A Sand County Almanac

One of the most beloved and revered books ever to arise from the beginnings of the environmental movement, A Sand County Almanac still provides a compelling look at the need for conservation and environmental stewardship.

Available at nearly ever Internet bookstore and in thousands of brick and mortar bookshops across the country, over 1 million copies of the book has been printed, in nine languages.

The Aldo Leopold Foundation provides a synopsis of the book and its author:

A Sand County Almanac written by Aldo Leopold

Throughout his life Leopold was at the forefront of the conservation movement—indeed, he is widely acknowledged as the father of wildlife conservation in America. Though perhaps best known for A Sand County Almanac, he was also an internationally respected scientist, authored the classic text Game Management, which is still in use today, wrote over 350 articles, mostly on scientific and policy matters and was an advisor on conservation to the United Nations.

He died of a heart attack on April 21, 1948 while helping his neighbors fight a grass fire. He has subsequently been named to the National Wildlife Federation's Conservation Hall of Fame, and in 1978, the John Burroughs Memorial Association awarded him the John Burroughs Medal for his lifework and, in particular, for A Sand County Almanac.

Published in 1949 as the finale to A Sand County Almanac, Leopold’s ‘Land Ethic’ defined a new relationship between people and nature and set the stage for the modern conservation movement.

Born in Burlington, Iowa, on January 11 1887 he developed a lively interest in field ornithology and natural history as a boy, and after schooling in Burlington, at Lawrenceville Prep in New Jersey, and the Shefield Scientific School at Yale, he enrolled in the Yale forestry school, the first graduate school of forestry in the United States.

Graduating with a masters in 1909, he joined the U.S. Forest Service. His first posting was a desolate forest in Arizona. By 1912 he was supervisor of the million-acre Carson National Forest in New Mexico, and in 1924 accepted the position of Associate Director of the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, the principal research institution of the Forest Service at that time.

In 1933 he was appointed to the newly created chair in Game Management at the University ofWisconsin, a position he held until his death.