A Wild Proposal: 1919– 1924

On August 1, 1919, Aldo was appointed to the second-highest position in District 3—Assistant Forester in Charge of Operations. Numerous foresters grumbled that Leopold didn’t deserve the job and was hardly suited to its enormous responsibilities. He hadn’t proven he was versed enough in all aspects of forestry management to handle the overarching tasks of inspecting every forest, reporting on what he found, and suggesting improvements. Leopold had a rigorous schedule to follow—three forests per summer, with a month at each. Since the Forest Service had no set inspection method, Leopold had to develop his own. His first reports were sketchy. He wrote more comments on rangers’ initiative and reading habits than on the details of their work or the conditions of their fire stations. During a late-summer tour of his old stomping ground, the Carson, Leopold roved further south into the Datil Forest. He fished away a Sunday at the headwaters of the Gila River and came away relaxed and refreshed. No telephone poles or roads cut across the landscape; there were just the pines; the trout; the tingle of fresh, pungent air; and a breeze alive with bird calls. Few areas like this remained in District 3. Was there, he wondered, a legal way to preserve the canyonlands around the Gila just as they were? That December, at a meeting of district foresters in Salt Lake City, Leopold heard about a young forest assistant named Arthur Carhart from District 2 in Colorado. Carhart, the Forest Service’s first landscape architect, had been dubbed the “Beauty Engineer” by his coworkers. Carhart had recommended that Trappers Lake, in the White River National Forest, be permanently preserved in a wilderness state—no so-called improvements. On his return trip, Leopold stopped by the D-2 offices to meet the man. Up to this point, attempts to set aside natural areas in the national forests led only to national parks or “primitive areas” that were open to later development. Leopold did not trust the park system to preserve any wilderness area intact.