
E.
M. Dahlberg
1882-1971
Inducted 2000
Edwin Monroe (E.M.) Dahlberg
was an educator, author and conservationist,
and his life activities in those areas
were intertwined. As an educator and school
administrator at Ladysmith High School
in northwest Wisconsin, he made conservation
a mainstay in the school curriculum.
He was also a nurseryman
and arborist and is credited with planting
trees along Rusk County and Ladysmith roads.
He also encouraged development of the Ladysmith
High School Forest, one of the first of
its kind in Wisconsin. As an author, he
developed a conservation textbook, Conservation
of Renewable Resources. The book
had four printings and was widely used
in high schools across the Lake States
region.
In 1926, he was appointed to the then
newly constituted Wisconsin Conservation
Commission. He was the commission's first
secretary and part of a group of leaders
who took bold steps to solidify Wisconsin's
conservation laws and practices. Dahlberg
served from 1927-33. Some of the commission's
accomplishments in those years include
creation of the basic Conservation Act,
the Forest Crop Law, forest protection
areas, a Water Pollution Control Committee,
resident rod and reel fishing licenses,
school forests and season regulations for
upland game birds.
The early commissioners also saw to it
that state wardens got appropriate uniforms.
They secured general fund appropriations
for forest protection, introduced fish
and game county hearings and pushed for
rural zoning. All that and more happened
in the years Dahlberg served.
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