Ep. 517: Aldo Leopold's Conservation Lessons For Modern Hunters With Stanley Temple and Doug Duren

we are back for week two of our Conservation Month series. Yep, you heard me right, we're talking conservation. We're doing that because we only get the benefit of deer on the landscape and wild places to explore in the opportunity to hunt these really cool critters because a bunch of people a long time ago gave a damn about conservation. I'm telling you what, I really badly hope that someone forty

years from now can say the same thing. I really want to be one of those people a long time ago who gave a damn, and I'm betting that many of you do too. So that is why today we're

gonna talk about Eldo Leopold. Now, you might have heard this guy's name before, Eldo Leopold, if you have listened to this podcast for a long time, or maybe you listen to the Meat Eater podcast, or you watch the Mediator show, or you read in my book That Wild Country, or really, if you've consumed any hunting slash conservation related content. His name and his writings and quotes from him are widely circulated still today. He's very much still in the

cultural zeitgeist. I guess you could say, but how much do you really know about him? Why do people keep quoting him? Why should you care what this guy had

to say? What's there to learn from him? How is this guy who lived more than seventy years ago relevant at all to us deer hunters and anglers and outdoors people today still now in That's what I want to explore today, and by doing so, I'm thinking that we're all going to be able to learn a little bit more about what we as hunters and outdoorsmen and women can do now and in the future to ensure a better future for deer, deer hunting, and the rest of

the natural world. Sky high aspirations, I realized, but why the hell not? So joining me today to discuss although Leopold and his conservation philosophy are two people. First off, some unfamiliar. We've got Doug Dern. You probably know Doug if you've watched Mediator or if you listen to this podcast. He's a Wisconsin landowner and hunter and a conservation advocate who's strongly been influenced by Leopold's message and he was

now specialized to a degree in spreading that message. Now, Doug's gonna help us ground Elder Leopold's legacy in the now, in the today of what's what's happening for hunters and land managers actually on the landscape. He's doing that kind of stuff now, so he's gonna help us kind of make this stuff tangible now. Secondly, we're joined by Stanley Temple. Now, stan is a senior fellow at the Eldo. Leopold Foundation.

He's a conservation biologist and he previously was Professor and conservation in the Department of Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin Madison. That's the position that was first held by Aldo Leopold himself back in the forties. I believe now Stanley brings to the table a lifetime worth of experience and insight into ELDO's teachings. He's one of the foremost experts on Leopold's conservation legacy, and he's been a

true torch bearer of that philosophy now in the modern day. So, my friends, what I'm trying to tell you is that this is gonna be good. So sit back, grab a cup of coffee or a beer, or or a water bottle if you're on the treadmill. Maybe pull up your copy of a Sand County Almanac if you have one, and let's get into it all right here with me. Now, I have Doug During and Stanley Temple. Gentlemen, thank you for taking the time this morning and have this call.

I'm excited about it. This is a this is a topic. This is a character we're gonna discuss who is often on my mind but doesn't often make it onto a podcast like this, where we're usually so focused on, you know, how to hunt, how to do specific things in your woods, how to improve land, how to find animals, um. But there's this whole other layer that I think lives. Maybe it's like an umbrella that lives over all of that. That speaks to how it is that we have these

places and these animals in the first place. And I think today's topic and and the person we want to talk about, Aldo Leopold, has a lot to do with the fact we still have these resources and opportunities. Um and Stanley, from what I understand, you are one of the absolute best people to speak to about Mr Leopold.

I'm curious, can you quickly give us just an introduction to you in your history up to this point and and what brought you to a place where you now have dedicated your life to speaking and learning about conservation and the legacy of All the Leopold. Sure. Mark, My first introduction to All the Leopold came when I was in high school and happened by chance to read a

copy of his book, The Sand County Almanac. And Um, I was an outdoorsy kid, very much into all kinds of outdoor activities, and that book really resonated with UM. The opening line especially got me hooked when Leopold said there are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot, And I was definitely one of the nots.

So I wanted to pursue a career in in ecology and conservation, I went to Cornell University, where I had the good fortune of having one of All the Leopold's former graduate students as my academic advisor, and he shared

a lot of All the Leopold Law with me. After doing a lot of conservation work around the world, um I was recruited at the University of Wisconsin to be the third person to occupy the position that All the Leopold once held, which was perhaps notable as the very first position in academia in the world devoted to this

new field of wildlife management. After my career in academia, in which I mostly focused on how to recover endangered species and private land conservation, um I ended up sort of furthering my connection with the All the Leopold Foundation by becoming a senior fellow and over the last well, actually, now it's it's many years, almost fifteen years. Um I've been doing this for the Aldo Leopold Foundation, basically outreach for them. Uh, I'm curious, why why do you Well,

let me let me take it back a step. Actually, before we go into the y UM I guess we should get one quick thing on the table for everybody, because there are some folks who again have heard the name all the Leopold, but don't know a whole lot more about why this man is important, or why he's someone that was so influenial to you, or why this book you mentioned, the Sand County Almanac, is something that so many people still have on their bookshelves and point

towards why that opening line you mentioned is something that resonates with so many people, myself included. Um, so do you have like a do you have an elevator pitch for Eldo Leopold When someone who doesn't know anything about Eldough Leopold walks up to you and says, so you work for this foundation? Who is this guy you guys keep talking about. Do you have a cliff Notes introduction to this man and his legacy to kind of give

us a foundation to to start from that you could share? Sure? Um, All the Leopold's probably best recognized as one of the most influential, is not the most influential conservationist of the twentieth century and still remains so into He was a lifelong outdoorsman, lifelong hunter, birdwatcher whose career touched on many of the newly developed ideas about conservation in North America, and his life and career span the history of modern conservation,

and along the way he made and continues to make important contributions to that. His three um for Leopold, He's probably best known for US and County Almanac, the book that he wrote at the end of his life and has now been translated into fifteen languages, has sold millions of copies and is widely regarded as providing the ethical or moral foundations of the modern conservation movement. But it's just amazing when you go back and look at his history.

He was the right person at the right time. His life and career, as I said, touched on so many important developments and modern conservation, and has a very skillful communicator, Leopold was able to make substantial, sometimes paradigm shifting contributions

to that history. Yeah. And what's what's kind of unique to me, or what maybe what just stands out to me about Leopold is is that he not only was influential at the end of his life with the writing of this book, and then also of course with with his work at the University of Wisconsin, and game management

and and that book as well. But the fact that he had these two sides of what he did, I suppose he had this, he had this writer side, he had this wildlife manager and academia side, and then he had this whole earlier life in which he was involved with the Forest Service and in which he became a wilderness advocate and one of the first people to really, um you know, speak out for that need for there

to be wild places preserved. UM. So he kind of touched a whole lot of different aspects of of wildlife conservation UM across his life. He wasn't just a one trick pony, I guess he he touched a lot of different aspects of this thing UM, which which is impressive. I guess. Yeah. That's that's quite important mark when you look at he was born in so his early childhood growing up, there really wasn't anything of an organized conservation movement in North America, and as a boy he was

witnessed to the consequences of that. UM. He saw the extinction of the passenger pigeon, that the near extinction of the bison, and those sort of tragic events in our history. Obviously had a big impact on him. His father was a great outdoorsman and hunter and instilled in his son of this idea of behaving ethically when you're in the out of doors. Um that career that we've been talking about started with the U. S. For US Service, a

brand new US for US Service. Leopold was one of the first generation of recruits to manage the millions of acres of newly created national forest. For Leopold, that was in Arizona and New Mexico. So this Midwestern kid who grew up in Iowa and was educated at Yale University finds himself in a completely alien habitat in the wild lands of the Southwest. And it was there in the U. S. Forest Service that he made some of his important early contributions.

Especially his contributions in the Forest Service sort of have a very important place in the history of that agency. Leopold was one of the first to advocate for what we now might call ecosystem management, of recognizing the ecological limits of an ecosystem and trying to manage that ecosystem within those boundaries, making sure you keep all the parts

in the ecosystem remains resilient. As you said, he was also responsible, in no small Park, for the creation of the very first wilderness area on public lands in the US. He did that forty years before we passed the Wilderness Act, and the Helo Wilderness stands as a testament to Leopold's passion about protecting wild places and for your audience. In particular, when Leopold tried to justify preserving the Halo Wilderness Um, it was largely to preserve an opportunity for outdoor recreation

in a wilderness setting, especially hunting. He described the features of a wilderness area as being capable of supporting a true wild experience in which you could essentially get yourself lost in a wilderness area for a couple of weeks on a pack trip. And he was one of the founders of the modern wilderness protection movement. And then his real passions were never with forestry, they were with wildlife.

In mid career, he shifts his interests to wildlife um becomes one of the really inspirational visionary leaders of a movement away from this idea of protecting wildlife to managing wildlife, and he introduces what at the time was a completely new field in ninety three with his book Game management. Uh, that's really a sort of a limiting title. It's really

about wildlife management in its in its broadest sense. But he was one of the first individuals surprisingly who saw the connection between ecology and conservation, and his book Game Management introduces this idea of science based management of populations rather than just sort of passively protecting wildlife, and it certainly propelled him to the pinnacle of influence in the

modern conservation movement. Um after nineteen thirty three, if you were professionally involved in wildlife conservation, your job up to that point was almost certainly as a game board and after ninety three the profession transitioned into wildlife manager, really

important philosophical and practical transformation. Leopold spent the second half of his career at the University of Wisconsin in this brand new position that the university had created for him, and as was true throughout his life, he was constantly evolving, exploring new ideas, and he pretty quickly shifted his primary sort of challenging conservation from wildlife management to the issue of conservation on private lands and the challenge of how

you get private landowners to engage in conservation, and that ultimately that challenge ultimately led him to what he viewed as a solution, which was this idea of ethics, his land, ethnic environmental ethics, sort of understanding our place in nature and appreciating the ethics of our relationship with nature. Yeah, I want to dive into that specifically before that, Doug, when when we speak about that specifically the idea of conservation on private land and and some of the things

that Leopold explored on that front. Uh, that that rings to me a lot about what you have dedicated your life too. Can you Can you give us a little history as to how you came to Leopold and why he's become so relevant to you and what you do now? I'm sure first I could listen to stand all day about Leopold. Um. Uh. And I actually came to Leopold in a similar way. I was in high school and um in the library and and there's this book on the on the counter Santoni Almanac, and UM I read that.

I began to read the book and got super interested in it. And what was so um interesting to me about it is that here's this guy was able to express m so eloquently the kinds of things that I was already experiencing, you know, Mark, you know that I managed the farm for my family that's been in our family almost a hundred twenty years now, and I didn't you know, I began to appreciate at that time the lessons that I was learning from my grandfather and my

my father about how we were taking care of Atlanta. UM. You know, and these are two men. My my grandfather was born about the same time that Leopold was and my dad was born in the nineteen twenties. UM. And the Driftless area where our farm is actually only about

thirty miles from from the Leopold check and the Leopold Foundation. UM. Many of the practices that in that second half of his life at the university UM that uh he discussed and just discusses and explains and encourages, you know, we're practiced in our area because you as a little kid, you'd ask these questions like how come we planned the fields like this? You know, the kind to our strips and and UM, well of those soil management and UM that was you know, sort of my beginning in it.

And then over a lifetime of well, lots of ods and ends and being around the country. Conservation has sort of been a theme through all of it. And now and um, I guess the last third of our life, I'm really dedicating it towards what's next um on our farm and in our area here in the driftless um. And you know, I think about Leopold uh in a

lot of different ways. I was actually coming across the other day and I came through Coon Valley and I stopped and and contemplated for a minute at the historical marker that's there along the highway about the Soil Conservation Project first in the name, and that Leopold was part

of the nineteen nine three the Civilian Conservation Corps. You think about everything was going on at that time, Um, you know, the Depression and in the dust bowl and all these things, and you know, here's Leopold because out

there in front of that and engaging with people. And yeah, here's this brilliant man who I don't know who was you were saying who already referred to it, But here's this brilliant man who you know, it's thinking on this high academic level, yet the practical applications of what he was talking about really resonated with people. And continue to this day. And that's really where my inspiration is, um, comes from, is from Leopold and that that kind of application.

And and how do you see or what is it that you see from that message that you think is most relevant today to people listening to this, to hunter us, to too private land managers who have something that might be primarily for hunting. Um, what of his of the numerous things he kind of represents, What do you think it is that's that's most relevant to what we do. One of the things that I've figured out, um, is that once you establish a philosophy, a personal philosophy, um.

And I certainly borrowed mind from Leopold, that when you start to after that the application of of you know, what the specifics are of what you're going to do. You know, Leopold said, we abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity. When we see the land as a community which we belong, we begin to use it with love and respect. Um. I kind of boiled that down to you know, my my motto, which is

not ours, it's just our turn. And when I begin to look at anything that we're doing on our farmer that I talked with people about out I think about what happened in the past, what I'm doing now, and

how that's going to affect the future. UM. And so when we start talking about habitat management, UM I talked about, you know, conservation, I talked about wildlife habitat versus UM deer management or deer habitat management because g good forestry and good good wildlife habitat is good for you know, deer as well. So it's a bigger community rather than UM uh, you know, being very honed in or very specific about one m one species. I mean, we can

concern ourselves with with one species. But I'm just trying to look at things and a from a wider standpoint. And I think that private landowners who I work with, and um and and thoughtful people about hunting and being involved with the outdoors, if they keep that a philosophy in mind, that the specifics of it UM are easier to sort through. And that's one of the things I really got from Leopold, and I think that people should I would like to think that people will will will

get from UM understanding him. I mean, you can go down big rabbit holes about specifics, but UM and and all of the incredible works. It's the guy didn't relatively

short lifetime. But starting with philosophy, so so on the philosophy thing stand you you had brought up there when you were less speaking, you brought up the land ethic, which, which is maybe what Leopold is most known for, is this concept that has has since had a life of its own, and people continue to point back towards um, can you give us an explanation of what the land ethic is that, although described in his book, what that means, what that looks like today in any kind of in

any kind of way, it's the land ethic and what does that matter? Well? Leopold described the land Ethic to the world in his book The Sand County Almanac, and he described it as the end result of his life journey.

Leopold certainly didn't anticipate when he wrote the book that he would die of heart attack at age sixty one before the book came into print in but the land Ethic is widely regarded as his most sort of universal contribution, and that it spans the entire sort of universe of conservation, or indeed the entire relationship that we have with the

natural world. Leopold struggled throughout the last fifteen years of his life with this challenge of how to get landowners to do the right thing, coming as he had from his first half of his career in the Forest Service.

His first inclination was to do it by regulations, by God will force him to practice conservation, and after he did some interactions with private landowners, he realized how much resentment there would be to that approach and decided to try something different, and that brought him into Coon Valley,

which Doug just mentioned. It was the first watership um scale project in conservation in the US, and to Leopold's credit, he shifted that entire project from being essentially an engineering project on how you build check dams and and do contour plowing and that kind of band aid approach to soil and water conservation to being a much more holistic look at the entire watershed, looking at it both from the perspective of the environment and people looking at it

from the perspective of ecology and economics and sociology. Real holistic look and Coon Valley worked because of government incentives and subsidies, and for a time Leopold was really high on subsidies and essentially an economic incentive for doing conservation.

But he quickly soured on that when he realized that once the government subsidies and incentives stopped flowing, many landowners reverted right back to some of their old irresponsible practices, and he wanted really something that would be enduring, something that didn't depend on regulations or economic incentives, And eventually that leads him to this idea which was pretty much unique to his thinking of an ethical relation with land.

He he frames it in terms of community, and I think Leopold being a very skillful communicator and knowing how to explain difficult concepts. He said that we all understand that we live within human communities, and within that human community there have to be some universally accepted guidelines on what's morally acceptable to do within that community. If we don't,

the community becomes dysfunctional. And Leopold made by analogy the context that the same way that we live in a human community, we also live in an ecological community that, as he described it includes the soils, the waters, the plants, the animals, all of the other things in the natural

environment around us. And just as the same way that there have to be some moral compasses that guide our behavior within the human community that we live in, have to be some ethical guidelines for living in that natural community, and that's where his land ethic comes into play. Leopold was clever enough to realize that what he was proposing was of a drum matic shift in our American view

of land. As Doug said, we regarded it as a commodity belonging to us, that we were free to do whatever the heck we wanted to do with our land, that it was our private property. And for Leopold, this tension between private property and the public's interest in the broader natural environment was essentially the tension that led him

to ethics. He reckoned that if you had a moral compass, if you had a good idea of what was right and wrong to do with your land, then you would probably obey regulations, you'd probably use economic incentives to further the health of your land, and certainly you would not want to do things that would be harmful to your

land and the ecological community in which you live. So when Leopold introduced still antithic, it was a very very new idea, one that actually didn't really take hold immediately.

It probably wasn't until the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies, when we sort of got into the modern environmental period that suddenly people rediscovered Leopold and realized that he had basically given the moral foundations of the modern environmental movement, this more holistic view of our relationship with the natural world and sort of reflecting that there was a big

time lag. Leopold's Book of Sand County Almanac was published in after five different publishers had rejected it because they didn't think there was any readership for this type of book, and finally Oxford University Press took a gamble and published it. And you know, the other five publishers were right. The book was a total dud. It hardly sold it all through the nineteen fifties and early into the night team sixties, and it wasn't until nineteen sixty six when Oxford University Pressed.

I always say it was either dumb luck or brilliant marketing that they came out with a paperback edition just at the very moment when the modern environmental movement was kicking off, and suddenly, almost twenty years after Leopold had written about the land ethic. Suddenly there was a readership ready to read what he had written, understand it, and be motivated by it. And since then sales of a

Sand County Almanact have just been exponential. As I said, it's sold millions of copies and is now read in fifteen languages around the world. Sustain you bring to you brought a thought to mind for me, one of these kind of oh legacies of of our past. I suppose that still makes makes for a number of challenges today. You know. In the book he writes that a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land community two plane member and citizen of it.

And that seems to be the crux of making the shift to having a land ethic is to to enlarge your boundaries of what you are, what community you are part of, from just people and what we need to also the land and the animals and and the air and water around us, um, and looking at not as

commodity but as as equals in some way. UM. But that is in contrast to what I think, although referred to as an Abrahammock view of the world, UM, in which you know, many people look at our role within the natural world as those of of having dominion over right we have. There's some that believe we have dominion over all the land and the animal in the fish, and we are to do whatever we want with it.

That's one kind of worldview, and then there's this other worldview in which we're saying, hey, no, let's be a part of it and enlarge the scope of who and what we care about. How do we how do we settler or how can we make sense of these two different world views? Or what do you say to someone who has this more domineering viewpoint of how we should interact with the world that it's that's just here for us to use. How do you how do you set

all those two viewpoints? Well, I think Leopold did it brilliantly. Um by analogy to the human community and that self serving behavior um often is in conflict with the broader community interest In the same way with land ownership, private self centered interests are often in conflict with the broader community interests. Whether you're talking about the human community that obviously has an interest in how private landowners manage their land,

but also the health of the ecological community. So for Leopold, he realized he was up against a big hurdle because that, as he described, at the Abrahamic view of our relationship with land Um and this sort of sacred regard for private property that's part of American culture, we're huge obstacles to overcome. And Leopold, being not just an ivory tower, you know, dreamer Um, but a very practical person, recognized that the shift that he thought was the way forward

was not going to happen quickly. In fact, in the land Ethic, in the essay The land Ethic in Sand County Almanac, Um, he makes the analogy to how we treat human rights. He said, you know, we've been working on human rights for millennia and we still have and

gotten that right. And he said, in sort of a parallel vein that it's probably going to take a long time for this idea of the human role in nature changing from a domineering, self centered role UH to a more ethical and as it's often described, sort of ecocentric view of our place in nature. So he left a challenge for us, and that is it's up to us to make the shift. He can't make that for us. He even says that nothing so important as an ethic has ever written. It evolves in the minds of a

thinking community. And I think for Leopold, the thinking community that he perhaps had the closest ties to in formulating the land ethic. We're private landowners here in the Midwest, and his hope that within that community, a thinking community, that people, once they were sort of started down this road, would quickly evolve into a land ethic that not only ensured their future, but the future of the natural ecological

community around them. How well we've done that well? You know, in the seventy years since Leopold presented this idea, you can certainly point to lots of evidence that people are now treating their land with more love and respect as as Leopold described it. Conservation is practiced on the land increasingly. You don't see as much horrible land abuse as Leopold did in the twenties and thirties when he started his work on private lands here in the Midwest. So we're

definitely making progress. You can point to all of the policies and legislation that have had and at the national level that clearly reflects this sort of expanded view of our role in nature and our responsibility for taking care of the world around us. Yeah, Doug, would you do you have anything you would add on the overarching thoughts of how we make sense of these different world views and how we might be able to live in this way as opposed to in that of the commander and

conquer of all that's around us. Yeah, I do. UM, I don't think what a tension that uh stand talks about is. Certainly is certainly there, but this isn't a it's a it's not a battle, right. I mean, it's not as if we can't um uh that we can't make use of and and make a living from our land. Um. But I can give you examples of of where having a land ethic would matter. Um. You know, the contour strips of the of the hillside will still being farm um.

So you know, there might there are those who might say, well, you create a desert when you plant corn or soybeans or um, you know, a road crop and then take that road crop off and then there's a there is a desert there. Now, how we treat the soil as a you know, as a question worthwhile, But we see you know, evolution in that um, you know big green farmers in in some in my area, I'm seeing more and more cover crops planted in the fall um that are you know there are putting back into the soil

UM and they are being um incentivized to do that. Sure, but they're also philosophically, you know, sort of getting and I've seen in my lifetime sort of the switch from really small little farms and um where there was plenty of land of you Sammy won't get me wrong. Um Heck, I can point to some of it on our on our farm UM where our cricks were widened widened and uh and and very shallow because of the amount of cattle that were in them. Now they're they're you're almost

new they were. It was described as as a young stream to me the other day by a hydrologist UM in that there it's faster and uh and narrower, but the banks still aren't exactly what they would be over a period of time. Sai's something that we're talking about, UM and we're going to be able to you know, make a difference in that that bottom sort of helping nature along. That that doesn't mean necessarily that we can't um still do some passturing that we can't still do

some farming. And you know, so it's being thoughtful about how you're, um, how you're you know, working with that land and and and realizing economics benefit UM. And I think that's really what UM, you know, part of what

Leopold was pointing at. Man, I think about a soil conservation service, you know, from the theories in the CCC run that work up in uh Coon Valley and looking at my own, uh the property that I that I have a good fortune to manage, and I'm working with nrcs on a fairly regular basis, you know, with things like CRP and c R e P and and and

their their contracts over a certain period of time. But one of the things that happens as you put land into those kind of programs, UM, you realized, well, boy, that land, that highly erodable land, marginal land that probably shouldn't have been cropped, but we can crop up above that if we provide those buffers and and so it's it's almost as if the incentivizeeing programs. UM. You know, if you look at it right, that it encourages you.

It encourages the philosophy of the mean with the land um and so those are examples, and I see it every day around here. Yeah. I think Doug makes a good point that throughout his career here in the Midwest he was dealing with working lands. By the time he had got back to the Midwest and arrived in Madison in four I mean, there was hardly any wild lands left in the Midwest, and certainly very little public land. But the land that he had to work on was

basically working lands. These were places that Leopold well understood people not only lived on the land, that they had to make a living on the land. And what he was all about was essentially trying to shape the way that we lived on the land and how we do that in a way that today we might use the word sustainable, in a way that sort of preserves the

working health of the land. And certainly, when Leopold first started tackling this problem in the nineties, you would probably have to conclude that the landscapes of the Upper Midwest were about as unhealthy as they have ever been. Soil and water conservation was rampant, wildlife populations were horribly depleted. White tailed deer were scarce on the landscape, wild turkeys,

and many waterfowl like like wood ducks were were virtually gone. Um. I always remind people that during this period, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources then the Conservation Department, actually was captive breeding raccoons and releasing them around the states because raccoons had become so scarce. So that was the landscape that Leopold was working with, and obviously he struggled to find a way out of the mess that we created

of the Midwestern landscapes. So what about today? You know, if someone's listening to this or they've read the book and they thought to themselves, you know what this land ethic that that resonates this makes some sense to me. I can I can see why it might be better to live and try to strive to live more sustainably, to try to live and look at the natural world around us as part of a community rather than something

for us simply to consume all the time. Um, if this resonates with someone, what does this look like in action? You know, Doug provide a couple of examples, but Stan, could you expand maybe a little bit on on what a land ethic in your life might actually look like? Coming to fruition. How do we how do we put this kind of philosophy into action. Well, Leopold gave us

a golden rule. Golden rules are are really valuable. They are you know, these these tight compact little maxims that um you and always use as a guidance in making decisions. And for Leopold, his golden rule was a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it

tends otherwise. That's just a beautiful sentence that captures the essence of every time we have to make a decision about our relationship with the natural world, to pause and think about it. What are the consequences of our actions going to be? And Leopold recognized that there does have to be obviously the economic parts of that decision for private landowners, but it also has to involve, as he

describes it, you know this this golden golden rule. So I think for most people the first step is to is to basically learn what this is all about. And probably the best way to do is to go back to the primary source. If you haven't done so, read a Sand County Almanac. Understand huiah Pold's passion for the natural world. Understand what he was getting at when he wrote the essay a land Ethic, and then think deeply about your own land ethic. They said, there's just one

land ethic, is not the land ethic. There's the ethic that everyone evolves in their own thinking about their relationship with the land. But it should be within the boundaries that Leopold sort of defined in the land ethic. And that's fine, But then you have to do the hard work.

You have to make your lifestyle reflected. You have to make sure that the decisions that you make in your life about your lifestyle about the land that you perhaps are responsible for, and think deeply about the consequences for the natural world. And that's not enough, even though you might be doing a good job on your land and might be doing a good job in the decisions that you make. There's also the challenge about spreading the word

to others. People like Doug, who have a passion for spreading their enthusiasm about a land ethic becomes an important part of it, because, as I said, a land ethic is only going to spread when you have exemplars, when you have people who demonstrate this so that others can see that this is a viable way of living in the world, and for people who have adopted a land ethic, spreading it to others contributing to the broader conservation effort.

Not just focusing on your property becomes almost an imperative one that you're impelled to do as a result of adapting your own land ethic. Yeah, back to you, dug on on that a few of those examples. Stan was just sharing. You know when you you read Sand County Almanac, you've grown as a land manager and as a hunter. And I know over the years you have shifted how you manage your farm, how you've approached hunting, how you've

approached land management. Um. Could could you share any specific examples of how you have put the land ethic into into action on your place, whether it be with how you hunt or how you've worked the land, or anything specifically that you've done, and what that shift looked like for you. Well, UM, let's go to the thing that's near into dear to both your in my heart, and that is um wait till deer hunting. UM. Southwest Wisconsin is one of the hotbeds of unfortunately one of the

hotbeds of chronic wasting disease. And we've been living with and dealing with c w D for over twenty years, and it certainly has affected UM, has affected my attitude about UM hunting. I'd like to think that UM, I had sort of taking my dad's philosophy UM with me at all times about hunting. That is that you're off also hunting for the other guy, that it's a community effort, that it's a cooperative effort. UM. But UM, you know, I may have straight from that a little bit, UM,

but I don't think so. When we were the way we managed, you know, we were managing deer on our property. We're very concerned about ecosystem balances, as you know, and and stand those a little bit about my work with oak regeneration, well, UM, deer and O p regeneration are are in conflict. A lot of deer and ok regeneration. You know, they love those white oak acorns and they leve those red oak seedlings. So it's really hard to

regenerate oak. UM. So we for for more than twenty years, have have worked hard to have a balance of deer on our property. And I thought that that meant UM that the handful of people that hunted the property UM would would take more dear and that we would be sure that we were, you know, UM taking dose and working on population and at the same time UM managing for you know, a balanced curtain. All the things that

we talked about with the National Deer Association. One of the things that I realized UM eight or ten y years ago is that I, UM, I don't want to be a deer exterminator. UM. I have too much respect for the animal. And when we were trying to take more deer, give you an example, on six acres this year, we took forty deer. Well, I'm not interested in in in generally in taking one or two. So UM I saw the opportunity. I saw the opportunity to share our land UM with more people. And by doing that, UM

we've opened up. Last year we had over thirty people almost I guess thirty five was the total of a number of people who hunted and UM. In doing that, it gives me the opportunity to talk to UM, to advocate for UM for a good conservation and in particularly

good deer management. And you know, we're here to UM reduce the population and UM, and we're here to have a community of hunters, and we're here to UM manage this disease as best we can and in our small area and and hopefully that it feels like it seems like it has, you know, spread out from our our central area, but just that where I'm now allowed and and honestly the people who are also my my family and have have agreed that yes, we need to bring

more people in and let them have that opportunity as well, UM to interact with nature and and and harvest deer and have that whole experience and UM and then understand you know, why we're doing this and how we're doing it UM. And so that's why I think one of the first things that I would point to is our deer management. Others are how we as I just mentioned,

how we're regenerating red and white oak. And I've worked with UM, the American Forest Foundation and the other Leopold Foundation folks UM on a project called My Wisconsin Woods and and our farm is one of the examples of that. But it's it's just long term thinking, long term management, UM. You know, uh, as Scan was talking, before I was I was thinking, I was just writing on these words

of learn, evaluate, plan, act, and then advocate. That was the one that that UM that brilliantly began to stick with me in the last eight to ten years. UM. So I think using that Leopold's philosophy is is is a part of of everything that that I think about as we UM do projects on our farm and that we involved conservation that we share our land UM. And I hope that that's something that other landowners will think

about more. Yeah, you know, you kind of described an evolution of sorts there for you, Doug in a couple different ways, and it brought to mind something that I guess I've experienced over the last ten to fifteen years. UM. And it kind of was put into words in a

book I just read. It's a book called Braiding Sweet Grass by Robin Walt Kimmer and and she explores UM from her perspective, UM, indigenous wisdom and conservation and how those things intertwined and a very important concept within her culture is this this this idea of reciprocity with the

natural world. And that just resonated really really strongly with me when I think so much about over the years how much I've gotten from the natural world, how much joy deer hunting has brought me, or how much awe I've experienced standing on a mountain or floating down a river. I mean, so many of the very best things in my life have have stemmed from wild places and animals and and these different things out there that we get

to experience. And I keep having this like weight on my chest that I feel about I've taken so much, I get so much, like so much good has come to me because of these places. I feel this overwhelming sense of it need to reciprocate that in some way, to somehow give back to somehow even the scales. And that's that's become just a constant thought that's always on my mind in one way or another. And it seems like this is something that many people have thought about

for for a long long time. UM. But when when you read ELDO's words here within um San County Almanac, he talks about the land ethic, I think he gets at a similar concept, but doesn't speak about that specifically. I'm curious stand when you when you hear me talk about this idea of reciprocity UM and how indigenous cultures might have thought about that and so much that they did. What are your thoughts personally on how that jives with the land ethic? What are your thoughts on what Leopold

might have thought? Um, I guess I'm not sure what my question is, but what are your thoughts when that comes a mind? Well, Robin's book is, you know, probably destined to be a classic in the same way that the Sand County Almanac is. It's She's a wonderful writer and obviously has a land ethic that is was not only informed by her cultural heritage, is an Indigenous woman, um, but also basically her understanding of where all the Vehopold

was coming from and all the Leopold. This is a question that comes up quite often is how much did all the Leopold borrow from indigenous cultures about our relationship with the land. And he certainly had many opportunities to to interact with with Native Americans, and he certainly understood the relationships that they had with the land and was very respectful of those. But it's not clear that his land has a was derived directly from the sort of

Native American ideas about our relationship with the land. Leopold's idea was based on ecology. It was based on a science um as opposed to the indigenous relationships with nature that were evolved by their direct contacts with the land.

But no question that indigenous cultures and and all the Leopold's land ethic have a lot in common about the values that we get from living on this planet and living on landscapes that are healthy, that provide for our needs in exchange for our living in a sustainable way

on those those lands. So yes, definitely, All the Leopold really has inspired the modern sort of environmental ethics movement, and there are lots of individuals like Robin Kimmerer who have thought deeply about it and have provided some of those um I don't say ideas, but some of their thoughts about the way forward. And certainly it didn't end with All the Leopold in We're continuing to evolve inspired by people of past. But it's our challenge now. It's not up to people of the past to show us

how to make this happen. It's up to us to figure out how to do it. You mentioned that, you know, there's been a lot of positive progress in the seventies some years since Leopold died. I'm curious, though, if he were still around today, what of all the events of our age in relation to the natural world, the environment, conservation, wildlife, anything like that. What do you think would keep Elder

Leopold up at night today? Well, um, given where we are right now in the conservation world, I think there's one thing that would have kept him up at night and probably would have had a lot to say about, and that is that, as the father of modern science based wildlife management, he would be horrified at the current efforts to take management out of the hands of the professionals in the profession that he largely created and handed

over to politicians and special interest groups. I think the thing that Leopold would be most proud of is the fact that he left this legacy of professionalism in wildlife management, that the field has expanded from its early birth here in Wisconsin, and that we now have this cadre of professionals who know how to manage wildlife in the public's interest, and the fact that it has recently been pillar read

in in some circles. Uh the fact that decisions are now being left up to people who don't have the educational background, the science background, and in some cases even the philosophical background to be making broad, broad decisions about the public's wildlife. Is there any example of that that that comes to mind for you, stand of particular interest,

or that keeps you up at night. Well, for me, the thing that keeps me up at night, I suppose is that you know, I'm in my seventies, and over my life I have I have seen the world deteriorate. I've seen places that I deeply, deeply loved and cared about deteriorate. Species that were there when I was a

kid are no longer there. The impact of climate change is visible anyone who takes even a casual notice of the world around them, and it keeps me up at night realizing that I've only got a few more years to make my impact, and that many of these changes that are happening, if we don't reverse them now, they're going to be practically irreversible, at least in a human

time scale. So I think you know, for me, the thing that keeps me up at night is worrying about my legacy really and whether I've really done enough, whether I've done the right things during my life and career to have truly made made a difference in the things that I really care about. What do you if you had to look back on that career of yours, Stanley, and what you have done, and you you you sit here and you wonder about what that legacy is and what you've done. What are you the most proud of?

What have you What that you've spent your life on do you feel has had the most impact? Well? As an educator, UM, I sort of put a high rank on the students that I've influenced. When I retired, the department figured out that more than ten thou students had taken my classes in ecology and conservation. And I know that all of those students, I hope went on to

be responsible citizens. They are the things you know that I am particularly proud of my graduate students, who have all gone on to positions of substantial leadership in the conservation world, and I know will carry with them and often pass on to their own students to things that they learned when they were at the University of Wisconsin. At a personal level, UM, the things that I've done, I know that there are species that would be extinct if it hadn't been for the work that my student

and I have done. I know that the habitats on which they depend that we had a substantial role in making sure that those areas were protected or managed in such a way that they would continue to sustain those species. I know that my public outreach, the things that I'm doing right now have reached even larger audiences of the

students who were in my classroom. And that's why, as it was senior fellow at the Alta Veehicole Foundation, I take my role as sort of an outreach person very seriously and try as hard as I can to to reach as many people in many different audiences as possible with messages about hope really and how we have the opportunity if we care to to change the way that we live on this planet and make it a better

place for for the future. So, speaking of hope, UM, you mentioned you mentioned and that there are certain species that are still present on the Earth today because of some of the work that you and your students have done. UM. It brought to mind this this one of the major environmental crises I think of our day. We're starting to

become more and more aware related to biodiversity across the world. UM, but I think that this is something that some people here in America, probably hunters specifically, might have a hard time believing in because we are in the golden age of of deer, populations, of black populations of turkeys, of of so many game species that that hunters specifically are so interested in. They might be thinking, jeez, things are

better than they ever have been. Um, it's great, But if you were to widen the your lens and look

beyond that, there's obvious examples that that's not the case. Um. Can you can you just fill us in a little bit about what's going on across the rest of the country and across the rest of the world that's different than the success we've seen with whitetail deer and turkeys and other game species here in North America, Because you know, there's increasing talk of the sixth massiest extinction event and we're losing animals so quickly in in both big and

small ways. I know that's something you've worked on with your working conservation biology. Is that something you can give us a little incento? Well, it certainly is. You know, a golden age for some of the species that have been sort of brought back by modern wildlife management um. Some of the species that we've been talking about, especially game species, that were so depleted in the early twentieth

century and have been brought back by proper management. The reason that they were brought back is that we had a high regard for those species as resources. They were species that we used in some way, and therefore we had a sort of a selfish reason for wanting to see them come back. And part of the real tragedy for the loss of biodiversity is that many of the vast majority of the species that are disappearing from the

planet are non resources. People don't necessarily recognize them as being as valuable says as a white tailed here, and as a result, we don't pay as much attention to them, and we certainly don't put as much effort into trying to prevent their extinction. We are in the dark ages in terms of extinction. What we're experiencing now is almost unprecedented in the history of life on this planet that

so many species are disappearing so quickly. Essentially, you know in the span of a human lifetime that us is really concerning about the future, because extinction, as they often say, is forever. Once they're gone. We can't bring them back. Once the passenger vision was gone, there's no there's no bringing it back. So these are decisions about the future that to some extent become irreversible if we don't pay attention to preserving these species. Now they're going to be

gone and we're not going to get them back. It's not the same situation that we faced with the species like white tailed deer, where they didn't disappear completely um and they could be brought back. But for many of the species that were most worried about, they become endangered. They reached this sort of critical low threshold where even our best attempts to try to bring them back are largely going to fail just because we've let the situation

deteriorate so much. So definitely, you know the golden Aide in terms of a few wonderful success stories of modern wildlife management in the dark ages. In terms of the bigger picture of life on the planet, I know there's a million different um variables that are leading this to be the case, But can you describe a few of the major pressures that are leading to this happening so

quickly and so such on such a widespread basis. Well, you can point to the very specific issues of habitat loss, spread of harmful invasive species, the fact that in some cases we still are over harvesting uh some species, and the fact that that the ecosystems of the world are

starting to deteriorate because of climate change and other pervasive activities. Um, but you boil it down and the ecologist Paul Arelic to the brilliant job of breaking it all down to its root causes, and he described it as the eye path equation. It's a simple little idea that I stands

for the impact that humans have on the environment. And he said, it's proportional or or equal to P, which is how many of us there are on the planet, and a our affluents, the rate at which we are consuming the world's resources, and t the damaging technologies that we use to get those resources. And when you think about the biodiversity crisis, climate change, all of these big global issues that we're facing, and you think about it

in terms of this simple iPad equation, it's us. It's the number of us, it's our consumption of resources, and it's the damage that we're doing to the environment while we get those resources. You know, I worry sometimes with this type of thing where the on the ground experience that someone like me but might be having in Michigan is different than what you're describing right as I mentioned, like here on the ground in Michigan, I'm seeing more wildlife than ever, and it might be easy for me

to selfishly think, Wow, I've got it great here. Why should I care about or if I if I'm really into deer, why should I care about the monarch butterflies out here? Or why should I care about the quail if I'm not hunting them, or why should I care about the whatever um? And when I think about that, I get another line from Leopold comes back to mind, where he said something along the lines of the key to management or I think it was tinkering with the

natural world or something like that. The key to that was keeping all the parts. Like the number one thing we've got to think about before anything else is we've got to keep all the parts around, because whether we understand the part they play, they do have a role, which I think is another reminder to us who maybe have a predisposition to care about certain species, to remember that it's not just all about deer, the butterflies, the amphibians,

everything else has a part to play. Uh. And then we too then have a part to try to not manage just for the deer we want to hunt, but for the whole system as well. Um hm, Doug, what is what does all this? How does all this resonate with you and the things that you do? Now? Uh? I like where you're going with that? That that management that you know, being so involved private landmment that I am. It's you know, it's ecosystem management and that respect for

all the species. You know, they were We've been talking about, you know, some pretty dire stuff here. But one of the one of the success stories, and it's one that I, um I'd love to hear Sam talked about, is that of the sand hill crane um. I've had the amazing experience to to share some time with him at the Leopold Foundation and walked down to the to the river and witness witness the gathering, the afternoon gathering um sand hill cranes is they're they're getting ready for their migration.

And stand correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Leopold thought that the sand hill crane um would could very well be extinct in his lifetime and through incredible work and and some of that is Stands work and his graduate students work. Um, the sand hill crane is is thriving. Now. Yeah, well, Doug, that was a wonderful evening that we spent on the river and sant Hill cranes are a beautiful example of a twentieth century conservation

success story. They were nearly wiped out in the Upper Midwest, and in the nineteen thirties when Leopold wrote his very point in essay marsh Land Oology, Um, he expected they were going to go extinct in the Midwest. Uh, despite the fact that they had been protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, something that Leopold was a great advocate for back early in his career and certainly fors Antio cranes. Tragically, the reason they almost disappeared from the Midwestern landscape was

quite simply because we killed them. We kill them for the market with market hunting. We killed them because we thought they thought cranes were a threat to their agricultural crops. But once we sort of changed our relationship with cranes, and especially once we stopped killing them. San hill cranes were very adaptable species and made the recovery pretty much on their own without any special efforts on the part

of the conservation community. And they stand to day, as I said, as one of those remarkable success stories from the species that nearly disappeared, uh to one that's now thriving. But it's important to point out that the threat to sand hill cranes it was pretty simple to correct. Stop killing them at a rate that the population couldn't sustain, and they'll take care of themselves after that. For many

other species, the problems are much more complicated. That they've lost their habitat, that their habitat is polluted in some way, uh, that they're affected by these big global issues of things like climate change that are a lot more difficult to tackle and turn around. It can't be turned around quite simply in the matter of a few years or a few decades the way things were turned around for sant

hill cranes. But no question, the conservation community can can take a lot of credit for species like the Santio crane that did come back dramatically after we changed our behavior. Yeah, that's so interesting because um, because it was such a simple solution. And then we have UH species like the white tailed deer and UH and UH raccoons. And I didn't know the raccoon story that you told earlier, and it was just kind of stunned by it because we're

just overrun by them now. UM. But that that there are so many of these species that do well UH on the landscape that's been like like southwest Wisconsin is highly manipulated by land or they they're winners in that in the in the relationship with with mankind and our and the way we UH work on the land. Yet there's so many that that don't and that we also

needed to to care for and be thinking about. And um and I was just thinking about how um sitting here listening just how it's you know, it's informing even more of my philosophy as I'm thinking about management on the property that I'm at and then going up to ten thousand feet and looking over the driftless area and my neighbors and and the public lands that are near me and and all of that, and how these things are also interconnected and how sure a deer at raccoon,

coyotes um um, you know are the ones at sand hill cranes now too, are the ones that come to mind, But it's the it's the ones that are so much more sensitive to um, to the degradation of their of the landscape and of their ecosystem that we really need to be thinking about. Yeah, you know, you mentioned the sand hill crane, and I'm I'm glad you brought that up, Doug, because it is this example of a win, you know, of one of these things that we are able to

bring back, and you know there's another. I love you made a great point stand that Leopold made. Part of what made his books so impactful, I think is that he has a wonderful way of of of articulating an

important idea in a single line or two. He has these little maxims that somehow he's he's dropped throughout this book that now still today so many of us remember these little lines, these these single thoughts that encapsulate these larger issues, and he so clearly and concisely articulated them that it's still the easiest way for us to bring something up. So we keep on referencing back to well, Leopold sell that said this, and he just said it

so darn well. I mean One of the things he said that comes to my mind now is he said that that something along this a paraphrase. But the downside of an ecological education is, you know, being alive in a in a world of wounds, like you, you have your eyes opened to all the things that are going on in the world that are bad for the environment. All the bad news. We all of a sudden start seeing it once you start paying attention to these things.

And you know, fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, as a young person, I was blissfully ignorant to any of the issues impacting you know, species diversity, impacting the environment, et cetera. And as soon as you start really getting tapped into this, you you can get overwhelmed with the bad news you mentioned. We are on the dark ages of of so many other things, even though you know

deer and deer hunting and that side is doing so well. Um, it's easy to to lose hope when you start seeing endless examples and stories and alarms about this species going extinct, or the ocean pollution or loss of bird populations, butterflies, grasslands, air quality, water quality, and there's so much bad news

out there. Uh if if I could. If I could bring Elder Leopold back for one night and have dinner with him, I think I would ask him how he kept hope or how he would keep hope today in the face of that, in the face of all these things that seem to be looming on the horizon. Um. But I can't bring Leopold back to ask him that, So I guess I'll ask you, guys, how how do you go about keeping hope? And how can we keep hope for everyone else out there who's trying to learn

about this stuff, who wants to get involved. How do we share these messages? How do we talk about these things without people just getting so depressed that they turn that they tune it out and just say, well, I can't do anything about this disaster. I'm just gonna go back to watching basketball or playing video games. Stan, Well, what are your thoughts on that? Well, it's a it's a good point. And certainly Leopold was a hopeful, hopeful person, as as am I, as as are you and and

and Doug. And I think a hopeful person is someone who recognizes that the odds are stacked against them, but they're willing to give it their best. Shot despite the odds. A pessimist, on the other hand, to somebody who knows that the odds are so stacked against them, that's what's what's the use um, as opposed to an optimist, somebody who knows that the odds are so stacked in their favor, uh that they don't have to worry about the outcome.

But being hopeful obviously requires that you have a reason to be hopeful. And for Leopold, the reason that he was so hopeful, I think was that he had faith in humanity. He had faith in our ability uh to see things clearly, to understand what's going on around us, and to make decisions that were informed by by what we've learned, what we see, our own personal experiences, and and to have an inherent ability to want to do

the right thing. And that that sort of motivation to do the right thing is why he was so hopeful that a land ethic would be the way forward, that that would be a turning point, that having that moral compass was going to be what really gave him hope for the future, that once that moral compass was firmly in place, that people would be inclined to always make decisions that would favor a healthy environment. Yeah, Doug, would you would you add anything to to your perspective on that?

I would In reading Um, Leopold one of the words that he uses from time to time, and it's it's a wonderful word is delight, the delight of it. UM. I'm a simpler person, so I use the word fun um, but fun and interesting. I mean, I think that UM one of the opportunities that I have and Mark you

and I haven't. Course, Stand has had his whole career, but you and I have because of our The work that we do in in outdoor media is is to start of sharing this the fun and delight in UM, in management and in thoughtfulness UM, mindfulness UM, of of working and being in um nature. UM. You know one of my favorite, one of the one of the favorite things that I did when you and I were working together on the back port, he was to leave you leave that tree for you to plant with your son.

And when you did that, I mean I get the biggest smile in my face when you sent that picture to me about about planting that and you know that that that that passing that I had a young man. Gee, I don't even know how old Owen he was. I think the tenant came and uh and spent some time on the farm with his uncle and another one of my sharing the land cooperators, and uh boy, to get the opportunity to to you know, sort of nurture that delight in that young man is wonderful in that uh

and watching his face light up. And I wasn't even trying to make his face light up so much as his face was just live up all the time. You know. One of the things Leopold said was what more delightful advocation than to take a piece of land and be cautious and by cautious experimentation to prove how it works. What more substantial service to conservation to practice it on one's own land. I work with landowners, you know, regularly.

I interact with landowners regularly, and um, I just find those kinds of opportunities to be um you know the best and you can you can sort of see those um you know ripples that I been thinking about that the tree that I gave you said that Leopold said to plant the pine for example, one neither be neither be God nor poet. One need to only need a good shovel, there are those there are those kinds of

things there. It's amazing how Leopold was able to, um, both speak so on such high levels and so eloquently, and study and all of the science of all this and then break it down to a simple phrase like one just needs a good shoffle um and I find

that stuff to be just delightful. So if we can, um, you know, continue to advocate in a in a positive way, to be serious when we need to be serious, but then you know, point out the joy and the fun of it all, um, um, that that will help us, um be more uh more aware and that people will you know, pick you know, continue to pick it up and and and move forward with with constrvation and interact with the natural world world in an ethical way. Yeah. Yeah,

that's that's such a great point. Uh well, stand do you want to do? You want to wrap this up for us? Um, I want to hear a little bit about Leopold week um, for those who want to dive more into some of these ideas and philosophies and learn more about Leopold. Um. You guys have got a great slate of events coming up here in just a matter of days. Um, would you first be willing to share any final thoughts on what we've talked about, Say, if there's anything else you want to leave us with a

final call to action or or anything. Um, we'd love to hear that. And then we'd love to hear more about where we can enjoy Leopold Week. Sure well. The All the Leopold Foundation, which was created by all the Leopold's five children UH to further their father's legacy, basically has some pretty simple mission statements. You know, one is

promoting the land ethic and spreading it to different communities. UM. And one of the ways we do that is through outreach efforts, and one of those is, of course the celebration, if you will, of Leopold Week. It's a period in early March in which we encourage and provide opportunities for communities to get together to perhaps do communal readings of the Sand County Almanac, or to listen uh to hopeful

messages UM and and be inspired by Leopold's legacy. And the Leopold Week coming up the second week in in March, there's a big slate of activities that the Leopold Foundation is hosting all online of course this year, and you can tune into those and find out whether there are things that you might be especially interested in by simply going to the Leopold Foundation website, which is really simple.

It's although Leopold dot org and look at the lineup and see whether there are things there that might well, I almost guarantee there will be things there will interest interest you, So tune it in and perhaps think about

doing some type of of Leopold Week event in your community. UM. There's nothing more sort of beneficial than spreading the word to your to your immediate neighbors, and often a good way to do that would be to to host some type of an event that UH involves all the Leopold and his legacy terrific Well, UH stand and dug A, I really appreciate you taking the time to kind of just what's I don't know, just just coming as a

community and talk about this stuff. I'm not quite sure what I'm trying to say here, other than the fact that it has been cathartic. It has been good to just sit here and talk about UH an important person, an important philosophy, and important set of ideas. I feel recharged to get back after it, after this chat. So so thank you Doug, thank you Stan. You're welcome. It's like a good walk in the woods, yes, which we could always use more of. All right, that is a rap.

I hope you guys enjoyed this. I hope it's giving you some things to think about. But I want to give you a couple more action items, a couple of pieces of homework. First, if you haven't read a Sand County Almanac yet, this book we keep referencing, what are you waiting for? Pick this thing up. You can get it for I don't know, fifteen bucks or something. It's a small book. It is just packed full of wisdom, great writing. It's worth it. Check it out a Sand

County Almanac. Secondly, i'd recommend you take stand up on his offer to tune into the Leopold Week events coming up here in the next few days. It's running from March fourth through March in particular. You might be interested in one of these events. It's a wominar with Nick Offerman. That's Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec. A lot of you guys must have watched Parks and Rec. It's a great show. The Ron Swanson character is Nick offered him.

He's written a number of great books. He's just recently written a book about conservation in the outdoors and nature, and in this talk he's going to discuss his his own conservation, awakening of sorts, and a number of other things. I'm sure. So that one is on March tenth at seventh Central. Another one that might be interesting is a webinar with Michelle knee Heist. I believe that's how you pronounce her last name. And she wrote a really interesting

book called Beloved Beasts. It's about the history of conservation of wildlife in America and where things are headed. I read the book, I enjoyed it. Um, it might be worth watching that one as well. There's a number of other good ones too, but those are just two that stood out to me. So you can find all that and you can sign up for those video events at although Leopold dot org. And that's it. I appreciate you being here, appreciate you tuning in. Um yeah, I UM.

I'm glad you guys are on this journey with me. It's been a journey over ten five ten years now, as I've gone from being someone who just really wanted to figure out how to kill deer, to figuring out how do you kill more dear, to figuring out how do you kill big bucks? To figure out how do you grow big bucks and managed land, to then at some point realizing how do you make sure these things are around in the long term and how do we

make sure we're given back. That's been my journey over this last fifteen years on wired Hunt, and for all of you who have rode along with me, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. I hope you're enjoying it, And until next time, stay wired to Hunt.