Original sentence: Aldo Leopold, forester and wildlife ecologist, purchased an abandoned property on the banks of the Wisconsin River in 1935.For nearly 40 years, the various habitats on the Reserve’s private lands have been dedicated to conservation improvement.Sand County Foundation coordinates Reserve-wide management and landscape ecological research.The Reserve represents a cooperative partnership between Sand County Foundation and other private landowners in and around the original Aldo Leopold farm and “Shack” written about in A Sand County Almanac.The lands are heavily used for landowner enjoyment, support of peer-reviewed quality research, long-term monitoring of savannas and grasslands, understanding of floodplain ecology, and support of incentive-based effort to improve the deer herd and its habitat.There, Leopold initiated a land-use recovery from unprofitable farming to private land protection, wildlife management, and habitat rehabilitation.They forged a voluntary alliance of neighboring landowners.Today, this early land trust, located in Sauk County in south central Wisconsin, comprises about  of private land.Together they created the Leopold Memorial Reserve.When subdivision of floodplain lands close to Leopold’s “Shack” was starting to destroy in the early 1960s what Leopold had initiated, Reed Coleman, Leopold’s godson, along with a few friends and neighbors, took private action