Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA) 2026 Conference

Aldo Leopold, a Wisconsin icon, is considered by many to have been the most influential conservation thinker of the 20th Century as a result of his seminal work, A Sand County Almanac, in which he presents a vision for how to to live on and care for the land. This call for a land ethic -- a conservation ethic -- would eventually serve as the intellectual and emotional foundation for disciplines ranging from forestry, wildlife management, conservation biology, sustainable agriculture, restoration ecology, private land management, environmental history, literature, and environmental education and ethics. This panel begins with a quick history of the twists and turns behind the publication of this conservation classic: how it almost was never published but then sold more than 2 million copies and was translated into 14 languages, and how its message remains as relevant today as it was 75 years ago.