Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) was an avid angler and perhaps the leading environmentalist of the 20th century.  Born in Burlington, Iowa, he earned his master of forestry degree from Yale University in 1909 and immediately entered the Forest Service in the southwestern United States. Leopold saw problems with the theories governing land and wildlife management, eventually leading him to the notion that land ought to be put aside for its recreational and aesthetic values alone. Written in 1933, Leopold's cornerstone book Game Management defined basic skills and techniques, creating a new science that combined forestry, agriculture, biology, zoology, ecology, and education. A Sand County Almanac, a collection of Leopold’s essays published posthumously in 1949, is considered by many one of the basic texts of the modern ecological ethic.