Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time

Gr 7 Up—Biographers Curt Meine and Susan Flader narrate this exquisite documentary that explores the life of philosopher Aldo Leopold, who was born in 1887. Leopold's parents instilled within him patience and a sense of keen observation. Always interested in the outdoors, Leopold graduated from Yale Forestry School and began his career in the Apache National Forest of Arizona. In the Southwest, Leopold gained firsthand experience with the results of overgrazing and predator control. During the early years of his government career, he recognized the need for wilderness preservation, and it was then that he began to formulate into actions and words what is now called the land ethic, or the understanding of man's interrelationship with nature. Leopold recognized that the land is an organism and that man must be a part of the living system. He died in 1948, just as Oxford University Press agreed to publish his book of essays, A Sand County Almanac. It has become the bible for the environmental movement. The highlights of this film are numerous and include the use of historical photographs; Peter Coyote reading the words of Leopold; a variety of talking heads from the fields of history, ecology, landscape architecture, and biology; and commentary from Leopold's daughter, Nina.