Aldo Leopold

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) was an American ecologist, forester and a founder of the modern conservation movement. A Sand County Almanac, published a year after his death, is his philosophical masterpiece — a year of observations from his Wisconsin farm and essays including the famous Land Ethic, which expanded the moral community to include soils, waters, plants and animals.

A pioneering researcher for the US Forest Service and professor at the University of Wisconsin, Leopold was among the first to teach wildlife management as a science. His conviction that humans are only a member of the land community, not its conqueror, became a cornerstone of twentieth-century environmental ethics.