Evironmentalist Summaries
Nature Essays
Part I
Aldo Leopold
1. Aldo Leopold felt the need for a “Land Ethic” because people did not understand their relationship to the land and the importance of the interconnections in the ecosystems. He felt that society did not protect anything that did not have an economic value, with few exceptions. It was therefore important that people understand the need to preserve the environment for other reasons, such as aesthetic value and simply its right to exist. This is very much an ecocentric view. Leopold firmly believed that all aspects of the environment have a right to exist and that they are all critical in the functioning of nature. He explains how conservationism will not change the perspective of the average American on page 201 of A Sand County Almanac, “We set out a generation ago to convince the American land owner to control fire, to grow forests, to manage wildlife. He did not respond very well. We have virtually no forestry, and mighty little range management, game management, wildflower management, pollution control, or erosion control being practiced voluntarily by private land owners.” Leopold was certain that, as history has shown, once the public is educated and has to come to appreciate the environment around them, then they will assign value to the ecosystem. He explains this phenomenon on page 247 of A Sand County Almanac, “When one of these non-economic categories is threatened, and if we happen to love it, we invent subterfuges to give it economic importance.” This is presented with the hope that eventually, all of nature will be appreciated and protected from the same ecocentric view that Leopold had.
2. When Leopold speaks of “thinking like a mountain” he is referring to imaging what the mountain knows and thinks about the ecosystem it is part of, and its perspective on the unique roles of all of the wildlife in the ecosystem. On page fourteen of A Sand County Almanac he describes the...
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