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In celebration of conservation pioneer Aldo Leopold's birthday January 11, we interview his great-grandson, Jed Meunier, about Aldo's conservation legacy.
Jed Meunier is the oldest great-grandson of Aldo Leopold's eldest daughter, Nina Leopold Bradley. Jed grew up in Baraboo spending his summers at the Leopold Shack on the Wisconsin River. Jed, like Leopold, is an avid hunter and fly fisherman, and enjoys finding grouse and woodcock in the Red Lanterns of fall with his wife, Tricia, and German shorthair pointer, Riva.
Jed obtained a Masters of Science from the University of Wisconsin in Wildlife Ecology studying the fall migration of the American Woodcock. Jed is presently a doctoral candidate at Colorado State University where he working on the fire history of the US/Mexico borderland's forests.
Q: What was it like growing up in the Aldo Leopold family?
I did not really understand how special my family is to me until having moved away for college and returning home as an adult. As time passes, I grow an ever-greater appreciation for my family. I recall my grandmother, Nina Leopold Bradley, showing me my first woodcock "sky dance", their spring courtship behavior. She of course grew up censusing these birds on the Leopold property surrounding the shack where the family spent weekends and holidays. I followed her instruction on how to run and dive under the bird while it is in flight to see how near I could get to its landing spot as they often return to the same spot after an elaborate flight. It was experiences like this that were very influential and that are perhaps becoming more uncommon as gadgets become ever more entertaining and our connections with land more fragmented.
While growing up I knew the importance of Aldo Leopold to my family and perhaps suspected his importance to Wisconsin, but in reality thought that my family was perhaps a little out of the ordinary. I had no idea the national importance of Aldo Leopold until going to Colorado State University where I came to appreciate the significance of his life and his work. My last day of classes of my senior year at Colorado State University every single professor ended the semester with a quote from Leopold, both a sobering and enlightening experience.
Q: How did Aldo's life affect what you pursued in your own life?
Leopold's life has probably affected all of our lives directly or indirectly in ways that neither I nor most of us fully understand. Things such as antlerless deer hunting seasons, the concept and designation of wilderness areas, the science of wildlife ecology, soil erosion issues, benefits of fire in maintaining natural ecosystems are all things he was instrumental in developing and are just a few examples.
Leopold has had many direct effects in my life direction, not so much by design, but assimilation and chance. Currently I am working on my Ph.D. in ecology on a fire ecology project in the borderlands of the SW US and northern Mexico. In fact, Leopold outlined my dissertation project in a 1937 essay he wrote "Conservationist in Mexico". I was not aware of this fact initially, but in relation to the continued influence of fire in northern Mexico he wrote, "The Sierra Madre (in northern Mexico) offers us the chance to describe, and define, in actual ecological measurements, the lineaments and physiology of an unspoiled mountain landscape. On our side of the line we have few or no natural samples left to measure. I can see here the opportunity for a great international research enterprise which will explain our own history and enlighten the joint task of profiting by its mistakes". My dissertation work is comparing fire occurrence between similar sites on either side of the international border with Mexico in this same area.
I worked on American woodcock ecology for my Masters research at the University of Wisconsin in the Department of Wildlife Ecology, the first of its kind in the country and started by Leopold. At the time of Aldo's death in 1948, he was working with a graduate student, Fred Greely, to determine how to sex and age woodcock based on external characteristics (plumage, bill length). Again without initially realizing the connection, it was these methods I used in m own research.
I can think of many such examples. The more I learn about Aldo Leopold, the more I discover how my path has been shaped by his, not always consciously or even initially recognized, but nevertheless significant.
Q: What forces do you think are opposing his "land ethic" today?
I think one force that opposes The Land Ethic is industrial agriculture. Industrial agriculture has shifted us backward in fundamental ways. Farming is now less about the relationships between people and land and of course, food, and more of a business like any other with inputs, outputs, and bottom lines. In fact, the ever-decreasing number of family farms and the increasing size of industrial farms is counterproductive to a land ethic. My guess is that most farmers do not even grow their own vegetable gardens. Of course, this disconnection from our food (and subsequently the land) is not limited to the supply part of the chain, but the consumers as well. Food has likely always been a catalyst for relationships between people and land. Fortunately, local foods and more natural food production systems is turning into a national movement and shows lots of promise, people are making an effort to buy locally grown food and are asking questions as to what it takes to bring food to their table.
Q: What do you think Aldo would be most concerned about today?
I am sure Aldo would have many concerns about today's world: including our slow progress on the initiation of renewable energy. I am sure he would look critically at the use of ethanol as a bio-fuel, and would prefer more resource friendly options including solar, algae, and wind.
The rate of suburban development would also concern him. One thing I often think of when traveling through the mountains and countryside is something my Grandmother has often pointed out; The Shack is the antithesis of second home development. Instead of taking a pristine location and adding an expensive home, devaluing the ascetics, Leopold took a washed up, worn out farm and chicken coop and restored it to make a place where he took is family to reflect on and improve the land, a task rarely undertaken in this more modern area.
Another aspect of suburbanization that would likely concern him is the change in hunting. The decrease in the number of hunters, the lack of understand of the ecosystem and extensive use of baits, trophy hunting, and privatization of hunting are all topics that Leopold would be concerned about today.
Q: What do you think Aldo would make of the antagonism that sometimes exists between "sportsmen" and "environmentalists"?
I think Leopold would be puzzled with this rift to say the least. If we briefly, and perhaps crudely, dissect this antagonism, we find that conservationism, born largely from rural America, has been somewhat replaced by environmentalism, a largely urban phenomenon. In Leopold's time, he was pushing for sportsmen, farmers, and private landowners to think beyond the economic capabilities of their landholdings or the filling of bag limits to land health; which took hold in leaps and bounds in the form of the conservation movement. In some ways, the rifts created by the environmentalism movement have retarded this progress. Let me be clear that in my thinking conservation and environmentalism are two very different things, this distinction often gets lost.
It may be easy to assume that a good fight is a natural reaction to misdeeds such as too much corporate influence over environmental regulation; which is what we saw throughout the 1970-1980's with litigation as a favorite weapon. However, recall that the roots of conservation, our National Parks and Forests, special interest groups like Ducks Unlimited, and the many governing agencies charged with protecting against such abuses...were borne from similar misdeeds. I believe that the many different factions of this rift have begun to recognize that there is more often than not no winner in such fights. That while the courts are tied up in litigation the species or system in question continues to lose ground, which no one wants. Thus, we are beginning to see new approaches to finding "the radical center" for positive action. Leopold of course was way ahead of the rest of us on such issues. He knew that a better understanding of the natural world would result in better judgment in its protection and conservation.
Photos courtesy Aldo Leopold Foundation Archives.