Starting Conversations is celebrating the Gila Wilderness Centennial with a special series featuring Steve Morgan, Chautauqua performer, as Aldo Leopold in conversation with three scholars working directly in forestry, environmental restoration, and land ethics.
Aldo Leopold was stationed in New Mexico from the early 20th Century and was immediately influenced by the Indigenous community and how they stewarded the land around them. Living alongside these communities he began to understand his relationship to his environment differently. Much of Leopold’s practices in naturalism and environmental conservation are credited to the Indigenous people who had stronger ties and the longest tenure to the regions that eventually became federally protected land.
This episode of Starting Conversations with Aldo Leopold features a discussion between Aldo and Dan Shilling, scholar and author who has focused on the life and practices of Aldo Leopold.
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Steve Morgan is a naturalist, performer-educator, and a Landscape Architect focused on creating, restoring, and retaining natural habitat. The southwest has been his home for 50 years and he currently resides in Kingston, New Mexico with his wife Nicole and their dogs. His goal is to continue teaching Leopold’s wisdom to encourage careful observation, inspire wonder, and promote environmental action and change.
Dan Shilling, Ph.D. Author, Lecturer, is a native Pennsylvanian where he taught high school. Dan moved to Arizona in 1980 and earned his Ph.D. from Arizona State University. He joined the Arizona Humanities Council as a program officer in 1984, and was named Executive Director in 1989, a position he stepped down from in 2003. At AHC he developed several award-winning projects on environmental history and community building. After leaving AHC, he directed a three-year, federally funded project on place-based tourism.