Dear Green-Fire Lighters:

Over the past week or so I’ve been musing over the writings of Aldo Leopold, the great naturalist whose understandings of environmental ethics were collected in 1949 into the posthumously published A Sand County Almanac. As a young man, Leopold longed to attend the Yale School of Forestry, founded by Yale University in 1901 as a graduate program in forest management. Eventually receiving his master’s degree in 1909, Aldo was able to turn his love for the outdoors into a full-time career. 

At that time, however, it was believed that saving nature required altering it. Heavily influenced by intrepid hunters like Teddy Roosevelt, the model of conservancy dominated, which meant manipulating the environment