Alumni Leaders
The names of Yale alumni appear frequently among the names of those who have shaped enviromental research, policy, and practices. Brief biographies of George Bird Grinnell, Aldo Leopold, and Gifford Pinchot, whose names are synonomous with the field are shown below.
Today, some of those who play prominent roles in the field include: Frances Beinecke, Executive Director and President of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC); Gilbert M. Grosvenor, chairman of the National Geographic Society's board of trustees and its Education Foundation; Thomas Eugene Lovejoy III, chief biodiversity adviser to the president of the World Bank, senior adviser to the president of the United Nations Foundation, and president of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment; William K. Reilly, who served as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Peter Seligmann, co-founder and CEO of Conservation International; and James Gustave (Gus) Speth, Dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and founded of the World Resources Institute.
George Bird Grinnell
George Bird Grinnell (1849-1938) was an American anthropologist, historian, naturalist, and writer. Grinnell was born in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in 1870 and a Ph.D. in 1880. Originally specializing in zoology, he became a prominent early conservationist and student of Native American life.
Having accompanied General Custer on his expedition to the Black Hills in 1874, Grinnell became acquainted with the Native American tribes in the area. For the rest of his life, Grinnell – whose writings still enjoy tremendous esteem in the anthropology community – was an advocate for Native Americans.
Grinnell enjoyed tremendous success in many fields during his life: the editor of Field & Stream, he also founded the Audubon Society and the Boone & Crockett Club, two of the most influential conservation groups in American history.
Aldo Leopold
Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) was a United States ecologist, forester, and environmentalist. He was influential in the development of modern environmental ethics and in the movement for wilderness preservation. Aldo Leopold is considered to be the father of wildlife management in the United States and was a life-long fisherman and hunter.
He received his Master’s degree in Forestry in 1909 from the Yale School of Forestry. Leopold developed an appreciation for nature in terms of ecology, beauty and mystery, as well as in terms of a source of resources. Thereafter, his professional life encompassed forestry, ecology and writing.
Leopold wrote A Sand County Almanac, which has been read by millions and has informed and spurred the environmental movement and a widespread interest in ecology as a science. By the same token, the Wilderness Society and Leopold’s work in it were important precursors to the environmental movement that coalesced around the time of the first Earth Day.
Gifford Pinchot
Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946) was the first Chief of the US Forest Service, and a founder of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. After graduating from Yale College in 1889, Pinchot traveled to France to study forestry. Upon his return, Pinchot worked for the National Academy of Sciences, as a member of the National Forest Commission. In that capacity, he first began to work on preserving America’s forests, and protecting their futures.
When the Forest Service was created in 1905, Pinchot was the consensus selection to be its initial chief. He remained in that office until 1910. During his five years in office, Pinchot oversaw an exponential expansion not only of the Forest Service, but also of the lands over which it had authority; the national parks grew to more than threefold their original size.
An historic leader of the Forest Service, Pinchot has secured a permanent place in the annals of American forestry. His legacies – as a founder of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and as the first Chief of the Forest Service – ensures a continued contribution to American forestry, even today.
