should
Speaker 1: I would like to think that people will will will
Speaker 1: get from UM understanding him. I mean, you can go
Speaker 1: down big rabbit holes about specifics, but UM and and
Speaker 1: all of the incredible works. It's the guy didn't relatively
Speaker 1: short lifetime. But starting with philosophy, so so on the
Speaker 1: philosophy thing stand you you had brought up there when
Speaker 1: you were less speaking, you brought up the land ethic, which,
Speaker 1: which is maybe what Leopold is most known for, is
Speaker 1: this concept that has has since had a life of
Speaker 1: its own, and people continue to point back towards um,
Speaker 1: can you give us an explanation of what the land
Speaker 1: ethic is that, although described in his book, what that means,
Speaker 1: what that looks like today in any kind of in
Speaker 1: any kind of way, it's the land ethic and what
Speaker 1: does that matter? Well? Leopold described the land Ethic to
Speaker 1: the world in his book The Sand County Almanac, and
Speaker 1: he described it as the end result of his life journey.
Speaker 1: Leopold certainly didn't anticipate when he wrote the book that
Speaker 1: he would die of heart attack at age sixty one
Speaker 1: before the book came into print in but the land
Speaker 1: Ethic is widely regarded as his most sort of universal contribution,
Speaker 1: and that it spans the entire sort of universe of conservation,
Speaker 1: or indeed the entire relationship that we have with the
Speaker 1: natural world. Leopold struggled throughout the last fifteen years of
Speaker 1: his life with this challenge of how to get landowners
Speaker 1: to do the right thing, coming as he had from
Speaker 1: his first half of his career in the Forest Service.
Speaker 1: His first inclination was to do it by regulations, by
Speaker 1: God will force him to practice conservation, and after he
Speaker 1: did some interactions with private landowners, he realized how much
Speaker 1: resentment there would be to that approach and decided to
Speaker 1: try something different, and that brought him into Coon Valley,
Speaker 1: which Doug just mentioned. It was the first watership um
Speaker 1: scale project in conservation in the US, and to Leopold's credit,
Speaker 1: he shifted that entire project from being essentially an engineering
Speaker 1: project on how you build check dams and and do
Speaker 1: contour plowing and that kind of band aid approach to
Speaker 1: soil and water conservation to being a much more holistic
Speaker 1: look at the entire watershed, looking at it both from
Speaker 1: the perspective of the environment and people looking at it
Speaker 1: from the perspective of ecology and economics and sociology. Real
Speaker 1: holistic look and Coon Valley worked because of government incentives
Speaker 1: and subsidies, and for a time Leopold was really high
Speaker 1: on subsidies and essentially an economic incentive for doing conservation.
Speaker 1: But he quickly soured on that when he realized that
Speaker 1: once the government subsidies and incentives stopped flowing, many landowners
Speaker 1: reverted right back to some of their old irresponsible practices,
Speaker 1: and he wanted really something that would be enduring, something
Speaker 1: that didn't depend on regulations or economic incentives, And eventually
Speaker 1: that leads him to this idea which was pretty much
Speaker 1: unique to his thinking of an ethical relation with land.
Speaker 1: He he frames it in terms of community, and I
Speaker 1: think Leopold being a very skillful communicator and knowing how
Speaker 1: to explain difficult concepts. He said that we all understand
Speaker 1: that we live within human communities, and within that human
Speaker 1: community there have to be some universally accepted guidelines on
Speaker 1: what's morally acceptable to do within that community. If we don't,
Speaker 1: the community becomes dysfunctional. And Leopold made by analogy the
Speaker 1: context that the same way that we live in a
Speaker 1: human community, we also live in an ecological community that,
Speaker 1: as he described it includes the soils, the waters, the plants,
Speaker 1: the animals, all of the other things in the natural
Speaker 1: environment around us. And just as the same way that
Speaker 1: there have to be some moral compasses that guide our
Speaker 1: behavior within the human community that we live in, have
Speaker 1: to be some ethical guidelines for living in that natural community,
Speaker 1: and that's where his land ethic comes into play. Leopold
Speaker 1: was clever enough to realize that what he was proposing
Speaker 1: was of a drum matic shift in our American view
Speaker 1: of land. As Doug said, we regarded it as a
Speaker 1: commodity belonging to us, that we were free to do
Speaker 1: whatever the heck we wanted to do with our land,
Speaker 1: that it was our private property. And for Leopold, this
Speaker 1: tension between private property and the public's interest in the
Speaker 1: broader natural environment was essentially the tension that led him
Speaker 1: to ethics. He reckoned that if you had a moral compass,
Speaker 1: if you had a good idea of what was right
Speaker 1: and wrong to do with your land, then you would
Speaker 1: probably obey regulations, you'd probably use economic incentives to further
Speaker 1: the health of your land, and certainly you would not
Speaker 1: want to do things that would be harmful to your
Speaker 1: land and the ecological community in which you live. So
Speaker 1: when Leopold introduced still antithic, it was a very very
Speaker 1: new idea, one that actually didn't really take hold immediately.
Speaker 1: It probably wasn't until the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: when we sort of got into the modern environmental period
Speaker 1: that suddenly people rediscovered Leopold and realized that he had
Speaker 1: basically given the moral foundations of the modern environmental movement,
Speaker 1: this more holistic view of our relationship with the natural
Speaker 1: world and sort of reflecting that there was a big
Speaker 1: time lag. Leopold's Book of Sand County Almanac was published
Speaker 1: in after five different publishers had rejected it because they
Speaker 1: didn't think there was any readership for this type of book,
Speaker 1: and finally Oxford University Press took a gamble and published it.
Speaker 1: And you know, the other five publishers were right. The
Speaker 1: book was a total dud. It hardly sold it all
Speaker 1: through the nineteen fifties and early into the night team sixties,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't until nineteen sixty six when Oxford University Pressed.
Speaker 1: I always say it was either dumb luck or brilliant
Speaker 1: marketing that they came out with a paperback edition just
Speaker 1: at the very moment when the modern environmental movement was
Speaker 1: kicking off, and suddenly, almost twenty years after Leopold had
Speaker 1: written about the land ethic. Suddenly there was a readership
Speaker 1: ready to read what he had written, understand it, and
Speaker 1: be motivated by it. And since then sales of a
Speaker 1: Sand County Almanact have just been exponential. As I said,
Speaker 1: it's sold millions of copies and is now read in
Speaker 1: fifteen languages around the world. Sustain you bring to you
Speaker 1: brought a thought to mind for me, one of these
Speaker 1: kind of oh legacies of of our past. I suppose
Speaker 1: that still makes makes for a number of challenges today.
Speaker 1: You know. In the book he writes that a land
Speaker 1: ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of
Speaker 1: the land community two plane member and citizen of it.
Speaker 1: And that seems to be the crux of making the
Speaker 1: shift to having a land ethic is to to enlarge
Speaker 1: your boundaries of what you are, what community you are
Speaker 1: part of, from just people and what we need to
Speaker 1: also the land and the animals and and the air
Speaker 1: and water around us, um, and looking at not as
Speaker 1: commodity but as as equals in some way. UM. But
Speaker 1: that is in contrast to what I think, although referred
Speaker 1: to as an Abrahammock view of the world, UM, in
Speaker 1: which you know, many people look at our role within
Speaker 1: the natural world as those of of having dominion over
Speaker 1: right we have. There's some that believe we have dominion
Speaker 1: over all the land and the animal in the fish,
Speaker 1: and we are to do whatever we want with it.
Speaker 1: That's one kind of worldview, and then there's this other
Speaker 1: worldview in which we're saying, hey, no, let's be a
Speaker 1: part of it and enlarge the scope of who and
Speaker 1: what we care about. How do we how do we
Speaker 1: settler or how can we make sense of these two
Speaker 1: different world views? Or what do you say to someone
Speaker 1: who has this more domineering viewpoint of how we should
Speaker 1: interact with the world that it's that's just here for
Speaker 1: us to use. How do you how do you set
Speaker 1: all those two viewpoints? Well, I think Leopold did it brilliantly.
Speaker 1: Um by analogy to the human community and that self
Speaker 1: serving behavior um often is in conflict with the broader
Speaker 1: community interest In the same way with land ownership, private
Speaker 1: self centered interests are often in conflict with the broader
Speaker 1: community interests. Whether you're talking about the human community that
Speaker 1: obviously has an interest in how private landowners manage their land,
Speaker 1: but also the health of the ecological community. So for Leopold,
Speaker 1: he realized he was up against a big hurdle because that,
Speaker 1: as he described, at the Abrahamic view of our relationship
Speaker 1: with land Um and this sort of sacred regard for
Speaker 1: private property that's part of American culture, we're huge obstacles
Speaker 1: to overcome. And Leopold, being not just an ivory tower,
Speaker 1: you know, dreamer Um, but a very practical person, recognized
Speaker 1: that the shift that he thought was the way forward
Speaker 1: was not going to happen quickly. In fact, in the
Speaker 1: land Ethic, in the essay The land Ethic in Sand
Speaker 1: County Almanac, Um, he makes the analogy to how we
Speaker 1: treat human rights. He said, you know, we've been working
Speaker 1: on human rights for millennia and we still have and
Speaker 1: gotten that right. And he said, in sort of a
Speaker 1: parallel vein that it's probably going to take a long
Speaker 1: time for this idea of the human role in nature
Speaker 1: changing from a domineering, self centered role UH to a
Speaker 1: more ethical and as it's often described, sort of ecocentric
Speaker 1: view of our place in nature. So he left a
Speaker 1: challenge for us, and that is it's up to us
Speaker 1: to make the shift. He can't make that for us.
Speaker 1: He even says that nothing so important as an ethic
Speaker 1: has ever written. It evolves in the minds of a
Speaker 1: thinking community. And I think for Leopold, the thinking community
Speaker 1: that he perhaps had the closest ties to in formulating
Speaker 1: the land ethic. We're private landowners here in the Midwest,
Speaker 1: and his hope that within that community, a thinking community,
Speaker 1: that people, once they were sort of started down this road,
Speaker 1: would quickly evolve into a land ethic that not only
Speaker 1: ensured their future, but the future of the natural ecological
Speaker 1: community around them. How well we've done that well? You know,
Speaker 1: in the seventy years since Leopold presented this idea, you
Speaker 1: can certainly point to lots of evidence that people are
Speaker 1: now treating their land with more love and respect as
Speaker 1: as Leopold described it. Conservation is practiced on the land increasingly.
Speaker 1: You don't see as much horrible land abuse as Leopold
Speaker 1: did in the twenties and thirties when he started his
Speaker 1: work on private lands here in the Midwest. So we're
Speaker 1: definitely making progress. You can point to all of the
Speaker 1: policies and legislation that have had and at the national
Speaker 1: level that clearly reflects this sort of expanded view of
Speaker 1: our role in nature and our responsibility for taking care
Speaker 1: of the world around us. Yeah, Doug, would you do
Speaker 1: you have anything you would add on the overarching thoughts
Speaker 1: of how we make sense of these different world views
Speaker 1: and how we might be able to live in this
Speaker 1: way as opposed to in that of the commander and
Speaker 1: conquer of all that's around us. Yeah, I do. UM,
Speaker 1: I don't think what a tension that uh stand talks
Speaker 1: about is. Certainly is certainly there, but this isn't a
Speaker 1: it's a it's not a battle, right. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not as if we can't um uh that we can't
Speaker 1: make use of and and make a living from our land. Um.
Speaker 1: But I can give you examples of of where having
Speaker 1: a land ethic would matter. Um. You know, the contour
Speaker 1: strips of the of the hillside will still being farm um.
Speaker 1: So you know, there might there are those who might say, well,
Speaker 1: you create a desert when you plant corn or soybeans
Speaker 1: or um, you know, a road crop and then take
Speaker 1: that road crop off and then there's a there is
Speaker 1: a desert there. Now, how we treat the soil as
Speaker 1: a you know, as a question worthwhile, But we see
Speaker 1: you know, evolution in that um, you know big green
Speaker 1: farmers in in some in my area, I'm seeing more
Speaker 1: and more cover crops planted in the fall um that
Speaker 1: are you know there are putting back into the soil
Speaker 1: UM and they are being um incentivized to do that. Sure,
Speaker 1: but they're also philosophically, you know, sort of getting and
Speaker 1: I've seen in my lifetime sort of the switch from
Speaker 1: really small little farms and um where there was plenty
Speaker 1: of land of you Sammy won't get me wrong. Um Heck,
Speaker 1: I can point to some of it on our on
Speaker 1: our farm UM where our cricks were widened widened and
Speaker 1: uh and and very shallow because of the amount of
Speaker 1: cattle that were in them. Now they're they're you're almost
Speaker 1: new they were. It was described as as a young
Speaker 1: stream to me the other day by a hydrologist UM
Speaker 1: in that there it's faster and uh and narrower, but
Speaker 1: the banks still aren't exactly what they would be over
Speaker 1: a period of time. Sai's something that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: UM and we're going to be able to you know,
Speaker 1: make a difference in that that bottom sort of helping
Speaker 1: nature along. That that doesn't mean necessarily that we can't
Speaker 1: um still do some passturing that we can't still do
Speaker 1: some farming. And you know, so it's being thoughtful about
Speaker 1: how you're, um, how you're you know, working with that
Speaker 1: land and and and realizing economics benefit UM. And I
Speaker 1: think that's really what UM, you know, part of what
Speaker 1: Leopold was pointing at. Man, I think about a soil
Speaker 1: conservation service, you know, from the theories in the CCC
Speaker 1: run that work up in uh Coon Valley and looking
Speaker 1: at my own, uh the property that I that I
Speaker 1: have a good fortune to manage, and I'm working with
Speaker 1: nrcs on a fairly regular basis, you know, with things
Speaker 1: like CRP and c R e P and and and
Speaker 1: their their contracts over a certain period of time. But
Speaker 1: one of the things that happens as you put land
Speaker 1: into those kind of programs, UM, you realized, well, boy,
Speaker 1: that land, that highly erodable land, marginal land that probably
Speaker 1: shouldn't have been cropped, but we can crop up above
Speaker 1: that if we provide those buffers and and so it's
Speaker 1: it's almost as if the incentivizeeing programs. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: if you look at it right, that it encourages you.
Speaker 1: It encourages the philosophy of the mean with the land
Speaker 1: um and so those are examples, and I see it
Speaker 1: every day around here. Yeah. I think Doug makes a
Speaker 1: good point that throughout his career here in the Midwest
Speaker 1: he was dealing with working lands. By the time he
Speaker 1: had got back to the Midwest and arrived in Madison
Speaker 1: in four I mean, there was hardly any wild lands
Speaker 1: left in the Midwest, and certainly very little public land.
Speaker 1: But the land that he had to work on was
Speaker 1: basically working lands. These were places that Leopold well understood
Speaker 1: people not only lived on the land, that they had
Speaker 1: to make a living on the land. And what he
Speaker 1: was all about was essentially trying to shape the way
Speaker 1: that we lived on the land and how we do
Speaker 1: that in a way that today we might use the
Speaker 1: word sustainable, in a way that sort of preserves the
Speaker 1: working health of the land. And certainly, when Leopold first
Speaker 1: started tackling this problem in the nineties, you would probably
Speaker 1: have to conclude that the landscapes of the Upper Midwest
Speaker 1: were about as unhealthy as they have ever been. Soil
Speaker 1: and water conservation was rampant, wildlife populations were horribly depleted.
Speaker 1: White tailed deer were scarce on the landscape, wild turkeys,
Speaker 1: and many waterfowl like like wood ducks were were virtually gone. Um.
Speaker 1: I always remind people that during this period, the Wisconsin
Speaker 1: Department of Natural Resources then the Conservation Department, actually was
Speaker 1: captive breeding raccoons and releasing them around the states because
Speaker 1: raccoons had become so scarce. So that was the landscape
Speaker 1: that Leopold was working with, and obviously he struggled to
Speaker 1: find a way out of the mess that we created
Speaker 1: of the Midwestern landscapes. So what about today? You know,
Speaker 1: if someone's listening to this or they've read the book
Speaker 1: and they thought to themselves, you know what this land
Speaker 1: ethic that that resonates this makes some sense to me.
Speaker 1: I can I can see why it might be better
Speaker 1: to live and try to strive to live more sustainably,
Speaker 1: to try to live and look at the natural world
Speaker 1: around us as part of a community rather than something
Speaker 1: for us simply to consume all the time. Um, if
Speaker 1: this resonates with someone, what does this look like in action?
Speaker 1: You know, Doug provide a couple of examples, but Stan,
Speaker 1: could you expand maybe a little bit on on what
Speaker 1: a land ethic in your life might actually look like?
Speaker 1: Coming to fruition. How do we how do we put
Speaker 1: this kind of philosophy into action. Well, Leopold gave us
Speaker 1: a golden rule. Golden rules are are really valuable. They
Speaker 1: are you know, these these tight compact little maxims that
Speaker 1: um you and always use as a guidance in making decisions.
Speaker 1: And for Leopold, his golden rule was a thing is
Speaker 1: right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and
Speaker 1: beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it
Speaker 1: tends otherwise. That's just a beautiful sentence that captures the
Speaker 1: essence of every time we have to make a decision
Speaker 1: about our relationship with the natural world, to pause and
Speaker 1: think about it. What are the consequences of our actions
Speaker 1: going to be? And Leopold recognized that there does have
Speaker 1: to be obviously the economic parts of that decision for
Speaker 1: private landowners, but it also has to involve, as he
Speaker 1: describes it, you know this this golden golden rule. So
Speaker 1: I think for most people the first step is to
Speaker 1: is to basically learn what this is all about. And
Speaker 1: probably the best way to do is to go back
Speaker 1: to the primary source. If you haven't done so, read
Speaker 1: a Sand County Almanac. Understand huiah Pold's passion for the
Speaker 1: natural world. Understand what he was getting at when he
Speaker 1: wrote the essay a land Ethic, and then think deeply
Speaker 1: about your own land ethic. They said, there's just one
Speaker 1: land ethic, is not the land ethic. There's the ethic
Speaker 1: that everyone evolves in their own thinking about their relationship
Speaker 1: with the land. But it should be within the boundaries
Speaker 1: that Leopold sort of defined in the land ethic. And
Speaker 1: that's fine, But then you have to do the hard work.
Speaker 1: You have to make your lifestyle reflected. You have to
Speaker 1: make sure that the decisions that you make in your
Speaker 1: life about your lifestyle about the land that you perhaps
Speaker 1: are responsible for, and think deeply about the consequences for
Speaker 1: the natural world. And that's not enough, even though you
Speaker 1: might be doing a good job on your land and
Speaker 1: might be doing a good job in the decisions that
Speaker 1: you make. There's also the challenge about spreading the word
Speaker 1: to others. People like Doug, who have a passion for
Speaker 1: spreading their enthusiasm about a land ethic becomes an important
Speaker 1: part of it, because, as I said, a land ethic
Speaker 1: is only going to spread when you have exemplars, when
Speaker 1: you have people who demonstrate this so that others can
Speaker 1: see that this is a viable way of living in
Speaker 1: the world, and for people who have adopted a land ethic,
Speaker 1: spreading it to others contributing to the broader conservation effort.
Speaker 1: Not just focusing on your property becomes almost an imperative
Speaker 1: one that you're impelled to do as a result of
Speaker 1: adapting your own land ethic. Yeah, back to you, dug
Speaker 1: on on that a few of those examples. Stan was
Speaker 1: just sharing. You know when you you read Sand County Almanac,
Speaker 1: you've grown as a land manager and as a hunter.
Speaker 1: And I know over the years you have shifted how
Speaker 1: you manage your farm, how you've approached hunting, how you've
Speaker 1: approached land management. Um. Could could you share any specific
Speaker 1: examples of how you have put the land ethic into
Speaker 1: into action on your place, whether it be with how
Speaker 1: you hunt or how you've worked the land, or anything
Speaker 1: specifically that you've done, and what that shift looked like
Speaker 1: for you. Well, UM, let's go to the thing that's
Speaker 1: near into dear to both your in my heart, and
Speaker 1: that is um wait till deer hunting. UM. Southwest Wisconsin
Speaker 1: is one of the hotbeds of unfortunately one of the
Speaker 1: hotbeds of chronic wasting disease. And we've been living with
Speaker 1: and dealing with c w D for over twenty years,
Speaker 1: and it certainly has affected UM, has affected my attitude
Speaker 1: about UM hunting. I'd like to think that UM, I
Speaker 1: had sort of taking my dad's philosophy UM with me
Speaker 1: at all times about hunting. That is that you're off
Speaker 1: also hunting for the other guy, that it's a community effort,
Speaker 1: that it's a cooperative effort. UM. But UM, you know,
Speaker 1: I may have straight from that a little bit, UM,
Speaker 1: but I don't think so. When we were the way
Speaker 1: we managed, you know, we were managing deer on our property.
Speaker 1: We're very concerned about ecosystem balances, as you know, and
Speaker 1: and stand those a little bit about my work with
Speaker 1: oak regeneration, well, UM, deer and O p regeneration are
Speaker 1: are in conflict. A lot of deer and ok regeneration.
Speaker 1: You know, they love those white oak acorns and they
Speaker 1: leve those red oak seedlings. So it's really hard to
Speaker 1: regenerate oak. UM. So we for for more than twenty years,
Speaker 1: have have worked hard to have a balance of deer
Speaker 1: on our property. And I thought that that meant UM
Speaker 1: that the handful of people that hunted the property UM
Speaker 1: would would take more dear and that we would be
Speaker 1: sure that we were, you know, UM taking dose and
Speaker 1: working on population and at the same time UM managing
Speaker 1: for you know, a balanced curtain. All the things that
Speaker 1: we talked about with the National Deer Association. One of
Speaker 1: the things that I realized UM eight or ten y
Speaker 1: years ago is that I, UM, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be a deer exterminator. UM. I have too much respect
Speaker 1: for the animal. And when we were trying to take
Speaker 1: more deer, give you an example, on six acres this year,
Speaker 1: we took forty deer. Well, I'm not interested in in
Speaker 1: in generally in taking one or two. So UM I
Speaker 1: saw the opportunity. I saw the opportunity to share our
Speaker 1: land UM with more people. And by doing that, UM
Speaker 1: we've opened up. Last year we had over thirty people
Speaker 1: almost I guess thirty five was the total of a
Speaker 1: number of people who hunted and UM. In doing that,
Speaker 1: it gives me the opportunity to talk to UM, to
Speaker 1: advocate for UM for a good conservation and in particularly
Speaker 1: good deer management. And you know, we're here to UM
Speaker 1: reduce the population and UM, and we're here to have
Speaker 1: a community of hunters, and we're here to UM manage
Speaker 1: this disease as best we can and in our small
Speaker 1: area and and hopefully that it feels like it seems
Speaker 1: like it has, you know, spread out from our our
Speaker 1: central area, but just that where I'm now allowed and
Speaker 1: and honestly the people who are also my my family
Speaker 1: and have have agreed that yes, we need to bring
Speaker 1: more people in and let them have that opportunity as well,
Speaker 1: UM to interact with nature and and and harvest deer
Speaker 1: and have that whole experience and UM and then understand
Speaker 1: you know, why we're doing this and how we're doing
Speaker 1: it UM. And so that's why I think one of
Speaker 1: the first things that I would point to is our
Speaker 1: deer management. Others are how we as I just mentioned,
Speaker 1: how we're regenerating red and white oak. And I've worked
Speaker 1: with UM, the American Forest Foundation and the other Leopold
Speaker 1: Foundation folks UM on a project called My Wisconsin Woods
Speaker 1: and and our farm is one of the examples of that.
Speaker 1: But it's it's just long term thinking, long term management, UM.
Speaker 1: You know, uh, as Scan was talking, before I was
Speaker 1: I was thinking, I was just writing on these words
Speaker 1: of learn, evaluate, plan, act, and then advocate. That was
Speaker 1: the one that that UM that brilliantly began to stick
Speaker 1: with me in the last eight to ten years. UM.
Speaker 1: So I think using that Leopold's philosophy is is is
Speaker 1: a part of of everything that that I think about
Speaker 1: as we UM do projects on our farm and that
Speaker 1: we involved conservation that we share our land UM. And
Speaker 1: I hope that that's something that other landowners will think
Speaker 1: about more. Yeah, you know, you kind of described an
Speaker 1: evolution of sorts there for you, Doug in a couple
Speaker 1: different ways, and it brought to mind something that I
Speaker 1: guess I've experienced over the last ten to fifteen years. UM.
Speaker 1: And it kind of was put into words in a
Speaker 1: book I just read. It's a book called Braiding Sweet
Speaker 1: Grass by Robin Walt Kimmer and and she explores UM
Speaker 1: from her perspective, UM, indigenous wisdom and conservation and how
Speaker 1: those things intertwined and a very important concept within her
Speaker 1: culture is this this this idea of reciprocity with the
Speaker 1: natural world. And that just resonated really really strongly with
Speaker 1: me when I think so much about over the years
Speaker 1: how much I've gotten from the natural world, how much
Speaker 1: joy deer hunting has brought me, or how much awe
Speaker 1: I've experienced standing on a mountain or floating down a river.
Speaker 1: I mean, so many of the very best things in
Speaker 1: my life have have stemmed from wild places and animals
Speaker 1: and and these different things out there that we get
Speaker 1: to experience. And I keep having this like weight on
Speaker 1: my chest that I feel about I've taken so much,
Speaker 1: I get so much, like so much good has come
Speaker 1: to me because of these places. I feel this overwhelming
Speaker 1: sense of it need to reciprocate that in some way,
Speaker 1: to somehow give back to somehow even the scales. And
Speaker 1: that's that's become just a constant thought that's always on
Speaker 1: my mind in one way or another. And it seems
Speaker 1: like this is something that many people have thought about
Speaker 1: for for a long long time. UM. But when when
Speaker 1: you read ELDO's words here within um San County Almanac,
Speaker 1: he talks about the land ethic, I think he gets
Speaker 1: at a similar concept, but doesn't speak about that specifically.
Speaker 1: I'm curious stand when you when you hear me talk
Speaker 1: about this idea of reciprocity UM and how indigenous cultures
Speaker 1: might have thought about that and so much that they did.
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts personally on how that jives with
Speaker 1: the land ethic? What are your thoughts on what Leopold
Speaker 1: might have thought? Um, I guess I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: my question is, but what are your thoughts when that
Speaker 1: comes a mind? Well, Robin's book is, you know, probably
Speaker 1: destined to be a classic in the same way that
Speaker 1: the Sand County Almanac is. It's She's a wonderful writer
Speaker 1: and obviously has a land ethic that is was not
Speaker 1: only informed by her cultural heritage, is an Indigenous woman, um,
Speaker 1: but also basically her understanding of where all the Vehopold
Speaker 1: was coming from and all the Leopold. This is a
Speaker 1: question that comes up quite often is how much did
Speaker 1: all the Leopold borrow from indigenous cultures about our relationship
Speaker 1: with the land. And he certainly had many opportunities to
Speaker 1: to interact with with Native Americans, and he certainly understood
Speaker 1: the relationships that they had with the land and was
Speaker 1: very respectful of those. But it's not clear that his
Speaker 1: land has a was derived directly from the sort of
Speaker 1: Native American ideas about our relationship with the land. Leopold's
Speaker 1: idea was based on ecology. It was based on a
Speaker 1: science um as opposed to the indigenous relationships with nature
Speaker 1: that were evolved by their direct contacts with the land.
Speaker 1: But no question that indigenous cultures and and all the
Speaker 1: Leopold's land ethic have a lot in common about the
Speaker 1: values that we get from living on this planet and
Speaker 1: living on landscapes that are healthy, that provide for our
Speaker 1: needs in exchange for our living in a sustainable way
Speaker 1: on those those lands. So yes, definitely, All the Leopold
Speaker 1: really has inspired the modern sort of environmental ethics movement,
Speaker 1: and there are lots of individuals like Robin Kimmerer who
Speaker 1: have thought deeply about it and have provided some of
Speaker 1: those um I don't say ideas, but some of their
Speaker 1: thoughts about the way forward. And certainly it didn't end
Speaker 1: with All the Leopold in We're continuing to evolve inspired
Speaker 1: by people of past. But it's our challenge now. It's
Speaker 1: not up to people of the past to show us
Speaker 1: how to make this happen. It's up to us to
Speaker 1: figure out how to do it. You mentioned that, you know,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of positive progress in the seventies
Speaker 1: some years since Leopold died. I'm curious, though, if he
Speaker 1: were still around today, what of all the events of
Speaker 1: our age in relation to the natural world, the environment, conservation, wildlife,
Speaker 1: anything like that. What do you think would keep Elder
Speaker 1: Leopold up at night today? Well, um, given where we
Speaker 1: are right now in the conservation world, I think there's
Speaker 1: one thing that would have kept him up at night
Speaker 1: and probably would have had a lot to say about,
Speaker 1: and that is that, as the father of modern science
Speaker 1: based wildlife management, he would be horrified at the current
Speaker 1: efforts to take management out of the hands of the
Speaker 1: professionals in the profession that he largely created and handed
Speaker 1: over to politicians and special interest groups. I think the
Speaker 1: thing that Leopold would be most proud of is the
Speaker 1: fact that he left this legacy of professionalism in wildlife management,
Speaker 1: that the field has expanded from its early birth here
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin, and that we now have this cadre of
Speaker 1: professionals who know how to manage wildlife in the public's interest,
Speaker 1: and the fact that it has recently been pillar read
Speaker 1: in in some circles. Uh the fact that decisions are
Speaker 1: now being left up to people who don't have the
Speaker 1: educational background, the science background, and in some cases even
Speaker 1: the philosophical background to be making broad, broad decisions about
Speaker 1: the public's wildlife. Is there any example of that that
Speaker 1: that comes to mind for you, stand of particular interest,
Speaker 1: or that keeps you up at night. Well, for me,
Speaker 1: the thing that keeps me up at night, I suppose
Speaker 1: is that you know, I'm in my seventies, and over
Speaker 1: my life I have I have seen the world deteriorate.
Speaker 1: I've seen places that I deeply, deeply loved and cared
Speaker 1: about deteriorate. Species that were there when I was a
Speaker 1: kid are no longer there. The impact of climate change
Speaker 1: is visible anyone who takes even a casual notice of
Speaker 1: the world around them, and it keeps me up at
Speaker 1: night realizing that I've only got a few more years
Speaker 1: to make my impact, and that many of these changes
Speaker 1: that are happening, if we don't reverse them now, they're
Speaker 1: going to be practically irreversible, at least in a human
Speaker 1: time scale. So I think you know, for me, the
Speaker 1: thing that keeps me up at night is worrying about
Speaker 1: my legacy really and whether I've really done enough, whether
Speaker 1: I've done the right things during my life and career
Speaker 1: to have truly made made a difference in the things
Speaker 1: that I really care about. What do you if you
Speaker 1: had to look back on that career of yours, Stanley,
Speaker 1: and what you have done, and you you you sit
Speaker 1: here and you wonder about what that legacy is and
Speaker 1: what you've done. What are you the most proud of?
Speaker 1: What have you What that you've spent your life on
Speaker 1: do you feel has had the most impact? Well? As
Speaker 1: an educator, UM, I sort of put a high rank
Speaker 1: on the students that I've influenced. When I retired, the
Speaker 1: department figured out that more than ten thou students had
Speaker 1: taken my classes in ecology and conservation. And I know
Speaker 1: that all of those students, I hope went on to
Speaker 1: be responsible citizens. They are the things you know that
Speaker 1: I am particularly proud of my graduate students, who have
Speaker 1: all gone on to positions of substantial leadership in the
Speaker 1: conservation world, and I know will carry with them and
Speaker 1: often pass on to their own students to things that
Speaker 1: they learned when they were at the University of Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: At a personal level, UM, the things that I've done,
Speaker 1: I know that there are species that would be extinct
Speaker 1: if it hadn't been for the work that my student
Speaker 1: and I have done. I know that the habitats on
Speaker 1: which they depend that we had a substantial role in
Speaker 1: making sure that those areas were protected or managed in
Speaker 1: such a way that they would continue to sustain those species.
Speaker 1: I know that my public outreach, the things that I'm
Speaker 1: doing right now have reached even larger audiences of the
Speaker 1: students who were in my classroom. And that's why, as
Speaker 1: it was senior fellow at the Alta Veehicole Foundation, I
Speaker 1: take my role as sort of an outreach person very
Speaker 1: seriously and try as hard as I can to to
Speaker 1: reach as many people in many different audiences as possible
Speaker 1: with messages about hope really and how we have the
Speaker 1: opportunity if we care to to change the way that
Speaker 1: we live on this planet and make it a better
Speaker 1: place for for the future. So, speaking of hope, UM,
Speaker 1: you mentioned you mentioned and that there are certain species
Speaker 1: that are still present on the Earth today because of
Speaker 1: some of the work that you and your students have done. UM.
Speaker 1: It brought to mind this this one of the major
Speaker 1: environmental crises I think of our day. We're starting to
Speaker 1: become more and more aware related to biodiversity across the world. UM,
Speaker 1: but I think that this is something that some people
Speaker 1: here in America, probably hunters specifically, might have a hard
Speaker 1: time believing in because we are in the golden age
Speaker 1: of of deer, populations, of black populations of turkeys, of
Speaker 1: of so many game species that that hunters specifically are
Speaker 1: so interested in. They might be thinking, jeez, things are
Speaker 1: better than they ever have been. Um, it's great, But
Speaker 1: if you were to widen the your lens and look
Speaker 1: beyond that, there's obvious examples that that's not the case. Um.
Speaker 1: Can you can you just fill us in a little
Speaker 1: bit about what's going on across the rest of the
Speaker 1: country and across the rest of the world that's different
Speaker 1: than the success we've seen with whitetail deer and turkeys
Speaker 1: and other game species here in North America, Because you know,
Speaker 1: there's increasing talk of the sixth massiest extinction event and
Speaker 1: we're losing animals so quickly in in both big and
Speaker 1: small ways. I know that's something you've worked on with
Speaker 1: your working conservation biology. Is that something you can give
Speaker 1: us a little incento? Well, it certainly is. You know,
Speaker 1: a golden age for some of the species that have
Speaker 1: been sort of brought back by modern wildlife management um.
Speaker 1: Some of the species that we've been talking about, especially
Speaker 1: game species, that were so depleted in the early twentieth
Speaker 1: century and have been brought back by proper management. The
Speaker 1: reason that they were brought back is that we had
Speaker 1: a high regard for those species as resources. They were
Speaker 1: species that we used in some way, and therefore we
Speaker 1: had a sort of a selfish reason for wanting to
Speaker 1: see them come back. And part of the real tragedy
Speaker 1: for the loss of biodiversity is that many of the
Speaker 1: vast majority of the species that are disappearing from the
Speaker 1: planet are non resources. People don't necessarily recognize them as
Speaker 1: being as valuable says as a white tailed here, and
Speaker 1: as a result, we don't pay as much attention to them,
Speaker 1: and we certainly don't put as much effort into trying
Speaker 1: to prevent their extinction. We are in the dark ages
Speaker 1: in terms of extinction. What we're experiencing now is almost
Speaker 1: unprecedented in the history of life on this planet that
Speaker 1: so many species are disappearing so quickly. Essentially, you know
Speaker 1: in the span of a human lifetime that us is
Speaker 1: really concerning about the future, because extinction, as they often say,
Speaker 1: is forever. Once they're gone. We can't bring them back.
Speaker 1: Once the passenger vision was gone, there's no there's no
Speaker 1: bringing it back. So these are decisions about the future
Speaker 1: that to some extent become irreversible if we don't pay
Speaker 1: attention to preserving these species. Now they're going to be
Speaker 1: gone and we're not going to get them back. It's
Speaker 1: not the same situation that we faced with the species
Speaker 1: like white tailed deer, where they didn't disappear completely um
Speaker 1: and they could be brought back. But for many of
Speaker 1: the species that were most worried about, they become endangered.
Speaker 1: They reached this sort of critical low threshold where even
Speaker 1: our best attempts to try to bring them back are
Speaker 1: largely going to fail just because we've let the situation
Speaker 1: deteriorate so much. So definitely, you know the golden Aide
Speaker 1: in terms of a few wonderful success stories of modern
Speaker 1: wildlife management in the dark ages. In terms of the
Speaker 1: bigger picture of life on the planet, I know there's
Speaker 1: a million different um variables that are leading this to
Speaker 1: be the case, But can you describe a few of
Speaker 1: the major pressures that are leading to this happening so
Speaker 1: quickly and so such on such a widespread basis. Well,
Speaker 1: you can point to the very specific issues of habitat loss,
Speaker 1: spread of harmful invasive species, the fact that in some
Speaker 1: cases we still are over harvesting uh some species, and
Speaker 1: the fact that that the ecosystems of the world are
Speaker 1: starting to deteriorate because of climate change and other pervasive activities. Um,
Speaker 1: but you boil it down and the ecologist Paul Arelic
Speaker 1: to the brilliant job of breaking it all down to
Speaker 1: its root causes, and he described it as the eye
Speaker 1: path equation. It's a simple little idea that I stands
Speaker 1: for the impact that humans have on the environment. And
Speaker 1: he said, it's proportional or or equal to P, which
Speaker 1: is how many of us there are on the planet,
Speaker 1: and a our affluents, the rate at which we are
Speaker 1: consuming the world's resources, and t the damaging technologies that
Speaker 1: we use to get those resources. And when you think
Speaker 1: about the biodiversity crisis, climate change, all of these big
Speaker 1: global issues that we're facing, and you think about it
Speaker 1: in terms of this simple iPad equation, it's us. It's
Speaker 1: the number of us, it's our consumption of resources, and
Speaker 1: it's the damage that we're doing to the environment while
Speaker 1: we get those resources. You know, I worry sometimes with
Speaker 1: this type of thing where the on the ground experience
Speaker 1: that someone like me but might be having in Michigan
Speaker 1: is different than what you're describing right as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: like here on the ground in Michigan, I'm seeing more
Speaker 1: wildlife than ever, and it might be easy for me
Speaker 1: to selfishly think, Wow, I've got it great here. Why
Speaker 1: should I care about or if I if I'm really
Speaker 1: into deer, why should I care about the monarch butterflies
Speaker 1: out here? Or why should I care about the quail
Speaker 1: if I'm not hunting them, or why should I care
Speaker 1: about the whatever um? And when I think about that,
Speaker 1: I get another line from Leopold comes back to mind,
Speaker 1: where he said something along the lines of the key
Speaker 1: to management or I think it was tinkering with the
Speaker 1: natural world or something like that. The key to that
Speaker 1: was keeping all the parts. Like the number one thing
Speaker 1: we've got to think about before anything else is we've
Speaker 1: got to keep all the parts around, because whether we
Speaker 1: understand the part they play, they do have a role,
Speaker 1: which I think is another reminder to us who maybe
Speaker 1: have a predisposition to care about certain species, to remember
Speaker 1: that it's not just all about deer, the butterflies, the amphibians,
Speaker 1: everything else has a part to play. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: we too then have a part to try to not
Speaker 1: manage just for the deer we want to hunt, but
Speaker 1: for the whole system as well. Um hm, Doug, what
Speaker 1: is what does all this? How does all this resonate
Speaker 1: with you and the things that you do? Now? Uh?
Speaker 1: I like where you're going with that? That that management
Speaker 1: that you know, being so involved private landmment that I am.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's ecosystem management and that respect for
Speaker 1: all the species. You know, they were We've been talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, some pretty dire stuff here. But one of
Speaker 1: the one of the success stories, and it's one that I,
Speaker 1: um I'd love to hear Sam talked about, is that
Speaker 1: of the sand hill crane um. I've had the amazing
Speaker 1: experience to to share some time with him at the
Speaker 1: Leopold Foundation and walked down to the to the river
Speaker 1: and witness witness the gathering, the afternoon gathering um sand
Speaker 1: hill cranes is they're they're getting ready for their migration.
Speaker 1: And stand correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe
Speaker 1: Leopold thought that the sand hill crane um would could
Speaker 1: very well be extinct in his lifetime and through incredible
Speaker 1: work and and some of that is Stands work and
Speaker 1: his graduate students work. Um, the sand hill crane is
Speaker 1: is thriving. Now. Yeah, well, Doug, that was a wonderful
Speaker 1: evening that we spent on the river and sant Hill
Speaker 1: cranes are a beautiful example of a twentieth century conservation
Speaker 1: success story. They were nearly wiped out in the Upper Midwest,
Speaker 1: and in the nineteen thirties when Leopold wrote his very
Speaker 1: point in essay marsh Land Oology, Um, he expected they
Speaker 1: were going to go extinct in the Midwest. Uh, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that they had been protected by the Migratory
Speaker 1: Bird Treaty Act, something that Leopold was a great advocate
Speaker 1: for back early in his career and certainly fors Antio cranes. Tragically,
Speaker 1: the reason they almost disappeared from the Midwestern landscape was
Speaker 1: quite simply because we killed them. We kill them for
Speaker 1: the market with market hunting. We killed them because we
Speaker 1: thought they thought cranes were a threat to their agricultural crops.
Speaker 1: But once we sort of changed our relationship with cranes,
Speaker 1: and especially once we stopped killing them. San hill cranes
Speaker 1: were very adaptable species and made the recovery pretty much
Speaker 1: on their own without any special efforts on the part
Speaker 1: of the conservation community. And they stand to day, as
Speaker 1: I said, as one of those remarkable success stories from
Speaker 1: the species that nearly disappeared, uh to one that's now thriving.
Speaker 1: But it's important to point out that the threat to
Speaker 1: sand hill cranes it was pretty simple to correct. Stop
Speaker 1: killing them at a rate that the population couldn't sustain,
Speaker 1: and they'll take care of themselves after that. For many
Speaker 1: other species, the problems are much more complicated. That they've
Speaker 1: lost their habitat, that their habitat is polluted in some way, uh,
Speaker 1: that they're affected by these big global issues of things
Speaker 1: like climate change that are a lot more difficult to
Speaker 1: tackle and turn around. It can't be turned around quite
Speaker 1: simply in the matter of a few years or a
Speaker 1: few decades the way things were turned around for sant
Speaker 1: hill cranes. But no question, the conservation community can can
Speaker 1: take a lot of credit for species like the Santio
Speaker 1: crane that did come back dramatically after we changed our behavior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so interesting because um, because it was such a
Speaker 1: simple solution. And then we have UH species like the
Speaker 1: white tailed deer and UH and UH raccoons. And I
Speaker 1: didn't know the raccoon story that you told earlier, and
Speaker 1: it was just kind of stunned by it because we're
Speaker 1: just overrun by them now. UM. But that that there
Speaker 1: are so many of these species that do well UH
Speaker 1: on the landscape that's been like like southwest Wisconsin is
Speaker 1: highly manipulated by land or they they're winners in that
Speaker 1: in the in the relationship with with mankind and our
Speaker 1: and the way we UH work on the land. Yet
Speaker 1: there's so many that that don't and that we also
Speaker 1: needed to to care for and be thinking about. And
Speaker 1: um and I was just thinking about how um sitting
Speaker 1: here listening just how it's you know, it's informing even
Speaker 1: more of my philosophy as I'm thinking about management on
Speaker 1: the property that I'm at and then going up to
Speaker 1: ten thousand feet and looking over the driftless area and
Speaker 1: my neighbors and and the public lands that are near
Speaker 1: me and and all of that, and how these things
Speaker 1: are also interconnected and how sure a deer at raccoon,
Speaker 1: coyotes um um, you know are the ones at sand
Speaker 1: hill cranes now too, are the ones that come to mind,
Speaker 1: But it's the it's the ones that are so much
Speaker 1: more sensitive to um, to the degradation of their of
Speaker 1: the landscape and of their ecosystem that we really need
Speaker 1: to be thinking about. Yeah, you know, you mentioned the
Speaker 1: sand hill crane, and I'm I'm glad you brought that up, Doug,
Speaker 1: because it is this example of a win, you know,
Speaker 1: of one of these things that we are able to
Speaker 1: bring back, and you know there's another. I love you
Speaker 1: made a great point stand that Leopold made. Part of
Speaker 1: what made his books so impactful, I think is that
Speaker 1: he has a wonderful way of of of articulating an
Speaker 1: important idea in a single line or two. He has
Speaker 1: these little maxims that somehow he's he's dropped throughout this
Speaker 1: book that now still today so many of us remember
Speaker 1: these little lines, these these single thoughts that encapsulate these
Speaker 1: larger issues, and he so clearly and concisely articulated them
Speaker 1: that it's still the easiest way for us to bring
Speaker 1: something up. So we keep on referencing back to well,
Speaker 1: Leopold sell that said this, and he just said it
Speaker 1: so darn well. I mean One of the things he
Speaker 1: said that comes to my mind now is he said
Speaker 1: that that something along this a paraphrase. But the downside
Speaker 1: of an ecological education is, you know, being alive in
Speaker 1: a in a world of wounds, like you, you have
Speaker 1: your eyes opened to all the things that are going
Speaker 1: on in the world that are bad for the environment.
Speaker 1: All the bad news. We all of a sudden start
Speaker 1: seeing it once you start paying attention to these things.
Speaker 1: And you know, fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, as
Speaker 1: a young person, I was blissfully ignorant to any of
Speaker 1: the issues impacting you know, species diversity, impacting the environment,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And as soon as you start really getting
Speaker 1: tapped into this, you you can get overwhelmed with the
Speaker 1: bad news you mentioned. We are on the dark ages
Speaker 1: of of so many other things, even though you know
Speaker 1: deer and deer hunting and that side is doing so well. Um,
Speaker 1: it's easy to to lose hope when you start seeing
Speaker 1: endless examples and stories and alarms about this species going extinct,
Speaker 1: or the ocean pollution or loss of bird populations, butterflies, grasslands,
Speaker 1: air quality, water quality, and there's so much bad news
Speaker 1: out there. Uh if if I could. If I could
Speaker 1: bring Elder Leopold back for one night and have dinner
Speaker 1: with him, I think I would ask him how he
Speaker 1: kept hope or how he would keep hope today in
Speaker 1: the face of that, in the face of all these
Speaker 1: things that seem to be looming on the horizon. Um.
Speaker 1: But I can't bring Leopold back to ask him that,
Speaker 1: So I guess I'll ask you, guys, how how do
Speaker 1: you go about keeping hope? And how can we keep
Speaker 1: hope for everyone else out there who's trying to learn
Speaker 1: about this stuff, who wants to get involved. How do
Speaker 1: we share these messages? How do we talk about these
Speaker 1: things without people just getting so depressed that they turn
Speaker 1: that they tune it out and just say, well, I
Speaker 1: can't do anything about this disaster. I'm just gonna go
Speaker 1: back to watching basketball or playing video games. Stan, Well,
Speaker 1: what are your thoughts on that? Well, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a good point. And certainly Leopold was a hopeful, hopeful person,
Speaker 1: as as am I, as as are you and and
Speaker 1: and Doug. And I think a hopeful person is someone
Speaker 1: who recognizes that the odds are stacked against them, but
Speaker 1: they're willing to give it their best. Shot despite the odds.
Speaker 1: A pessimist, on the other hand, to somebody who knows
Speaker 1: that the odds are so stacked against them, that's what's
Speaker 1: what's the use um, as opposed to an optimist, somebody
Speaker 1: who knows that the odds are so stacked in their favor,
Speaker 1: uh that they don't have to worry about the outcome.
Speaker 1: But being hopeful obviously requires that you have a reason
Speaker 1: to be hopeful. And for Leopold, the reason that he
Speaker 1: was so hopeful, I think was that he had faith
Speaker 1: in humanity. He had faith in our ability uh to
Speaker 1: see things clearly, to understand what's going on around us,
Speaker 1: and to make decisions that were informed by by what
Speaker 1: we've learned, what we see, our own personal experiences, and
Speaker 1: and to have an inherent ability to want to do
Speaker 1: the right thing. And that that sort of motivation to
Speaker 1: do the right thing is why he was so hopeful
Speaker 1: that a land ethic would be the way forward, that
Speaker 1: that would be a turning point, that having that moral
Speaker 1: compass was going to be what really gave him hope
Speaker 1: for the future, that once that moral compass was firmly
Speaker 1: in place, that people would be inclined to always make
Speaker 1: decisions that would favor a healthy environment. Yeah, Doug, would
Speaker 1: you would you add anything to to your perspective on that?
Speaker 1: I would In reading Um, Leopold one of the words
Speaker 1: that he uses from time to time, and it's it's
Speaker 1: a wonderful word is delight, the delight of it. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm a simpler person, so I use the word fun um,
Speaker 1: but fun and interesting. I mean, I think that UM
Speaker 1: one of the opportunities that I have and Mark you
Speaker 1: and I haven't. Course, Stand has had his whole career,
Speaker 1: but you and I have because of our The work
Speaker 1: that we do in in outdoor media is is to
Speaker 1: start of sharing this the fun and delight in UM,
Speaker 1: in management and in thoughtfulness UM, mindfulness UM, of of
Speaker 1: working and being in um nature. UM. You know one
Speaker 1: of my favorite, one of the one of the favorite
Speaker 1: things that I did when you and I were working
Speaker 1: together on the back port, he was to leave you
Speaker 1: leave that tree for you to plant with your son.
Speaker 1: And when you did that, I mean I get the
Speaker 1: biggest smile in my face when you sent that picture
Speaker 1: to me about about planting that and you know that
Speaker 1: that that that passing that I had a young man. Gee,
Speaker 1: I don't even know how old Owen he was. I
Speaker 1: think the tenant came and uh and spent some time
Speaker 1: on the farm with his uncle and another one of
Speaker 1: my sharing the land cooperators, and uh boy, to get
Speaker 1: the opportunity to to you know, sort of nurture that
Speaker 1: delight in that young man is wonderful in that uh
Speaker 1: and watching his face light up. And I wasn't even
Speaker 1: trying to make his face light up so much as
Speaker 1: his face was just live up all the time. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the things Leopold said was what more delightful
Speaker 1: advocation than to take a piece of land and be
Speaker 1: cautious and by cautious experimentation to prove how it works.
Speaker 1: What more substantial service to conservation to practice it on
Speaker 1: one's own land. I work with landowners, you know, regularly.
Speaker 1: I interact with landowners regularly, and um, I just find
Speaker 1: those kinds of opportunities to be um you know the
Speaker 1: best and you can you can sort of see those
Speaker 1: um you know ripples that I been thinking about that
Speaker 1: the tree that I gave you said that Leopold said
Speaker 1: to plant the pine for example, one neither be neither
Speaker 1: be God nor poet. One need to only need a
Speaker 1: good shovel, there are those there are those kinds of
Speaker 1: things there. It's amazing how Leopold was able to, um,
Speaker 1: both speak so on such high levels and so eloquently,
Speaker 1: and study and all of the science of all this
Speaker 1: and then break it down to a simple phrase like
Speaker 1: one just needs a good shoffle um and I find
Speaker 1: that stuff to be just delightful. So if we can, um,
Speaker 1: you know, continue to advocate in a in a positive way,
Speaker 1: to be serious when we need to be serious, but
Speaker 1: then you know, point out the joy and the fun
Speaker 1: of it all, um, um, that that will help us,
Speaker 1: um be more uh more aware and that people will
Speaker 1: you know, pick you know, continue to pick it up
Speaker 1: and and and move forward with with constrvation and interact
Speaker 1: with the natural world world in an ethical way. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's such a great point. Uh well, stand do
Speaker 1: you want to do? You want to wrap this up
Speaker 1: for us? Um, I want to hear a little bit
Speaker 1: about Leopold week um, for those who want to dive
Speaker 1: more into some of these ideas and philosophies and learn
Speaker 1: more about Leopold. Um. You guys have got a great
Speaker 1: slate of events coming up here in just a matter
Speaker 1: of days. Um, would you first be willing to share
Speaker 1: any final thoughts on what we've talked about, Say, if
Speaker 1: there's anything else you want to leave us with a
Speaker 1: final call to action or or anything. Um, we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear that. And then we'd love to hear more
Speaker 1: about where we can enjoy Leopold Week. Sure well. The
Speaker 1: All the Leopold Foundation, which was created by all the
Speaker 1: Leopold's five children UH to further their father's legacy, basically
Speaker 1: has some pretty simple mission statements. You know, one is
Speaker 1: promoting the land ethic and spreading it to different communities. UM.
Speaker 1: And one of the ways we do that is through
Speaker 1: outreach efforts, and one of those is, of course the celebration,
Speaker 1: if you will, of Leopold Week. It's a period in
Speaker 1: early March in which we encourage and provide opportunities for
Speaker 1: communities to get together to perhaps do communal readings of
Speaker 1: the Sand County Almanac, or to listen uh to hopeful
Speaker 1: messages UM and and be inspired by Leopold's legacy. And
Speaker 1: the Leopold Week coming up the second week in in March,
Speaker 1: there's a big slate of activities that the Leopold Foundation
Speaker 1: is hosting all online of course this year, and you
Speaker 1: can tune into those and find out whether there are
Speaker 1: things that you might be especially interested in by simply
Speaker 1: going to the Leopold Foundation website, which is really simple.
Speaker 1: It's although Leopold dot org and look at the lineup
Speaker 1: and see whether there are things there that might well,
Speaker 1: I almost guarantee there will be things there will interest
Speaker 1: interest you, So tune it in and perhaps think about
Speaker 1: doing some type of of Leopold Week event in your community. UM.
Speaker 1: There's nothing more sort of beneficial than spreading the word
Speaker 1: to your to your immediate neighbors, and often a good
Speaker 1: way to do that would be to to host some
Speaker 1: type of an event that UH involves all the Leopold
Speaker 1: and his legacy terrific Well, UH stand and dug A,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you taking the time to kind of
Speaker 1: just what's I don't know, just just coming as a
Speaker 1: community and talk about this stuff. I'm not quite sure
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say here, other than the fact
Speaker 1: that it has been cathartic. It has been good to
Speaker 1: just sit here and talk about UH an important person,
Speaker 1: an important philosophy, and important set of ideas. I feel
Speaker 1: recharged to get back after it, after this chat. So
Speaker 1: so thank you Doug, thank you Stan. You're welcome. It's
Speaker 1: like a good walk in the woods, yes, which we
Speaker 1: could always use more of. All right, that is a rap.
Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoyed this. I hope it's giving
Speaker 1: you some things to think about. But I want to
Speaker 1: give you a couple more action items, a couple of
Speaker 1: pieces of homework. First, if you haven't read a Sand
Speaker 1: County Almanac yet, this book we keep referencing, what are
Speaker 1: you waiting for? Pick this thing up. You can get
Speaker 1: it for I don't know, fifteen bucks or something. It's
Speaker 1: a small book. It is just packed full of wisdom,
Speaker 1: great writing. It's worth it. Check it out a Sand
Speaker 1: County Almanac. Secondly, i'd recommend you take stand up on
Speaker 1: his offer to tune into the Leopold Week events coming
Speaker 1: up here in the next few days. It's running from
Speaker 1: March fourth through March in particular. You might be interested
Speaker 1: in one of these events. It's a wominar with Nick Offerman.
Speaker 1: That's Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec. A lot of
Speaker 1: you guys must have watched Parks and Rec. It's a
Speaker 1: great show. The Ron Swanson character is Nick offered him.
Speaker 1: He's written a number of great books. He's just recently
Speaker 1: written a book about conservation in the outdoors and nature,
Speaker 1: and in this talk he's going to discuss his his
Speaker 1: own conservation, awakening of sorts, and a number of other things.
Speaker 1: I'm sure. So that one is on March tenth at
Speaker 1: seventh Central. Another one that might be interesting is a
Speaker 1: webinar with Michelle knee Heist. I believe that's how you
Speaker 1: pronounce her last name. And she wrote a really interesting
Speaker 1: book called Beloved Beasts. It's about the history of conservation
Speaker 1: of wildlife in America and where things are headed. I
Speaker 1: read the book, I enjoyed it. Um, it might be
Speaker 1: worth watching that one as well. There's a number of
Speaker 1: other good ones too, but those are just two that
Speaker 1: stood out to me. So you can find all that
Speaker 1: and you can sign up for those video events at
Speaker 1: although Leopold dot org. And that's it. I appreciate you
Speaker 1: being here, appreciate you tuning in. Um yeah, I UM.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you guys are on this journey with me.
Speaker 1: It's been a journey over ten five ten years now,
Speaker 1: as I've gone from being someone who just really wanted
Speaker 1: to figure out how to kill deer, to figuring out
Speaker 1: how do you kill more dear, to figuring out how
Speaker 1: do you kill big bucks? To figure out how do
Speaker 1: you grow big bucks and managed land, to then at
Speaker 1: some point realizing how do you make sure these things
Speaker 1: are around in the long term and how do we
Speaker 1: make sure we're given back. That's been my journey over
Speaker 1: this last fifteen years on wired Hunt, and for all
Speaker 1: of you who have rode along with me, I can't
Speaker 1: tell you how much I appreciate it. I hope you're
Speaker 1: enjoying it, And until next time, stay wired to Hunt.