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Elisabeth C. Miller Library

Keyword: Restoration ecology

Stories from the Leopold Shack: Sand County Revisited

Even if you have never read A Sand County Almanac by the famous conservationist Aldo Leopold, you will enjoy and learn from this memoir by his youngest child.
In the first half of the book, Estella Leopold recounts the family acquisition of Wisconsin farmland, long abandoned, and the remodeling of a decaying barn on the site, so it could be used as a shelter on weekends. They named the barn The Shack.
Aldo Leopold developed the idea of ecological restoration. On his property he wanted to restore the soil and bring back the plants native to the area. The whole family, including the five children, worked on that project, beginning in 1936. Estella describes how her dad filed a sharp edge on the shovels each day before they all dug holes and planted hundreds of pine trees. For this and many other tasks, she makes it sound like they all had fun.
In chapters on each season of the year, the author combines these work activities with experiences with nature they all enjoyed. She tells of skating on the frozen river and seeing a muskrat swimming along under the ice with her. She recounts the many hours she savored being alone in the woods, and the times the children hid to watch the woodcock courtship dance. Aldo Leopold was a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The Shack was just a few hours from the family home, so the family could visit regularly and invite friends. These had to be tolerant friends, as amenities at the Shack were few. Water came from a hand pump outdoors. The outhouse earned the majestic name “The Parthenon.” Estella describes many nights of singing and guitar playing, with much Spanish music from her mother’s past.
Aldo Leopold set out to restore the prairie to its state before the land was plowed for farming in the mid-1800s. One springtime activity to that end was transplanting wildflowers (springtime because they had to be in bloom to be identified). Sources were unmown places along railroad tracks and country roads, and even private property that had been left unplowed. The family dug up, transported in a tub by car, and planted in their old cornfield prairie grasses and many perennial wildflowers.
In Chapter 7 the author describes the ecological restoration as well as the glacial history of the property. The parents and some of the children learned and recorded the Latin names of all the plants on the property, including the wildflowers they transplanted. The Leopolds had personal relationships with some plants. A few non-natives, like a lilac bush, were allowed near the Shack, because Mother (also named Estella) loved them. Natives they loved included wahoo, serviceberry, trillium, and aspen. Others they were proud to collect and see thrive: turkeyfoot, Indian grass, switchgrass, prairie phlox, and purple coneflower.
Concerned that a fire might wipe out all their planting, Aldo devised a system of protective fire lanes. The family, with helpers, laid tin sheets and supervised the flames with water buckets. Then they noticed that the prairie grasses grew better where they had burned. Years later they adopted the current practice of regular burning.
Chapter 8 recounts the “Continuing Process of Restoration” after Aldo’s death in 1948. He had acquired about 350 acres. Another 1500 acres have been added to what is now the Aldo Leopold Memorial Reserve. Several other Wisconsin prairies have been restored. There is an active study center on the property, and the Aldo Leopold Foundation now meets in the LEED-certified Leopold Center.
Each of the five Leopold children followed in their father’s footsteps by creating a Shack-like project in whatever state they lived. Estella’s work in Colorado led to the establishment of the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. She is now a professor of botany emerita here at the University of Washington.
The federal government recently announced plans to plant a billion trees to counteract global warming. It’s fun to think it all may have started with the Leopold family laboring over pine seedlings in the 1930s.
Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy for the Leaflet, September 2022, Vol. 9, Issue 9

Center for Invasive Species Plant Management

The Center for Invasive Species Management (CISM) developed an online Restoration Resource Database to allow land managers to search for literature, books, handbooks, and web sites on restoration, particularly related to invasive species. CISM is by June 2015 no longer in operation, and the website now serves as an archive of the agency’s projects and resources.

Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm

[Wilding] cover

Isabella Tree and her partner, environmentalist Charlie Burrell, own the 3,500-acre property known as Knepp Castle Estate. Her book Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm recounts the Knepp Wildland Project that took place over 18 years starting in 2000 after a failed effort to make the farm profitable with modern, intensive techniques. Their idea, inspired by a similar project in the Netherlands, was to undo many centuries of land management by introducing hardy large herbivores and then stepping back to see what would happen. The author defined it as: “Rewilding — giving nature the space and opportunity to express itself – is largely a leap of faith.” Take a look at a a 15-minute video of Tree introducing the concept.

This book was enjoyable to read because Tree describes various wildlife, birds, insects, mammals, and livestock from an amateur’s enthusiastic perspective rather than with a dispassionate scientific voice. Tree keeps the pace of the narrative moving, yet provides enough details of animals, ecology, history and even governmental regulations that the reader understands why they choose to rewild despite considerable obstacles.

Her narrative of the slow evolution of rewilding their large property takes place over three decades. The story of the farm pasture and woods, neighbors, various national agencies and the wider economy is interspersed with detailed accounts of rare birds, land-use history, heritage breeds of livestock, and the inner workings of ecological interdependence. Tree’s special fondness for the turtle dove is appropriate: nearly extinct in Britain, it is thriving at Knepp.

The role of plants is integral to animal habitat. Tree learns that animals, specifically large herbivores and predators, directly contribute to remaking plant communities which then evolve to support even more species of wildlife. Their philosophy could be boiled down to: increase biodiversity, stay hands-off, build resiliency — repeat!

Neighbors and their notions of a tidy, well-cared-for, pastoral landscape proved to be the most vociferous opponents of allowing their land to revert to a wild state. Tree attempts to understand their unease by looking into the social and psychological impact of living in a controlled, tidy, managed environment. Neighbors saw the Knepp project as abuse and gross negligent abandonment. The author remarks how the oldest neighbors remember the hedgerows and all the birdsong now absent in the agriculturally productive countryside. She also repeatedly points out how their land is marginal and even with modern equipment, chemicals and “improved” breeds they could never make a profit. She wonders why farmers, and governments through subsidies, spend so much on producing food when so much of it wasted, thrown away, uneaten by consumers or worse, never even making it to market because of the low prices received for commodity crops.

Readers interested in regenerative agriculture, ecological restoration and climate change mitigation will find Wilding an inspiring source of hope.

Published in the Leaflet, June 2020, Volume 7, Issue 6.

Society for Ecological Restoration – Northwest

“The Society for Ecological Restoration – Northwest Chapter (SERNW), a private non-profit organization, is a dynamic interactive professional society dedicated to the art and science of restoration. Members of SERNW are actively protecting and restoring ecosystems throughout the Cascadia bioregion which includes Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Alaska and Northern California.”

Urban Naturalist

“The Urban Naturalist is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes original articles focused on all aspects of the natural history sciences as they pertain to urban areas. Subject areas include, but are not limited to, field ecology, biology, behavior, biogeography, restoration ecology, wildlife and fisheries management, taxonomy, evolution, anatomy, physiology, geology, and related fields as they occur in urban settings.”

Urban Habitats

“Urban Habitats is an open-access electronic journal that focuses on current research on the biology of urban areas. Papers cover a range of related subject areas, including urban botany, conservation biology, wildlife and vegetation management in urban areas, urban ecology, restoration of urban habitats, landscape ecology and urban design, urban soils, bioplanning in metropolitan regions, and the natural history of cities around the world.” Urban Habitats will become Urban Naturalist. The Urban Habitats site will remain available for past journal issues.