Aldo Leopold, considered by many the father of wildlife management and of the United States' wilderness system, was a conservationist, forester, philosopher, educator, prolific writer, and outdoor enthusiast. He conceived of a book for general audiences that examined humanity's relationship to the natural world, and a little more than a year after his death his collection of essays A Sand County Almanac was published. Its concluding essay, "Land Ethic," defined a new relationship between people and nature and helped set the stage for the modern conservation movement. With over two million copies sold, the book became one of the most respected works about the environment ever published, and Leopold came to be regarded as the most influential conservation thinker of the twentieth century. He understood ethics as directing individuals to cooperate with each other for the mutual benefit of all, and one of his philosophical achievements was enlarging the idea of community to include soils, waters, plants, animals, or collectively, the land. His legacy continues to inform and inspire people to see the natural world as a community to which they belong.
