As you walk into the current University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, on the second floor of Russell Laboratories, you’ll see it is a far cry from Leopold’s 424 Farm Place, next to the university cow barns. Even so, resting just outside the department’s office door is a handmade Leopold Bench—one of those simply designed pieces with crossed-plank legs holding up a plank seat and back. As the Environmental Protection Agency’s Landscaping site states: “To spy a Leopold bench in someone’s yard is to know something about the family who there resides. … Its form, resting alone under a tree or in congregation around a fire-pit, reminds us of Leopold’s thoughtfulness.” This handmade blond bench, though, is over a half-century old. It was a gift to the Professor from his department—and wood-burned into it are the names of Aldo’s secretaries and graduate students for him to remember them by, and now for us to do the same. The department, of course, has changed radically since Aldo unexpectedly left. It web page displays a photo of Aldo in the upper corner and lists twenty-two faculty members, four of whom are women (which he would have liked). The fields of expertise presented at first seem like Leopold methods and topics on steroids: forest biometry, forest genetics, molecular ecology, forest remote sensing, spatial analysis, modern climate change. Other specialties are perspectives he had already been integrating into his thinking and planning: landscape ecology, forest ecosystem ecology, tree physiology, forest and environmental history, conservation biology, land use/land cover change, hydrology, population dynamics, conservation management extension, resource policy, ecosystem management, society and natural resources. Scanning the expertise of the emeritus and affiliate faculty, you can see even further outgrowths of Leopold’s far-ranging, integrated thinking and imagining: forest pathology, natural resource and land economics, biogeochemistry, international forestry, development planning, recreation management, economic forecasting, forest soils, human behavior and resource management, nutrient and carbon cycling in forest, nursery, and urban ecosystems.
