Baraboo: Five-hundred pine trees planted by Aldo Leopold and his family in the 1930's are being cut down, but don't worry, every part of the tree will be put to good use.

Steve Swenson is an ecologist with the Aldo Leopold Foundation. He says this logging is the same kind of land stewardship Leopold wrote about in A Sand County Almanac. "The ones we're taking out are the ones you might call the sub–dominant trees or the ones that are under that upper most canopy."

Swenson says this 10 acre forest needs to be thinned to provide the healthier trees more room to grow. "We felt that the trees around it would benefit if this one was removed."

But the exciting thing for Swenson is how the fallen trees will be used. "We'll make that into a timber, like an 8X8 or a 4x10 or something, but it's going to hold up the building down there."

The building is the Leopold Legacy Center, which will go just down the road from Leopold's old farmhouse. Every part of the log will go into the center. "We're going to make paneling out of that one."

Even the smaller pulp wood will be taken to the Forest Products Lab in Madison and made into paper. "That paper is going to be made into Sand County Almanacs, which is Leopold's seminal work."

Chris Risbrudt is Director of the Forest Products Lab. He says they're happy to be involved. "This is a special project because of the special role that Leopold had at the Forest Products Laboratory and in setting the conservation philosophy for the agency of the United States Forest Service."

The project has taken on a symbolic meaning for Swenson. "Taking these pines down and finding a way to make them as timeless as Leopold's message about a land ethic and using them to literally put a roof over the land ethic."

The Leopold Legacy Center will cost $4 million. Swenson says they hope to break ground next year.