Calendar

The Woodland School

This year we offer an array of Woodland School classes to advance your land stewardship practice, from the classics— chainsaw safety, prescribed fire—to new opportunities like birding the Leopold Memorial Reserve with experts. We hope you'll let one pique your curiosity and join us in the field! We are also pleased to now offer online registration for all our classes!

Become a Member Today!

Become a key partner in helping us spread the land ethic, advance the science of land health, preserve the Leopold shack and farm, and train new leaders for the future of conservation. Join today!

Fall Tours

Come visit for a tour this fall. Read the schedule for fall or register for a tour.

The Outlook eNewsletter

September 2008

Welcome to our first eNewsletter!

To communicate with you more regularly, we're augmenting our newly formatted Outlook member magazine with an eNewsletter. You'll stay up to date on news and events from Leopold land, plus enjoy new features added to our website. And the eNewsletter is not just for members! Forward this message to a friend and invite them to subscribe today.

The Leopold Center's Latest Addition

Trek Bikes has partnered with the Aldo Leopold Foundation to make commuting a little bit greener. Located almost 10 miles outside the nearest town, automobile is the most common way to reach the Leopold Center. To help employees choose a less carbon-intensive commute, Trek has donated a fleet of three bicycles for staff to use in travel to work and around the Leopold Memorial Reserve. In the past month, staff members have biked nearly 200 miles.

Interpreting Leopold's Legacy

Last January, the Aldo Leopold Foundation applied for a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), to fund the planning process for long-term educational exhibits. Just a few weeks ago, we were delighted to learn that our proposal was funded! NEH will provide a portion of the funds necessary to refine our interpretive approach to the Leopold Center, Shack, and property as a whole for both on and off site audiences. As part of the NEH's We the People program, Interpreting America’s Historic Places grants support public humanities projects that exploit the evocative power of historic places to address themes and issues central to American history and culture. Through the efforts of education coordinator Jennifer Kobylecky and ALF board chair Susan Flader, our proposal made a strong argument for Leopold’s place in those arenas. The really exciting part of this is that this positions us well for a follow up proposal due in January 2009, which would fund the next stage of the process, development and installation of exhibits.

Encyclopedia of Earth

Aldo Leopold and his intellectual legacy will be the topic of one of the inaugural articles in the Encyclopedia of Earth. The Encyclopedia will be the largest reliable information resource on the environment in history. It is the first web-based information resource that combines the trustworthiness and authority of scientific review with the power of web-based collaboration, all enabled by a state-of-the-art technology platform. The Encyclopedia is free to the public, has no advertising, and is governed by scientists, educators, and professionals. Visit it today at www.EoEarth.org

Portugal Reads Leopold

Aldo Leopold's classic, A Sand County Almanac, has now been translated into ten languages and continues to influence conservation practitioners and advocates around the globe. Most recently, it was published in Portuguese, which the translator hopes will help Leopold's idea of a land ethic to reach audiences not only in Portugal, but also in Brazil, Mozambique, and Cape Verde where Portuguese is the primary language. The book was recently used to celebrate Earth Week in Portugal; watch the news clip on YouTube (it's in Portuguese).

Leopold Center Volunteer Work Day

Join us on Saturday, September 13 for our second annual volunteer work day at the Leopold Center! Last year over 100 volunteers turned out to help us landscape the center. Come on out this year to see the results of their labor and lend a hand in planting more seedlings, weeding, or a variety of other projects. Bring the family! Schedule for the day:
9:00: Welcome and Introduction
9:15-11:30: Work Projects
11:30-1:30: Lunch (provided) and Speaker
1:30 - 4:30: Leopold Center and Shack tours (optional)

Inaugural Aldo Leopold Half-Marathon

It’s part harvest festival, part trail race, and all about connecting people to the land. The trail race is set for Saturday, October 25 at Devils Lake State Park, near Baraboo and the Leopold Center, where bluffs rise 500 feet over the lake—and the start line. A 5K route introduces runners to the challenges and rewards of trail running while the half-marathon is planned for runners seeking to test their skill and endurance. The post-race cookout will feature locally-grown foods, and a local foods fundraising dinner is planned for Friday evening at the Leopold Center. Registration is capped at 300 to avoid impact to the park’s trail system. To register, visit Great Lakes Endurance. The foundation also seeks volunteers to help on the day of the race. To volunteer, contact Jennifer Kobylecky at jennifer@aldoleopold.org. Read more about the race.

Notes from the field

Summer is not the season of prescribed burning, but it's a perfect time for planning future burns. Stewardship Coordinator Alanna Koshollek has been doing just that. Helping private landowners be more responsible stewards of their land, Alanna has been visiting restoration projects all over the region to assist landowners in writing prescribed burn plans. They will be able to submit the plans to the Department of Natural Resources to secure a burn permit next year. Read more about the foundation's land stewardship activities.

Your Turn!

When ecologist Steve Swenson asked his six-year-old son "What does 'land health' mean?" the answer he got was: "Take care of the Earth." Steve pondered the simplicity of Leopold's classic term in the last issue of Outlook. Now we're asking you! Please tell us what 'land health' means to you. Have you found areas of healthy land in your region? You can email your answers to jeannine@aldoleopold.org, and we will publish a selection of responses in the next Outlook. Read Steve's article.