Aldo Leopold has been widely recognized as one of America's great conservationists. His 1949 "A Sand County Almanac" and other works have inspired generations of wildlife biologists, foresters and naturalists and provided the foundation for modern natural resource management.
So it was appropriate that in 1999 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided to honor Leopold's legacy with a new refuge near his Wisconsin home. The agency intended to buy and restore drained marshlands called muck farms to provide habitat for tens of thousands of migrating waterfowl and other birds.
But the Aldo Leopold National Wildlife Refuge never came into existence. What happened instead probably would have pleased Leopold more than a refuge bearing his name. Appropriately, it points to a refreshing, exciting direction that can help conservation in the 21st century.
Local farmers in Wisconsin said they didn't want a federal refuge. Instead, they formed what they called the Farming and Conservation Together Committee. Working with the Fish and Wildlife Service, they are overseeing wetland and upland conservation projects while keeping the land in private ownership. "Even the selection of our name is a reflection of our sincere commitment to a long-term balance of conservation and agriculture made possible through community-based oversight," says Buddy Huffaker, the chairman of the committee.
In his writings, Leopold never expressed doubt that the government should buy land for conservation. But he questioned the government's tendency to take over conservation completely by acquiring land or regulating its use. Instead, he called for a new land ethic in which landowners themselves took on this responsibility -- precisely what happened with the refuge that was to have borne his name.
"There is a clear tendency in American conservation to relegate to government all the necessary jobs that private landowners fail to perform," Leopold wrote. "At what point will governmental conservation, like the mastodon, become handicapped by its own dimensions?"
The Interior Department has spent decades acquiring new land, including committing $3 billion for that purpose since 1995. It now owns nearly one in every five acres of America. Add in the land managed by the U.S. Forest Service, and the federal government owns one in every four acres.
Yet for decades we have had difficulty finding enough staff and funds to manage all this land properly. When I became interior secretary in early 2001, the National Park System and the National Wildlife Refuge System had maintenance backlogs in the billions of dollars. Buildings and equipment were deteriorating, and managers had to leave important conservation projects undone. This is a sad legacy that must change.
President Bush has made a major commitment to reducing these backlogs and improving conservation on our public land. His 2004 budget request proposes more than $1 billion to fulfill his pledge of addressing the maintenance backlog in the parks. His proposed $402 million budget for the National Wildlife Refuge System represents a 25 percent increase in funding since 2002 and more than double the 1997 budget.
Even as we commit more funds to maintenance, the demands on public land are increasing with the country's expanding population. More and more people are looking to public land for recreation. In the past decade the number of people visiting national parks grew by 24 million, or 8 percent, and refuges by 9 million, or 33 percent.
We need to again consider Leopold's point. In recent years the Interior Department has found that, given an opportunity, Americans are more than ready to become the citizen-conservationists and volunteers that he envisioned. Private landowners, for example, have voluntarily restored 640,000 acres of wetlands, 1 million acres of upland habitat and 4,700 miles of streams under the Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program. This conservation initiative provides funding and technical help to landowners. President Bush has proposed a 24 percent budget increase in the program, which will allow at least 2,500 more landowners on the program's waiting list to participate.
The president is proposing to provide $900 million under the Land and Water Conservation Fund to promote conservation partnerships with states, tribes, local communities and private citizens. In doing so, we hope to shift the focus away from simply acquiring land toward empowering citizen-conservationists.
I recently saw the power of this kind of partnership during a visit to the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area near Tucson. Federal funds have helped local citizens, ranchers, environmentalists and even local schoolchildren join forces to restore marshes, creeks, grassland and other wildlife habitat on 80,000 acres of state and federal land while allowing grazing and recreational use to continue.
"This is the most cost-effective, long-lasting type of conservation," said Roseann Hanson of the Sonoran Institute, a local environmental group. "You end up with stewards who take care of places where they live."
Exactly what Aldo Leopold wanted.

The writer is secretary of the interior.