Introducing kids to Aldo Leopold

Spider's sheet web weighed down with morning dew

Aldo Leopold has been called “the father of wildlife management” and “the father of wildlife ecology” and the “father of conservation ethics.” Have children read about Aldo Leopold’s life and work. Ask them to list the “firsts” that Leopold accomplished. Then discuss what it means to be called the father of a movement or of a new way of thinking. What qualities does a person need in order to think in a new way and to become “the first” in his field?


​Have children choose one month’s entry in A Sand County Almanac to read and study. 

• Ask them to copy their favorite passage and explain why they like it.
• Ask what they learned about nature after reading Leopold’s remarks. Can they connect it to their own experience in some way?
• How did Leopold gain the information he presented? Does it seem like something he learned by studying or by observing – or by both methods? Ask children to give an example from their reading.

Ask children to design a research project to learn something about nature. Begin with a question, then include research, exploration, and record keeping. If possible, have them carry out their projects and present their findings.

​Aldo Leopold wrote, “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.”

• Ask children whether they can or cannot live without wild things and why.

Leopold wrote, “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

• Ask children to consider these opposite beliefs: Land belongs to its owner. We belong to the land (we are part of a community, which includes living plants and animals, soil, and water). How do we treat land when we think it is just there to serve us? How do we treat land when we think it is a living community that we belong to?

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