In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

4 Growth in Research and Education Programs 64 Although land management and landowner outreach were the central undertakings of the Leopold Memorial Reserve in its early years, Frank Terbilcox also included research and education in his initial work. Such initiatives, however, had been limited to tours for school groups, lectures around the area, and radio-tracking studies of deer. is changed in late 1976 when Nina Leopold Bradley and her husband, Charles (Charlie) took up residence in a newly constructed home and science study center located on a portion of reserve land leased to them by the Head Foundation.1 In 2009 Nina explained their decision to retire on the reserve: “Charlie . . . was a geologist and taught at Montana State University and after we were married he said ‘I want to retire early enough so we can do a major project.’” When two of his projects did not work out, Nina asked him about retiring on the reserve. Her husband liked the idea so much that they acted on it and began building a retirement house after receiving approval from other reserve participants. ey arrived before it was complete, but that was not a problem, since the Bradleys lived at the shack while they built their new house. To construct it, they used as support beams some of the pine trees near the shack that Nina had planted in her youth.2 e home was artfully built into a hillside looking out over a demonstration vegetable garden, pond, and restored prairie. As part of their commitment to the reserve, the Bradleys did more than build their own retirement house there. ey also incorporated into its floor plan an office and greenhouse space so that graduate research interns could work at the reserve while participating in a new summer fellowship program. During this expansionary phase of the reserve’s history, Nina and her siblings—Starker, Luna, Carl, and Estella—further emphasized the importance of research and education by founding the Aldo Leopold Shack Foundation in 1982. Fostering Ecological Research on the Reserve e Bradley Study Center, as Nina and Charlie Bradley’s house and research facility came to be known, kept them as busy as any full-time job. e Bradleys’ expertise in botany and geology and their remarkable talent for inspiring others to become involved in conservation helped the Head Foundation significantly increase the number of research and education programs on the reserve. Pleased by these developments, Frank Terbilcox wrote in his journal “how fitting it is to have a Leopold . . . come home with her husband Charlie Bradley to build a home and working laboratory from these hand-planted pines. . . . ere is much that could be said about the Lab, the Clivus [composting toilet] system of sewerage disposal, the photo lab, wood burning furnace, solar panel, greenhouse, root cellar, etc. All add up to a wonderful addition for the reserve.”3 Terbilcox and others at the Head Foundation were clearly excited to have additional on-site support for expanding the reserve’s mission. e decision to build the Bradley Study Center did not occur without some contentious moments, however. Although the Leopold family owned the sandhill near the shack where the Bradleys first wanted to build, Reed Coleman and Nina’s siblings Estella and Luna did not agree with the proposed location. Nina Bradley later concurred that the original sandhill site would have been a poor one, even though her father had originally suggested it: “Dad had always said that he wanted to build up on the sandhill. And I was with him when he said ‘is is where you’re going to build.’ So when Charlie and I came back, this is what we had planned. . . . [But] Reed was right on target, it would have been a mistake to build too near the shack.”4 Leaving the shack area undeveloped, as it was during her father’s time there, was more important to family, friends, and a growing number of visitors from around the state and country than the Bradleys had originally realized. After construction of the Bradley Study Center at a location just down Growth in Research and Education Programs 65 the road, there was little evidence of any remaining ill will between Reed Coleman and the Bradleys about the chosen building site. e Head Foundation supported the efforts of the study center by contributing financially to the new summer graduate fellows program and to scholarships for area high school teachers and students who demonstrated...

Share