-         Private land floodplain habitats are degraded in the absence of occasional flooding.

-     Fish spawning and feeding in the floodplain could be much enhanced with levee removal.

-         White-tailed deer have been extremely destructive to vegetation and rare plants.

-         Prescribed fire and selective logging are essential to management for better native vegetation quality and species richness and “to improve the health of the land community,” as Aldo Leopold put it.

Sand County Foundation, private landowners, ecological researchers, white-tailed deer hunters, Fish and Wildlife Service, University of Wisconsin – Madison Center for Limnology, University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point College of Natural Resources, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Environmental Protection Agency, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Aldo Leopold, forester and wildlife ecologist, purchased an abandoned property on the banks of the Wisconsin River in 1935. On some of the least promising of lands but with some of the most stirring results, he initiated a turn-around from unprofitable farming to private land protection, wildlife management, and habitat rehabilitation.

Thirty years later, subdivision of floodplain lands close to Leopold’s “Shack” was destroying what Leopold had initiated. Sand County Foundation leaders along with landowner neighbors forged a voluntary alliance creating the 1,900 acre Leopold Memorial Reserve.

Sand County Foundation coordinates Reserve-wide management and ecological research.  For nearly forty years the variety of habitats on the Reserve have been dedicated to conservation improvement and education.  The lands are used for landowner enjoyment, conservation farming, support of quality research, long-term monitoring of savannas and grasslands, understanding of floodplain ecology, and incentive-based efforts to improve the deer herd and its habitat.