Sept. 13, Curt Meine

Conservation and the Wisconsin Idea:
An Evolving Legacy

Link to video, September 13th, 2016.

Photo of Curt Meine
Curt Meine

Curt Meine, Ph.D., is a conservation biologist, historian, and writer. He received his bachelor’s degree in English and History from DePaul University in Chicago and his graduate degrees in Land Resources from the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

During his conservation career over the last twenty years, Meine has worked on projects involving topics ranging from biodiversity conservation planning, sustainable agriculture, and international development, to crane and wetland conservation, prairie restoration, and development of community-based conservation programs. He has worked in Europe, Asia, and across

North America, in partnership with organizations including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the World Conservation Union, the World Wildlife Fund, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. He has served on the Board of Governors of the Society of Conservation Biology and on the editorial boards of the journals Conservation Biology and Environmental Ethics.

Meine has edited and authored several books. His biography Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work, published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 1988, was the first full-length biography of Leopold, and was named Book of the Year by the Forest History Society. He has edited the volumes The Essential Aldo Leopold: Quotations and Commentaries and Wallace Stegner and the Continental Vision. His most recent book is Correction Lines: Essays on Land, Leopold, and Conservation (Island Press). Meine is a recipient of the Bay Foundation’s Biodiversity Leadership Award and the Quivira Coalition’s Outstanding Conservation Leadership Award.

In addition to his work with the Center for Humans and Nature, Meine currently serves as Senior Fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin, and as Research Associate with the International Crane Foundation, also located in Baraboo. He is Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is active locally as a founding member of the Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance in Sauk County, Wisconsin.


Assigned Readings:

“Landscape and Home: Environmental Traditions in Wisconsin” by William Cronon

The Wisconsin Idea: “The Legend and the Legacy” and “Today and Tomorrow” April 1981 by Gale L VandeBerg