Probably the most important decision ever made by a young forester was when Aldo Leopold decided, in the spring of 1909, on his graduation from the Yale School of Forestry at age 22, to accept an assignment in District 3 within the newly established U. S. National Forest system and moved to New Mexico and Arizona. Though serving 18 years in the USFS, Leopold quickly discovered he could not escape his personal struggle between land as economic commodity and as a treasure for humankind to protect for its intrinsic value. His first battle in the Southwest was against the destruction of big game animals, and he campaigned for the formation of the New Mexico Game Protection Association. As part of that effort, he visited Silver City for the first time in 1916.

In 1911 Leopold was transferred from the Apache NF to the Carson NF and was for the first time confronted with the disastrous results of severe overgrazing and poor management. He came to recognize that livestock grazing was causing changes in the patterns of vegetation and even in the land itself, causing stream channel cutting and floodplain erosion. As he started to recognize conflicts between his own observations within the forests and the management and discussions of these problems, he began to speak out and write directly to these issues. Many of his most perceptive and thoughtprovoking articles were written between 1916 and 1924, while he was working for the USFS in AZ and NM.

The Gila Wilderness within the GNF was established in 1924 as the first national wilderness area as a result of a 1921 paper Leopold published in the Journal of Forestry, titled The Wilderness and Its Place in Forest Recreational Policy. This paper set the stage for the eventual passing of the most profound piece of conservation legislation, the Wilderness Act of 1964, by which date more than 40 wilderness areas had been established. Though John Wesley Powell, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir had spoken and written eloquently on the protection of wild nature before Aldo Leopold took up the subject of conservation, speaking of the natural world as majestic and of pristine beauty, sometimes as godly, it was Leopold who spoke in terms the USFS and Congress could understand. The subject of ecology wasn’t well established in his time, yet Leopold saw the land ecologically. He recognized that the birds are related to the trees and the trees to the shrubs and fungi, that all living things are related and that these relationships are what make the forest. This understanding, along with his developing land ethic—his ecological conscience—helped inform his concept of wilderness.

Leopold was under pressure to define wilderness to a larger community and to go beyond just slowing the rate of timber cutting and the battles such people as Gilford Pinchot and President Theodore Roosevelt were facing. Instead, Leopold made the case for selecting and establishing areas in perpetuity that could remind us all what this land was like before we arrived. He offered an initial definition: "By wilderness I mean a continuous stretch of country preserved in its natural state, open to lawful hunting and fishing, big enough to absorb a two weeks' pack trip, and kept devoid of roads, artificial trails, cottages, and other works of man." In some ways he was responding to the overdevelopment he had seen in the state and federal park systems. He is quoted as saying to those in the USFS and in political positions "We must save these areas now so we won’t need to try to recreate them in the future."

In arguing to establish the nation’s first wilderness area, Leopold proposed setting aside the headwaters of the Gila River, high in the Mogollon Mountains of west-central New Mexico. The entire area was well situated within the boundaries of the GNF, and it met his criteria: The area included nearly half a million acres, was isolated by mountain ranges and box canyons, hadn’t been intruded upon by railroads or automobile roads, contained little land of agricultural value, and its native wildlife populations were relatively intact. Some cattle were grazed in the area, but Leopold did not propose changing the grazing status quo; he needed the support of the cattlemen, who would benefit from the exclusion of new settlers and hordes of motorcars. The only economic loss caused by the wilderness proposal, then, would come from prohibiting large-scale logging.

As Aldo Leopold was moving toward the end of his career in the Southwest, he was becoming more and more confused as to the role of the U. S. Forest Service. The truth of the matter was that by 1923 or 1924 he had intellectually outgrown the Forest Service. He had grown closer and closer to recognizing the value of sound science in the fields of ecology and evolution. And he recognized the necessity of long-term conservation practices in protecting all living things, including humankind. His growth, in general, came not through instant conversion but through incremental evolution, and he remained a student of conservation and ecology throughout his lifetime.

Among Leopold’s most lasting legacies to conservation is his articulation of a clear land ethic. A land ethic enlarges our individual, personal boundaries to include the total community of living systems. Like Leopold, most of us have been taught by our society, culture, and religious heritage that we are above all other species, with dominion, looking down on other forms of life, rather than that we are simply one of the many organisms to evolve on earth. There is, however, a larger community of life: We are all in this together and we all depend on each other. Developing a conservation ethic towards the land that includes all life, not just other Homo sapiens, continues to be difficult. It requires that we understand the biotic pyramid of living systems, and ultimately develop an ecological conscience. Leopold taught us that conservation involves recognizing the harmony between humans and the land, yet recognizing the violence that exists among all living systems.

As he struggled to identify and describe the goals of responsible land stewardship, Leopold formulated two profound and lasting contributions to America’s conservation movement: the scientific approach to wildlife management, and a plan for wilderness preservation. He began to emphasize the need to base management policies and regulations on biological principles and research rather than on opinion. In the 1930s he made a plea for protecting not only all wild animals but rare plants and plant communities. He recognized the need to inventory vanishing species and set aside habitats to save them from extinction. He also recognized that the preservation of a threatened species depends on our ability to preserve the integrity of its habitat. More important to us today, Leopold came to recognize that wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: The following references were used in this summary: David E. Brown and Neil B. Carmony, ed., Aldo Leopold’s Wilderness; Aldo Leopold, A Sandy County Almanac; Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work.