Date: 1/28/26 3:23 pm From: <jwdavis...> <jwdavis...> Subject: Fw: SOLILOQUY FOR CHICKEN HOUSE PRAIRIES January 28 2026
Thank you for sharing this information about Arkansas Reads Leopold weekend, March 7 and 8. I am a fan of Aldo Leopold and some of his writings were kept in front of my desk during my four decades working as a Forest Wildlife Biologist. When I was the Forest Wildlife Biologist for the Tonto National Forest, many of Aldo's research and writing papers were in the Forest Files when he worked for the Forest Service in Arizona and New Mexico. I provided copies of this information to Curt Meine for his book Aldo Leopold, and he gave me credits in the acknowledgements. I have also visited the Leopold cabin and the Foundation Office and Museum in Wisconsin.
We need a rebirth and understanding of what Aldo Leopold had to say and those that have not read A Sand County Almanac, Round River, Game Management, Aldo Leopold, Aldo Leopold's Southwest and the Essential Aldo Leopold among others have missed out on excellent writings on conservation.
Thank you
Jerry Wayne Davis
Hot Springs, AR
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From: The Birds of Arkansas Discussion List <ARBIRD-L...> on behalf of Lynn Foster <lfoster5211...>
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2026 12:50 PM
To: <ARBIRD-L...> <ARBIRD-L...>
Subject: Re: SOLILOQUY FOR CHICKEN HOUSE PRAIRIES January 28 2026
Jerry,
Thanks for your post and the shout-out to Aldo Leopold. For those interested in finding out more about Aldo Leopold or revisiting him, let me mention Arkansas Reads Leopold weekend, March 7 and 8. There will be seven community reading events on that weekend, and their focus is reading excerpts from A Sand County Almanac. More information on specific events can be found here: https://arbirds.org/AASPage.aspx?pg=16. A "prequel" will be held the evening of March 3 at the Ron Robinson Theater in Little Rock, where the Central Arkansas Library System will show the documentary about Leopold and his life and work, Green Fire.
AAS is the chief sponsor of these events, having obtained a grant from the Aldo Leopold Foundation<https://www.aldoleopold.org/>. We'll be distributing free copies of A Sand County Almanac, if you don't have one. If you do, bring it and read along! Statewide cosponsors include the Arkansas Master Naturalists Audubon Delta, Wild Birds Unlimited, Ozark Society, and Sierra Club. NWAAS and ASCA, along with many others, are cosponsoring local events. AAS members are some of our readers!
I've attached an event flyer. Contact me off-list if you have questions.
Lynn Foster
President, Arkansas Audubon Society
On Wed, Jan 28, 2026 at 10:03 AM <jwdavis...><mailto:<jwdavis...> <jwdavis...><mailto:<jwdavis...>> wrote:
Thank you, Joe, it is more difficult for some of us to come to peace with what is happening to our world. There are 2,800 Billionaires in the US and 22,000,000 Millionaires in the US, and it would be great if they would use some of their fortunes for the good of society and natural resources rather than its desire. Musk and Benzo want a trillion people on earth so they can make more profits, and they will never understand the good they could do with a different mindset.
For Aldo Leopold, the most precious lesson one could learn (at any age) was not found in a schoolhouse, but rather in the land around it. Understanding the value of the natural world required introspection and observation skills, both of which could be found in the wilderness.
"Man, always kills the thing he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?"
“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.” ― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac<https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/321811>
“A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of the land.” ― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac<https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/321811>
The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. Only those who know the most about it can appreciation how little we know about it. The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering. Aldo Leopold<https://libquotes.com/aldo-leopold>
For those that care about conservation and our natural resources it would be good for the soul to reread A Sand County Almanac.
https://ebird.org/checklist/S296690493 https://ebird.org/checklist/S296688638 Seems like only yesterday I had a full crop of dark hair and walked through endless prairie fields with binoculars around my neck and a Bushnell spotting scope on a rifle sling strapped on my back. Ready for LeConte’s Sparrow to flush and fly low to perch in broomsedge bluestem.
Yes … thoughts on a gray morning ... Then there’s an old friend, sun, popping through, all radiance and promise. It won’t bring back my hair. Does elevate the spirit. All of nature appreciates the moment, including this bird watcher.
I hope none of you who read these thoughts will feel despair about this. I sure don’t mean it that way. Just the facts, Mam … in a country where close to 50 years of winters have been full of harriers and I assume at night, Short-eared Owls. Where in a time now long gone before living people prairie-chickens called home.
Now different kinds of chickens reign supreme. The white kind, by tens of millions, in long silver barns. Our chicken house prairies.
According to signs posted along the road, what was long before me Tallgrass Prairie will be 129 new homes. And the new home owners will without doubt think about future shade and plant trees where not that long ago grew Big Bluestem and Indian Grass.
If I was Alice Walton I would have bought all of this when it went up for a sale last year. 200+ acres. Would have made a decent preserve. But I’m not Alice. When it came to making the big money, I made other choices. It will be 129 new homes.
I’m making my peace with it. The place where I live in Fayetteville used to be something else, too. I came to live in what was once a Tallgrass Prairie oak barren. Like how 129 new homes will be coming to Tallgrass Prairie.
This is a soliloquy for back country where for ages Northern Harriers reigned supreme. Where if I look hard enough on a June day Grasshopper Sparrows still sing. Probably, also soliloquy for the guy who used to have thick dark hair who is today, as they say, “on the sunny side of 80” and seeing how so many things pass away.
As a birder, I know other spots where I can turn sideways on an unpaved but graded country road for a better look at White-crowned Sparrows -- without the new comers who don’t know me calling deputies to report a outbreak terrorist.
The good stuff for birding opportunity is not all going to disappear because of 129 new homes, but I can see the storm coming. The sky is getting all purple and dimpled. I’m enjoying other chicken house prairies.
