Nature’s Second Chance, by Steven I. Apfelbaum

Back in the '70s when Steven Apfelbaum told his mom he was
studying for a degree in ecology, his mother didn't know what to think. Unable
to accept or perhaps even understand this new specialty, she told friends that
"Little Stevie was going to be a veterinarian." She wasn't the only one
wondering. Ecology was a vague, warm-n-fuzzy abstract that smacked of good but
impractical intentions with some real science-botany, geology and
chemistry-bundled into a degree that would be difficult to market.

But Apfelbaum had always loved being outside, from college
weekends spent at Devil's Lake State Park in Wisconsin to canoeing Minnesota's Boundary
Waters. By the time this book begins, he has graduated from the University of
Illinois and is founder of his own company, Applied Ecological Services, and on
his way to becoming an international leader in ecological system restoration,
conservation development and the restoration of hydrology.

Yet Nature's Second Chance is not the story of that success, although Apfelbaum the ecologist
shares some of what he's learned throughout the book, making it an educational
as well as an entertaining read. This book is about how all of that passion for
the out of doors plus his skill and vision became personal. Apfelbaum wanted
not just to work on others' land and projects but to live and work on his own
land. In 1982, he stumbled upon 2.7 acres of farm and farm buildings in
southwestern Wisconsin and decided to purchase the land.