What does /out/ think of Aldo Leopold?

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Good guy that did good work for the sierra club. Saved it from potentially being a shitty fear mongering environmental organization.

I personally like him because he came up with a minimalist style bench that requires one board, 6 carriage bolts, and a fist full of screws. I made 8 of them for my Eagle scout project a few years back.

>>755647
that bench design isn't really that impressive, clearly he wasn't a wood worker.. dunno how you can inspire someone based off a "minimalist" bench that uses carriage bolts and a fist full of screws.

minimalist would be joinery only and I can tell you how to build a one board bench doing so. so do you aspire my set of skills? I would hope not.. you don't know me.

>>755655
I always figured Aldo was more of an intellectual guy when it came to /out/ stuff. He was a forester, went to Yale and was an adviser to the UN on conservation when he died.

Does you /out/siders know of any other influential, famous folks like him? I'm admittedly short on knowledge of the outdoors myself

>>755647
holy shit I used that for my Eagle Project, I didn't know Aldo Leopold was behind it. sweet stuff

>>755689
Bob Marshall
Howard Zahniser
John Muir of course
David Brower
Edward Abbey

>>755542
im reading his book "a sand county almanac" right now and i don't understand the hype. i was hoping for something more straight forward but so far he's hiding all the info in metaphors or in some other story of his.

>>756527
That's the point. Don't you have any poetry in your soul?

>>756567
i was just hoping for something more fact oriented. poems seem a bit too liberal arts for me.

>>756576
If you want fact oriented then read his book Game Management which actually goes into the nuts and bolts. A lot of it is outdated or just flat out wrong, but still worth a read if you're interested in wildlife management as a discipline. Sand County is more the philosophy of it. Leopold tries to put into words why it matters, not necessarily how to do it.

I got my degree in Wildlife Managemenr and currently work for the government doing different projects, ask away if you want to know anything.

>>756729
How do even manage an ecosystem? Do you just keep it from getting fucked up?

>>758363
Depends on your goal. For example, wilderness areas tend to just get designated, walled off, and let go to do their thing. A lot of other areas are managed for certain species. Specifically what's called a "keystone species" that is important for the health of an ecosystem. An example of that would be oak trees, as they provide a bunch of habitat and forage for countless other critters. So you do things like measure their health, thin out the trees around them so that they can grow, plant them if needed, etc.

If you were managing the area for a certain wildlife species, let's say an endangered one, you look at what their growth limiting factor is and try to encourage more of whatever that is. A lot of bats, for instance, rely on snags (dead trees) for shelter during their active summer periods and caves for their hibernating winter periods. I.E. Shelter is their limiting factor. So, if you were managing for bats, you would make sure that any snags found were not cut down, build bat boxes to increase the amount of shelter available, and make sure any caves in the area were not disturbed by installing bat gates that keep people out, but let the bats fly in and out normally.

Each species is different, so you have to look at their characteristics and then work out what the best way to manage the land is.

There's also a bunch of other stuff too like invasive weed and pest control, controlled burning, constructing ponds, breeding and reintroduction of species, etc.

Hope that gives you a good basic overview. It can get pretty complex, and it's definitely not an easy job, but you can really do some good and it can be a hell of a lot of fun sometimes.

>>758735
Do you ever wish the average landowner would do more to help plant and wildlife management? Or would they just fuck it up?

>>759570
It would be nice if they gave more of a shit or were more knowledgeable about ecology in general. A lot of the public want to have things in a way that's contradictory, and that tends to spring from a lack of knowledge. For example a friend has a business where he manages and constructs ponds for landowners. He has to convince a number of them that you can't have a clear pond and fish at the same time, it's one or the other. Another instance is another friend of mine who does environmental consulting and landscaping. One of his clients just left the deer population unchecked on their acreage and they were wandering up to his house and eating his plants. I had noticed that they had eaten some jimsom weed, which is highly hallucinogenic and fatally toxic. I told him that, if the deer are wandering up to his house are eating stuff that they know is bad for them, they must be getting kinda desperate for browse and suggested he open his land for hunting to depopulate and let the plant life grow back. The guy wouldn't hear of it, so I suggested he reintroduce predators, which he wasn't for either. His plan? Build a deer fence (theres no such thing as a deer proof fence), which means that the deer are going to harm the plant life of his property by overbrowsing and then starve to death.

As for ranchers and farmers, they typically only care if something negatively impacts their business in some way, like the invasive plant leafy spurge that can kill their cattle if they eat it or, in the case of wolves, they over claim the impact the wolf has on their herd and get up in arms about reintroductions.

>>759765
Obviously that's not everybody. My current job is working in State and Private forestry at the US Forest Service and a lot of our research, monitoring, and projects come from private landowners who actually give a shit and are interested enough to learn more.

>>759775
>>759765
Is there any way that the suburbs, and the people who live in them, can be made more amenable and accepting to wildlife and native plants?

>>760106
I really like the "natural yard" movement, where basically you just let whatever grows, grow. I know many Homeowners Associations and City Councils aren't too keen on it though and they tend to throw fines at you or pay people to mow your lawn when you aren't around.

If that's not particularly an option, smart gardening that saves water (like drip irrigation) and planting local flora is always a plus.

>>756527
actually loved this book but I knew what I was getting into. It is a great inspiration to get me back /out/ everytime I read it

>>760106
carefully manage the buffers around small creeks. some animals thrive in suburban areas (foxes for example) but if you can get a good selection of natives growing around a clean creek that has been cleared of some of the inevitable erosion silt you can really provide some building blocks for a good ecosytem.


>or you could start chucking moltovs into patches dominated by asian invasives

>>763012
>but if you can get a good selection of natives growing around a clean creek that has been cleared of some of the inevitable erosion silt you can really provide some building blocks for a good ecosystem
How feasible would it be for a two or three people to do this to a few hundred yards of a suburban creek?

>>763033
if you've got a shovel, big pruners, a small folding saw, some time, and some money to buy native seeds/saplings its more than feasible.

>ID the invasives
>pull them up by the roots or cut them down and herbicide the stump
>clear out as much sand as you can from the creek bed. maybe make some small pools on the sides
>cover any exposed ground with a native seed mix
>plant native trees as you wish

if you live somewhere where they belong, consider planting a catalpa tree overhanging the water, they host sphix moth caterpillars and are a great source of food for fish populations.

>>755647
>Good guy that did good work for the sierra club. Saved it from potentially being a shitty fear mongering environmental organization.

Tell that to the Sierra Club fucks in NJ who protest the bear hunt every year when we have more black bears now than we ever did in recorded history.

Leopold was a formative voice for North American conservation. His chapter on the Land Ethic is still decades ahead of it's time, in terms of conservation philosophy. Brilliant dude.

>>763047
youve to establish that as a negative thing.

>2016
>duh...???

"Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?"

>>758735
>"keystone species"
I have some homework for you....
http://www.amazon.com/Wilderness-Political-Ecology-Charles-Kay/dp/0874807190

> Kay's edition effectively debunks two myths. One is the myth of the American Wilderness. This involves a belief that nature is actively self healing, but most importantly, will return herself to a specific equilibrium; a static, synchronic model. A corollary to this belief is that somehow this natural model does not include human interaction. This myth is favored by that brand of eco-centric thinking which proposes that nature and fauna are morally regardable. The claim is that there is one morally superior state of nature that does not include us. Once it is achieved, nature rests.

> The second myth is that of the indigenous people of America as passive members of their ecosystems. Several of the chapters in Kay's book argue that this is essentially a racist position. It continues the orientalist strategy of imperialist campaigns. The myth variously claims that the indigenous people were too few, too technologically limited, or too unaware to have any real impact on their ecologies. The chapters explore the nature of indigenous hunting and foraging practices, the food-limited versus predator-driven ecological structuration models, humans as key-predator species, and other examples of indigenous peoples' active ecosystem management practices.

>These two myths continue to misinform our national park policies and our perspectives of the indigenous people in the US....

When the second wave of Europeans found America, they described skies black with birds, and so many fish in streams that you could "walk on them" to cross a river. This was because the first wave of Europeans sort of accidentally (disease, etc) killed the people already there for thousands of years. The humans who had lived on the continent for 15,000 year or so were the apex predator and keystone species. "Wilderness" is an artifact of genocide.

>>763520
>and so many fish in streams that you could "walk on them" to cross a river. This was because the first wave of Europeans sort of accidentally (disease, etc) killed the people already there for thousands of years
this is not a corollary you are allowed to establish

>>763520
I'm speaking of wilderness in a land designation sense. I'm fully aware that you can play the "well what's natural and wild" philosophy game all day, but that's really rather tiresome and you don't get much out of it. My approach to wildlife and land management is more about a healthy ecosystem, as it relates to the abundance and diversity of life found there. Something that Leopold alludes to when he talked of a "land ethic." This always includes a human element, whether that be recreation, economic exploitation of resources (logging, fishing, agriculture), conflicts, etc.

The bit about misinformed park policy and indigenous peoples you can really just blow out your ass. Ever written a management plan? Anything even remotely impacted has to be described, explored, and mitigation has to be suggested. It's a huge pain and the documents are hundreds of pages long. They cover their bases.

Also, the keystone species concept is not really related to the mess you posted.