There is so much outstanding discovery ongoing at the Center, it is especially important today that those results be communicated with Iowa’s producers. Jack Payne, Vice Provost for Extension, ISU

“My graduate degrees are in wildlife management and Aldo Leopold has a special place in that discipline because he founded the first wildlife department in the country at the University of Wisconsin,” Payne explained. “Leopold was a trained forester and up until that time, wildlife science was not a separate discipline within universities.”

Payne has a copy of Leopold’s Game Management, the first textbook on wildlife management, published in 1933.

”Even today, with over 70 years of scientific wildlife management behind us, no wildlife professional has been quite as elegant in their writings as was Leopold,” he said. “From his essays you will get a great sense of who the man was.”

Payne describes himself as a second generation Leopold student. “I was privileged to have some of Leopold’s former students as professors during my graduate school years. Among them were Allen Stokes, who was just finishing his doctorate under Leopold when Leopold died fighting the grass fire at his famous shack, and Robert McCabe, whose son shared a graduate student office with me and was the envy of all because he had Leopold’s desk chair as his own.”

A guiding philosophy
As a result, Payne said many of Leopold’s philosophies guide his own world views.

“Leopold believed as I do that the future of American wildlife lay largely on private land, in the attitudes and decisions of American farmers, not in the bureaucracy of government,” Payne said. “That is why I feel privileged to have the opportunity as a conservationist to work in agriculture, to work with the men and women who are making a living off of the land.”

After learning about the Leopold Center, Payne also was interested to note that his new domain, ISU Extension, plays a big role in helping fulfill the Center’s mission. The founding legislation for the Leopold Center, the 1987 Groundwater Protection Act, calls for the Center to “develop in association with the Iowa cooperative extension service in agricultural and home economics an educational framework to inform the agricultural community and the general public of its findings.”

ISU Extension faculty and staff have traditionally been key players in sharing Center research findings, and also have been principal investigators on many projects. Payne sees even more opportunities for ISU Extension and the Center to interact to the benefit of both organizations.

“I am very pleased and excited that Jerry DeWitt is now serving as the Leopold Center interim director,” Payne said. “Jerry is a great communicator, scientist and most importantly, an Extension faculty member with a long successful history of bringing science-based information to the people of Iowa.

“There is so much outstanding discovery ongoing at the Center, it is especially important today that those results be communicated with Iowa’s producers and other affected clientele. With Jerry’s leadership I am sure that the outreach and extension activities of the Center will increase greatly.”

A conservation perspective
Payne came to ISU from Utah State University in Logan where he served as vice president for University Extension, director of the Utah Cooperative Extension Service, dean of continuing education, and was a tenured professor in the College of Natural Resources. He also served on the faculties of Texas A&M University and Pennsylvania State University, and spent 10 years with Ducks Unlimited as their national director of conservation.

Much of Payne’s career experience has been geared to the wildlife side of natural resource management, but he also has had an opportunity to observe how sustainable agriculture can play a role in wildlife preservation and woodland restoration. Payne already envisions ways in which Leopold’s land ethic can help ISU Extension and the Center to better serve the people of Iowa.

“It is most fitting for Iowa as a leading agricultural state to have a center for sustainable agriculture named after Aldo Leopold, a wildlife professor,” he explained. “Leopold wrote constantly about the responsibilities that go along hand in hand with the rights of owning private land, especially ag land.

“Leopold once said of agriculture that we are too enamored of show pieces. We have not yet learned to think in small cogs and wheels that determine healthy land. He believed that only knowledge of its cogs and wheels can build a lasting affection for the land and affection underpins ethics.”

Building outdoor recreation opportunities
As a keen outdoorsman, interested in a variety of sports, Payne can see potential for more outdoor recreation in Iowa.

“I love all forms of recreational hunting and fishing,” Payne said. “As an Extension wildlife specialist in Texas, I had the opportunity first hand to see how hunting and fishing leases can provide valuable extra income for farmers and ranchers while also providing an incentive for the landowner to conserve and manage the wildlife habitat existing on the property. In some cases these leases helped to keep these farms and ranches in production agriculture.”

Even though he’d barely gotten the boxes unpacked in his new office in Beardshear Hall, Payne took time out of his busy schedule to do some advance reading about the Leopold Center and meet with the Center’s review team during their site visit in March.

“It was great to hear the high praise from the national team of scientists who participated in the review of the Leopold Center. They were extremely complimentary of the Center’s successes to date and their plans for the future,” he said. “I strongly believe that the Center with its exceptional scientists and outreach faculty will continue to add to the quality of life of Iowa’s citizens and bring important sustainable practices to the many men and women of Iowa who continue to make a living off the land.”

As Vice Provost for Extension and Outreach at Iowa State, Payne will serve as director of cooperative extension, which has programs in agriculture and natural resources, communities and economic development, families and 4-H youth development. The vice provost also administers University Extension, which includes business and industry programs and continuing education offerings.

More about Aldo Leopold and his Iowa roots

Bits of wisdom from Aldo Leopold, selected by Jack Payne