In the summer of 1969, a federal district court in Denver, Colorado, heard arguments in one of the nation's first explicitly environmental cases, in which the Defenders of Florissant, Inc. opposed real estate interests intent on developing lands containing an extraordinary set of ancient fossils. This book, the first account of the fight to preserve the Florissant fossil beds, tells a story of environmental activism that remains little known more than forty years after the coalition's victory. The principal author, Estella Leopold, was a major participant in the process.

In 1934, conservationist Aldo Leopold and his wife Estella bought a barn - the remnant of a farm - and surrounding lands in south-central Wisconsin. The entire Leopold clan - five children in all - worked together to put into practice Aldo's "land ethic," which involved ecological restoration and sustainability. In the process, they built more than a pleasant weekend getaway; they established a new way of relating to nature. In 1948, A Sand County Almanac was published, and it has become a beloved and foundational text of the conservation movement.
Decades later, Estella B. Leopold, the...