Curt Meine
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Curt Meine is a conservation biologist, environmental historian and writer based in Sauk County, Wisconsin. He serves as senior fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo and the Chicago-based Center for Humans and Nature; as research associate with the International Crane Foundation; and as adjunct associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work has included conservation projects across North America, Europe and East Asia, with a wide array of organizations, agencies, universities and businesses. In his home landscape he devotes himself to community-based land conservation, ecological restoration and sustainable agriculture projects, and is a founding member of the Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance. Meine has written and edited a number of books on conservation and environmental history, including "Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work" (reissued in a new edition in 2010); and most recently "The Driftless Reader" (2017). He served as on-screen guide in the Emmy Award-winning documentary film "Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time" (2011), which has aired more than 1,000 times on PBS stations around the country.
Aldo Leopold's call for a 'land ethic' is still needed, as we grapple with a social and environmental crisis
While Leopold did not explicitly recognize how the impacts of land exploitation fell disproportionately on the poor and on Black and Indigenous people and people of color, he came to believe that Western ethical frameworks had to expand to embrace land. Read More
