Charlie married childhood friend Nina Leopold in 1971. Charlie's wife Maynard Riggs Bradley had died a few years before.
When he retired from Montana State University Charlie and Nina returned to Wisconsin to work to promote scientific exploration, conservation, and wetland and prairie restoration on what was to become the Leopold Memorial Reserve in Baraboo.
The Leopold Reserve is the site of the Shack, an old chicken coop which became bunkhouse for the Aldo Leopold family in the 1930's and 40's. It is the place where A Sand County Almanac was written by Leopold, Nina's father. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, the Shack is "the heart of the Leopold Foundation’s programs."
In 1976 Charlie and Nina began building a log home made from trees thinned from a woods the Leopold family had planted in the 1930s. They designed the building with solar panels, a rock storage for solar heat and a composting toilet.
Called the Bradley Study Center, they saw the building as a place for learning.
The Bradley Study Center.
Charlie stacking firewood.
Nina and Charlie in the garden.
Borrowing from A Sand County Almanac they focused on education and set up a fund for college students to come and conduct research on the Reserve, with Charles and Nina guiding them into scientific exploration. As Nina put it, "We were trying to help our students see the land and understand what they were seeing." Studies began with such basic topics as nesting birds, vegetation, soils, geology, hydrology, and land use history.
Phenological events were tabulated. They developed a series of Shack seminars. People were invited to talk about certain aspects of ecology or the influence of Aldo Leopold. The Leopold "fellows," as the students were known, presented their data. Charlie and Nina "generated environmental values in their students and helped them to become ecologically literate leaders of our democracy."
Charlie began writing again and continued to do so into his 80s. One of his first articles recalled observations during WWII in the Aleutians, of ravens playing in the snow.
For history and memoirs he drew upon experiences going back to his childhood. "My Life as a Reindeer" tells of his father creating an elaborate Christmas ritual that each son became initiated into, first as the subject, then later as a co-conspirator.
He also recalled both in words and in photo essays his relationship and admiration for Aldo Leopold. Several articles were of contemporary observations and research at the Leopold Reserve.
Articles published by Charlie Bradley, 1976-1987:
- 1978: Play behavior in Aleutian ravens, The Passenger Pigeon, Winter 1978, v. 40 no. 4, p. 493-495.
- 1979: A short story of a man hunt, Wisconsin Academy Review, v. 26, no. 1, December 1979, p. 7-9
- 1979: Waxing nostalgic, Nordic Skiing, p. 34- 37.
- 1980: Snow crystallography and strength: An index of the effectiveness of roof insulation, Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, v. 68, p. 44-49.
- 1981: Otter Odyssey, Wisconsin Natural Resources, January-February 1981, v. 5, no. 1, p. 25-27.
- 1982: Probing the mystery avalanches, Cross Country Skier, vol. 1, no. 5, p.40-45.
- 1982: Trying to live with energy conservation, Wisconsin Trails, November/December 1982, p. 36-42.
- 1983: My life as a reindeer, Wisconsin Trails, November/December 1983, p.40-44.
- 1984: The beavers next door, Wisconsin Trails, November/December 1 984, p. 34-39,55.
- 1987: Doctor of the Land: A matter of degree, Wisconsin Academy Review, v. 34, no. 1, December, p.7-23.
In the late 1980s, when he found that nothing had ever been published about the WWII mountain troops in the Aleutians, he began to write extensively of that and produced Aleutian Echoes, his last publication. The University of Alaska Press published the book in 1994. See Building a Book for details about how Aleutian Echos came to be written and published.
On April 12, 1980 Charles and Nina participated in a panel on lifestyles for the symposium, The Church and the Environmental Movement, at Northland College, Ashland, WI. Charlie's responses to the questions they sent him prior to the symposium spell out his relationship to the land.
What does the Lord require of thee (environmentally)?
I will have to beg off on this question. ... I never was a strong church-goer. In part because I had problems with credos, I never joined a church.... I found very little either in the old or new Testaments or in the hundreds of sermons I have listened to that gave me even the wildest clue of what the Lord expects of me in an environmental sense. Back in the ‘40s when I first began to have gut-worries about what is now called "the environmental crisis," if someone had come at me with the words of Charles Pfeifer printed in the special newsletter for this meeting, I might have taken a more serious look at the church.... I believe we must be far more conservation-minded than we have ever dreamed of. I believe we need to curb with a strong hand the strange drive we seem to have to occupy and alter all parts of the world.
What is the source of your conviction?
A lifetime spent trying to be a reasonably good geologist. Trying to understand the resource base of this nation, of the world, of life. Particular books: Road to Survival by William Vogt; Plundered Planet by Fairfield Osborn; A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. These were all books I read in the ‘40s and got me thinking about the problems. Particular people: My father and Aldo Leopold influenced my thinking most powerfully.
What are the main features of that life style?
Frugality. Greater dependence on self for the production of necessities. Search for a better understanding of the crisis as a first step toward solutions - not stop-gap solutions but those based on long-range renewability of the resource base and which are socially and politically possible. To pass on to others whatever we learn that might prove useful, and hope others will do the same for us.
Is it not true that traditional religious views are irrelevant or even harmful in the contemporary crisis?
To some extent yes.... One can find passages in the Bible which appear to drive us in the wrong direction. "Be fruitful and multiply." ... Worse than that are some individual interpretations of the scriptures by misguided men of the cloth. I used to cringe during the Christmas and Easter meetings of the particular service club I belonged to. Our minister member repeatedly told us that the reason Americans had such opulence and material wealth was because we were such good Christians. As a geologist I knew we had such material wealth because we had cheap energy, abundant natural resources, and a ruthless, reckless materialistic drive, which invites the name "greed."
Can we combine traditional religious views and those of modern science to create a personal environmental ethic as a basis and guide for our individual life style?
I see no reason why it can't be done. We have to change the life style we have now because it simply cannot be sustained on this planet. We will change either by default or by decision....I am certain that the problem we are facing will shortly become so demanding of our attention that if formal religion or formal science (or formal politics or formal technology) elect not to lend a hand, or, worse if they elect to try to perpetuate our current life style, they will either become irrelevant or simply additional large stumbling blocks on the rocky trail toward survival of species Homo. There are those - quite a few of them - who say in all frankness, "Species don't last forever so we might as well have a good party and go." Would they really feel that way when the green light of "Go!" shows for them, and in its light they can see that the first steps are hunger, starvation and disease?
In 1988, Charlie and Nina were jointly recognized for their work with an honorary doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"...As co-Directors of Research of the Leopold Reserve...the Bradleys have dedicated themselves to the reclamation and preservation of natural ecosystems.
The work at the Leopold Reserve was started by Nina Bradley's father, Aldo Leopold, over fifty years ago, and that work has intensified in the dozen years since the Bradleys became Directors of Research. Their observations and experiments have yielded fecundity in land that was once depleted and regeneration in forms of animal life that had all but disappeared. In fashioning techniques of ecological rejuvenation that are significant to the habitability of our planet, these two alumni are in the vanguard of a cause that has long claimed the allegiance of this State and of its University.
The Bradleys have been generous in working with environmental scientists at their alma mater. A program of fellowships that they established at the Leopold Reserve has enabled advanced students and faculty from our University to conduct field studies and to cooperate in the exploration of environmental issues. Their work has made the Leopold Reserve a creative center for the study of natural resources in a true realization of the Wisconsin Idea.
CHARLES CRANE and NINA LEOPOLD BRADLEY: For the work that you do to preserve the integrity of our environment, for the ideal that you represent in respecting the land and the life that it sustains, and for the examples that you set as devoted custodians of nature, the University of Wisconsin-Madison confers on each of you its honorary degree, Doctor of Environmental Science."
In 1992, Charlie and Nina were given the Environmental Award from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
In 2000, Charlie was honored as a Distinguished Alumnus by the Department of Geology and Geophysics, UW-Madison.
The scientist and artist Dr. Charles Crane Bradley died in May 2002, in Baraboo, Wisconsin, at the age of 91. He is survived by his wife Nina, his son Charles, Jr. and his daughter Dorothy.
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This page was created 07-15-06 by M.D. and most recently modified 08-04-06. For comments or corrections please email.