Nature needs YOUR land ethic!
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“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”
—Aldo Leopold, Foreward to A Sand County Almanac, 1949
Community readings can inspire commitment for an ethical relationship to the natural world. There is power and untapped potential in public readings—building a sense of place, growing community bonds, amplifying voices, actively listening, inspiring critical-thinking, and conjuring emotional connections. Leopold Week is the first full week of March each year. We are providing grants for civic groups to host public readings in their communities during the first weekend of Leopold Week, whichwill be March 6 or 7, 2027.
Because of your $1,000 gift, you can choose to have a grant directed to a Community Reading in your own community in 2027! Simply complete and submit the form at the bottom of this page and we will contact you to help set the wheels in motion.
Of course, there is no obligation for you to support a specific event in your community, we expect to have a great deal of interest, so your investment will enable other communities without adequate resources to gather and grow the land ethic community.
Aldo Leopold Week celebrations began on March 4, 2000 in the town of Lodi, Wisconsin. The first gathering was championed by Tom Heberlein, Emeritus Professor of Rural Sociology and Environmental Studies at UW-Madison.
That year, at Heberlein’s invitation, citizens congregated to read A Sand County Almanac aloud, cover-to-cover, as a way to explore a sense of place, build community bonds, and spread a Land Ethic®.
The events in Lodi led to a 2004 proclamation by then Wisconsin Governor James Doyle, officially designating the first weekend in March each year as Aldo Leopold Weekend in the state of Wisconsin. The state of Iowa followed suit in 2014 by designating the first week in March as Aldo Leopold Week.
You can choose to host a reading event yourself, or, we suggest, you can reach out to your local librarian or similar community leader and ask them to host with the grant support materials and funding detailed below:
A Sand County Almanac books (50 copies)
Promotional posters and postcards
Grant funds at discretion of event host for refreshments
and prizes, etc.
Total Budget Value
no cost to you ($400 value)
no cost to you ($100 value)
$500, (No cost to you, we send a check)
$1,000
Program Ideas for Your 2027 Community Reads Leopold Program:
• Read selected essays from A Sand County Almanac capturing Leopold’s beautiful writing and moral call for a land ethic, along with other selected authors.
• Read the book cover to cover (10 hours long!).
• Read the entire almanac portion, Part I (3 hours) and other selections (additional 1-2 hours).
• Readings followed by facilitated discussion or nature hike and/or activity from Learning with the Land: Exploring Nature through Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac.
• Readings and screening of Green Fire: A Land Ethic for Our Time, an Emmy-award winning documentary on Aldo Leopold and the Land Ethic®.
The Aldo Leopold Foundation was founded in 1982 with a mission to foster the Land Ethic® through the legacy of Aldo Leopold, awakening an ecological conscience in people throughout the world.
"Land Ethic®" is a registered service mark of the Aldo Leopold Foundation, to protect against egregious and/or profane use.
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