1887-1948

American wildlife ecologist and educator who was, with brief interruptions, associated with the United States Forest Service in various capacities from 1909, the year he completed his Master of Forestry degree at Yale, until 1928. Leopold directed a game survey for the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturer's Institute between 1928 and 1932, publishing a Report on a Game Survey of the North-Central States (1931). This was a pioneering regional study of the status of game animals and what was being done to foster their conservation. In 1933 he organized the first department of game (later wildlife) management in the United States at the University of Wisconsin and for fifteen years held the first professorship in the subject there. His textbook Game Management (1933) was the first to examine population dynamics within the context of ecological relationships. His posthumously published Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There (1949) expounded his "Land Ethic" and broadly defined many issues that have since characterized the modern environmental movement.