A Public Face for Science: A. Starker Leopold and the Leopold Report

Rydell, Kiki

In 1963 a group of scientists and wildlife experts authored a report - subsequently, and more commonly, referred to as the Leopold Report - to help the National Park Service manage its wildlife. While the Leopold Report reflected in broad terms the scientific thinking of wildlife biology in the 1960s and, in a narrower sense, some of the ideas put forth by previous Park Service critics, it bore the unmistakable imprint of its primary author, Aldo Starker Leopold. Son of a conservationist and wilderness advocate Aldo Leopold, Starker Leopold was at the time a wildlife biologist at the University of California in Berkeley. The report is a prime example of Starker Leopold's particular expertise: his uncanny ability to translate biological ideas into public policy.