The Aldo Leopold Shack and Farm, and the programs that support it, make it a place that matters!
Friday, August 13, 2010
National Trust Member: Jennifer Kobylecky

Help the Aldo Leopold Foundation connect people and land!

Aldo Leopold is most well-known as the author of A Sand County Almanac. The ideas he presented in this book helped spark a growing awareness of the need for a respectful relationship between people and the natural world--something he called a land ethic.

The Aldo Leopold Foundation works to advance Leopold's land ethic, and to restore and protect the beautiful 300 acre Aldo Leopold Shack and Farm property along the Wisconsin River near Baraboo, now a National Historic Landmark. This is the place where Leopold was inspired to write the Almanac, and it continues to inspire thousands of visitors from all over the nation and the world. The Aldo Leopold Foundation has helped tens of thousands of people better understand our environment through programs that encourage respect for the land. The foundation calls its audiences to live their lives in ways that conserve our resources and preserve the planet for future generations.

The foundation is a member-supported, not for profit organization with members in 42 states. Grants like this one help the foundation advance work on its key programs and projects, including:

Land management:
Continuing the restoration and land management Leopold started at the Shack property is a big job, and it's a huge part of the foundation's work in protecting this special place. Invasive species control and other active land management work on the property such as prairie burning and forest management takes up nearly 60% of our land stewardship crew's time. The rest of the work focuses on landowner education and outreach. Our monthly Woodland School workshops build capacity for private landowners and public land managers to identify the natural community, understand threats to their land, develop stewardship skills, and refine their vision of a healthy landscape.

Education and Outreach.
We serve a growing number of visitors each year that come to the new Leopold Center and the Leopold Shack site for a guided or self guided tour, or a special program. The Leopold Center is the foundation's headquarters building and a visitor center. It was honored in October 2007 with the highest certification in the world at that time by the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system. The Aldo Leopold Foundation website provides educational resources for over 60,000 virtual visitors a year. Personal interactions with foundation programs and staff reach nearly 19,000 people a year through a combination of visits to the site, conferences across the country, and speaking engagements. As owner and steward of the Leopold property, literary legacy, archives and artifacts, the foundation is the definitive resource on Aldo Leopold's life and legacy, both throughout history and as it applies in the 21st century. We are in the process of developing a wide array of new educational exhibits and interactive web-based learning tools to enhance educational opportunities for both on-site and virtual visitors.

Documentary Film.
The Aldo Leopold Foundation is working with US Forest Service filmmakers to produce a full-length documentary film: Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and the Land Ethic in the 21st Century. Currently in production, the high-definition film is scheduled to be completed later this year and then released on public television in 2011. The film will explore Aldo Leopold's life in the context of American conservation and environmental history, while also illustrating how Leopold's legacy lives on today in the work of people and organizations across the nation and around the world. Additional film segments and teaching tools will build on the Green Fire film, with the aim of encouraging educators and community leaders across the nation to screen the film and organize discussions about critical conservation and environmental issues in their own communities today.
http://www.aldoleopold.org/greenfire

Land Ethic Leaders Training Program.
The Land Ethic Leaders program is designed to help improve the comfort, confidence, and ability for people to lead deeper discussions about the meaning and value of conservation in their own "places that matter." It provides tools and ideas for organizing and developing events that utilize the foundation's upcoming Green Fire film but also go beyond it. We see this as an important step in inspiring and empowering local leaders all across the country to really advance a land ethic in their own backyard. The basis for the program is Leopold's own method of engaging his family and students in developing a personal land ethic through observing the natural world through scientific inquiry, participating in purposeful work on the land, and reflecting on their experiences.

Artifacts and Archival Resources.
In addition to restoring and preserving the Shack structure itself, the foundation is the caretaker for many Leopold artifacts. Many will be incorporated into exhibits at the center, such as his handmade bows and arrows, his hunting guns, his writing desk and many original pencil drafts of manuscripts written there, his saddle, his binoculars, glasses and pipes, and even the charred notebook from his pocket when he died. We also have thousands of pages of his original handwritten journals and diaries as well as numerous photographs and other documents. Most of the voluminous papers are physically housed at the University of Wisconsin Archives, where they are one of the most heavily used collections. In order to make them more available to the public while protecting the originals, the foundation partnered with the UW Archives and Digital Collections Center to digitize the entire collection, making it freely available online: http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/AldoLeopold/.

Publications.
We maintain a monthly e-newsletter, a dynamic website (http://www.aldoleopold.org), a bi-annual full color magazine, and numerous other print resources. We have recently produced three award-winning landowner handbooks (for Southwest Wisconsin, Southeastern Minnesota, and Arkansas) called "My Healthy Woods." They educate at the layperson level, explaining how an average person can maintain and restore land health on their property. They're available for free on our website!

Staff.
People make it happen! The foundation employs 8 full-time permanent staff. About 1/3 of the staff is based in education and interpretation, 1/3 in land stewardship, and 1/3 in administrative support. We also hire between 3 and 5 interns annually that work with us in education and land stewardship from February through November each year.