Leopold gavel donated to UWSP Museum

An oak gavel carved from a log once owned by environmentalist Aldo Leopold has been donated to the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point’s Museum of Natural History. A longtime loan of the gavel to the museum has been recently made permanent.

George Becker, professor emeritus of biology, loaned the official gavel of the Citizens Natural Resources Association (CNRA) to the museum in 1977 at the end of his term as president of the group. It is part of a display about Leopold at the gateway of the museum in the main lobby of the Learning Resources Center.

The gavel came to Becker from Milwaukee area artist Phil Sander who carved it. Estella Leopold gave Sander the wood when he visited her after Aldo’s death. Due to Leopold’s leadership in conservation, wilderness preservation and his writings, he is often credited as being a founder of the environmental movement.

The tree from which the gavel was carved isn’t just any piece of oak. It is a piece of "the good oak," Becker said. "The Good Oak" is the title of a Leopold essay in "A Sand County Almanac" published in 1949. The essay reflects his land ethic and the oak symbolizes his philosophy.

The essay summarizes the history of attitudes toward the environment as a saw cuts through an oak tree being cut for firewood. The tree’s growth rings represent the decades from the present at the outside of the tree to the center which represents the Civil War era when Leopold surmises that the tree first took root. Leopold lists the advances of forest policy and game conservation in recent decades, notes the degradation of wildlife populations in the 1800s, and describes the era when the last native Wisconsin elk was killed in 1866 when "the good oak" was a year old.

"The gavel is the only thing I know of carved from the good oak," Becker said.

The gavel was intended to be a temporary loan, but has remained on display at the museum with its disposition uncertain until recently. Becker brought the future of the gavel to the attention of CNRA members, who approved it as a gift to the museum.

"I often see people standing at our Aldo Leopold exhibit for several minutes," said Ed Marks, curator of education at the museum. "So many visitors spending so much time at one exhibit can only mean that they value the exhibit’s content and message."

Although the stump of the tree has now disintegrated, a plaque has been placed on a nearby boulder by the CNRA to mark the site of the tree.

Founded in 1948, the CNRA is an organization of Wisconsin citizens concerned with preservation of the environment. The organization encourages individuals to take action that will guide public policy and private practice. It has promoted responsible use of chemicals in the environment, policies to preserve natural beauty and preservation of endangered wildlife and natural areas including wetlands. In it’s early years, CNRA was instrumental in implementing a ban on the use of DDT. More recently the organization pushed for alternatives to a flood control project in the Kickapoo River Valley in Southwest Wisconsin and supported a plan to control industrial pollution of the Wisconsin River basin.

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