This Labor Day weekend, enjoy a conference "In the Footsteps of Leopold," which will commemorate the 100th anniversary of beloved conservationist Aldo Leopold's arrival in the southwest, where he began his career with the U.S. Forest Service.
The event is scheduled for Sept. 5-7 in Nutrioso at the Old Schoolhouse, Highway 2180. A special free public event will be held Thursday, Sept. 3, in Eagar. Conference programs begin promptly at 8:45 a.m. each day.
Scholars and activists from around the United States will participate in the conference. Hikes, camp-outs and training sessions will get participants out into landscape that so inspired Leopold a century ago.
Most widely known as the author of A Sand County Almanac (1949), Aldo Leopold used his writing, teaching, and forestry career to cultivate an important legacy of respect for wild places that began in eastern Arizona.
Leopold is considered the father of environmental ethics and advocated for treating our wild lands as part of our community rather than a commodity. In one of his famous essays, Leopold remembers an encounter with a dying wolf in the hills around Escudilla Mountain.
The experience changed the way he viewed the role of predators in a larger wilderness ecosystem.
Today, only 52 Mexican gray wolves roam in the wilds of eastern Arizona and western New Mexico; reintroduction efforts are ongoing but face numerous challenges.
"One hundred years ago, Leopold saw the challenges we now face protecting our remaining roadless wild places," said Kevin Gaither-Banchoff, executive director of the Arizona Wilderness Coalition.
"This conference is meant to remind us all of the importance of intact wilderness ecosystems - for filtering our water, cleaning our air, and offering us a place to enrich our children's lives."
Leopold helped establish the Gila Wilderness area in 1924, 40 years before the passage of the Wilderness Act. Later, he co-founded The Wilderness Society. As a professor of game management at the University of Wisconsin, he became one of the most influential environmental writers of the 20th century.
This year also marks the 45th anniversary of the passage of the Wilderness Act, which created the National Wilderness Preservation System.
Nutrioso is a small community at the base of Escudilla Mountain in the White Mountains on the Arizona/New Mexico border. Leopold made the mountain famous in his essay "Escudilla." In 1984, the top of Escudilla was designated as a wilderness area.
The event is sponsored locally by the White Mountain Conservation League, Arizona Wilderness Coalition, Grand Canyon Wildlands Council and Sky Island Alliance, with support from the Arizona Humanities Council, Arizona Wildlife Federation and the Arizona Wildlife Education Foundation and the Southwest and Border Cultures Institute. The conference was organized with help from New Mexico State University.
For more information on the conference, a schedule of events, and to register, go to leopoldcentennial.org/.
