We Can Do Better: Collected Writings on Land, Conservation, and Public Policy | Paul W. Johnson edited by Curt Meine | 9781948509657 | $25 | 298p | Coming September 25, 2025
From the Editor’s Note: “I first met Paul Johnson in 1988 alongside a hay wagon in a hillside pasture in southwestern Wisconsin. Paul had come across the Mississippi River from his home and farm in adjacent Iowa to meet with like-minded farmers and conservationists. His work as a state legislator to safeguard Iowa’s groundwater and promote sustainable agriculture had brought him attention well beyond his own state. At a volatile time in the rural Midwest, when tens of thousands of farms were being lost to foreclosure, his work and voice suggested a different path forward.
Dressed that morning in work clothes and sporting his full brown beard, Paul did not come across as the seasoned public figure that he was. He spoke plainly and in detail about his policy work in Iowa, but also about the finer points of his own farm, its soils and water, and his family’s grazing and cropping practices. A dozen of us asked questions and shared stories from our own places and experiences in Wisconsin … Compiling this collection has often felt like a continuation of the conversation we began in that Wisconsin pasture and that we carried on for more than three decades.”
CURT MEINE is a conservation biologist, environmental historian, and writer. He serves as Senior Fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin, and with the Chicago-based Center for Humans and Nature. He is also a Research Associate with the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo and Associate Adjunct Professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology.
Meine received his B.A. in English and History from DePaul University in Chicago, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Land Resources from the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His dissertation was published in 1988 as Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work (reissued in a new edition in 2010). This work, the first biography of Leopold, received a number of awards, including the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Award of Merit, the Wisconsin Library Association’s Outstanding Achievement Award, and the Forest History Society’s Book of the Year Award. After completing his Ph.D. Meine served in Washington with the U.S. National Academy of Sciences on programs involving biodiversity conservation, sustainable agriculture, and international development. Returning to Wisconsin, he worked with colleagues at the International Crane Foundation and around the world to develop the first global conservation action plan for cranes.
Meine has written and edited a number of books on conservation and environmental history, including Wallace Stegner and the Continental Vision (1998), The Essential Aldo Leopold: Quotations and Commentaries (1999), Correction Lines: Essays on Land, Leopold, and Conservation (2004); the Library of America collection Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac and Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology (2013); and the bioregional anthology The Driftless Reader (2017). Meine also served as narrator and on-screen guide for the Emmy Award-winning documentary film Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time (2011), which continues to be screened in venues around the country and has appeared more than 1,000 times on PBS stations.