Abstract
Leopold composed his ringing descriptions of the great marsh, with its “sense of time…thick and heavy” and its noble cranes, “symbol of our untamable past,” in the form of a “Marshland Elegy. “ It was a sad song of past, present, and future loss. After tracking the effects of intensifying, machine-driven human land uses on the marsh, from first settlement to the late 1930s, Leopold offered a bleak prediction:
Have not invention, energy, and discipline consolidated the gains of mankind securely against all danger, excepting our own selfishness and capacity for mutual destruction in time of war and peace?
Paul B. Sears, Deserts on the March
Culture is a state of awareness of the land’s collective functioning. A culture premised on the destructive dominance of a single species can have but short duration.
Aldo Leopold, “Land-Use and Democracy”
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Notes
- 1.
AL, “Marshland Elegy,” American Forests 43, no. 10 (1937): 472–474, and later in SCA, pp. 95–100; quote from p. 101. For a discussion of this essay, see C. Meine, “Giving Voice to Concern,” in Correction Lines: Essays on Land, Leopold, and Conservation (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2004), pp. 132–147. Thanks to conservation, cranes up 5 %/yr since 1966.
- 2.
AL, “Marshland Elegy,” SCA.
- 3.
The essays ultimately formed parts of A Sand County Almanac.
- 4.
Albert Hochbaum, letter to AL, 11March 1944, LP 10-2, 3.
- 5.
AL, SCA, p. viii.
- 6.
C. D. Meine, Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), p. 467.
- 7.
AL, “Ecology and Politics,” RMG, pp. 281–286; See, too, Chapter 6.
- 8.
AL, round-robin letter titled “Mobility of Wildlifers, 2nd Progress Report,” 1 September 1943, LP 10-1, 3. See also AL, letter to William Vogt, 12August 1942, LP 10-1, 3: “I had planned towritemy ‘Conservation Ecology’ during the coming year,” and AL, letter to William Vogt, 8 July 1943, LP 10-1, 3: Vogt had been urging Leopold to visit him in South America. Leopold responded, “I am somewhat in doubt about putting off my book for two years, ”Doug Wade to the Gang letter, 5May 1944: I still lay into the professor about his ecology book …” LP 10-1, 3.
- 9.
See also Meine, Aldo Leopold, p. 486. Two years later Leopold began experiencing symptoms of what would be diagnosed as tic douloureux, which required strong pain medication and ultimately brain surgery at the Mayo Clinic’s St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, in September 1947.
- 10.
Meine, Aldo Leopold, pp. 451–452.
- 11.
For an extensive discussion of Leopold’s understanding of the deer overpopulation issue, see S. Flader, Thinking Like a Mountain: Aldo Leopold and the Evolution of an Ecological Attitude toward Deer, Wolves, and Forests (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974).
- 12.
For a discussion of the Crime of ’43 and Leopold’s work as a Wisconsin conservation commissioner, highlighting Leopold’s concern over the public interest in deer management, see Flader, Thinking Like a Mountain, pp. 193– 203; see also Meine, Aldo Leopold, pp. 452–455.
- 13.
Ibid., p. 467;AL, letter to Starker Leopold and Betty Leopold, 25 December 1944, LP 10-1, 2.
- 14.
AL, round-robin letter to “The Gang,” 1 September 1943.
- 15.
Douglas Wade, round-robin letter to “The Gang,” 5May 1944, LP 10-1, 3.
- 16.
AL, Game Management (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933), fig. 2, p. 25. See also Chapter 4, p. 132.
- 17.
Douglas Wade, round-robin letter to “The Gang,” 5May 1944.
- 18.
AL, “The Conservation Ethic,” RMG, p. 188.
- 19.
AL, “A Criticism of the Booster Spirit,” RMG, p. 104.
- 20.
AL, “The Conservation Ethic,” RMG, p. 189; AL, “The Ecological Conscience,” RMG, pp. 338–346. See also AL, “Review of Farrington, The Ducks Came Back,” RMG, p. 328.
- 21.
AL, “The Conservation Ethic,” RMG, p. 190.
- 22.
The German system of game administration, according to Leopold, arose in part as “a manifestation of that intense love of the soil which is found throughout Germany.”What impressed Leopold more than anything else as he observed German forests and game in 1935 was a “surging interest in nature.” Germans wanted to spend time outdoors—walking, hiking, hunting, and farming—they seemed to want “to get their feet in the soil.” See “Every Farmin Wisconsin to Be a Game Preserve: Professor Leopold Finds German Methods Practical Here,” Milwaukee Journal, 5 January 1936, LP 10-3, 10. In 1940 Leopold summarized a similar hope for Americans: “Our profession [of wild life management] began with the job of producing something to shoot. However important this may seem to us, it is not very important to the emancipated moderns who no longer feel soil between their toes.” See AL, “The State of the Profession,” Journal of Wildlife Management 4, no. 3 (July 1940): 343–346, also in RMG, p. 280; AL, “On a Monument to the Pigeon,” SCA, pp. 108–112.
- 23.
Leopold’s ecological and ethical ideas have influenced several academic fields in the humanities, including ethics, law, history, and philosophy. For example, J. Baird Callicott has worked out and promoted a formal moral theory for land use based on some of Leopold’s ideas. He argues that it is the holism of Leopold’s ethic that sets it apart from dominant strands of ethical philosophy—its focus on the community as such rather than the particular living parts of it. Callicott argues that Leopold’s worldview evolved to become one that was ecocentric, versus anthropocentric, while still acknowledging that Leopold never left off advocating for human-nature symbiosis. He also emphasizes a paradigm shift in ecology away from a balance-of nature to a flux-of-nature view, arguing that Leopold’s land ethic is adaptable to the new paradigm. See J. B. Callicott, “Whither Conservation Ethics?” Conservation Biology 4 (1990): 15–20. See also his “Elements of an Environmental Ethic: Moral Considerability and the Biotic Community,” Environmental Ethics 1 (1979): 71–81; “Hume’s Is/Ought Dichotomy and the Relation of Ecology to Leopold’s Land Ethic,” Environmental Ethics 4, no. 2 (1982): 163–174; “The Conceptual Foundations of the Land Ethic,” in Companion to “A Sand County Almanac”: Interpretive and Critical Essays (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), pp. 186–217; In Defense of the Land Ethic (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989); Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999); and “From the Balance of Nature to the Flux of Nature: The Land Ethic in a Time of Change,” in Aldo Leopold and the Ecological Conscience, edited by R. L. Knight and S. Reidel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 90–105.
Also drawing heavily from Leopold’s work, Bryan Norton, in building his ethical philosophy for land use, on the other hand, argues that Leopold’s changing views on management arose not from a conversion from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism but from increasing knowledge and experience that better informed the values he already held: “Leopold believed throughout his career that long-sighted anthropocentrism provides an adequate basis for conservation practices.”Norton also emphasizes that Leopold took into account both ecological change and ecological stability and constancy by thinking holistically in terms of different spatial and temporal scales. See also Norton’s “The Constancy of Leopold’s Land Ethic,” Conservation Biology 2, no. 1 (1988): 93–102; “Context and Hierarchy in Aldo Leopold’s Theory of Environmental Management,” Ecological Economics 2 (1990): 119–127; Toward Unity among Environmentalists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Searching for Sustainability: Interdisciplinary Essays in the Philosophy of Conservation Biology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); “Change, Constancy, and Creativity: The New Ecology and Some Old Problems,” Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum 7, no. 49 (1996): 49–70; and Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Management (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
For further comments on Leopold’s ethical philosophy, see others including M. P. Nelson, “A Defense of Environmental Ethics: A Reply to Janna Thompson,” Environmental Ethics 15, no. 3 (1993): 147–160; M. P. Nelson, “Aldo Leopold, Environmental Ethics, and the Land Ethic,” Wildlife Society Bulletin (Winter 1998): 741–744; H. Ralston III, Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988); H. Ralston III, Conserving Natural Value (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); and K. J. Warren, “Leopold’s Land Ethic, Ecofeminist Philosophy, and Environmental Ethics,” in Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic: A Legacy for Public Land Managers, proceedings of conference, 14–15 May 1999, National Conservation Training Center, Shepherdstown, WV.
In law and conservation thinking, see the work of Eric Freyfogle, e.g., “The Land Ethic and Pilgrim Leopold,” University of Colorado Law Review 61 (1990): 217–256, and Bounded People, Boundless Lands: Envisioning a New Land Ethic (Washington, DC: Island Press, Shearwater Books, 1998).
In history, see, e.g., D. Worster, “Restoring Natural Order,” in The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 171–183; D. Worster, “Transformations of the Earth: Toward an Agroecological Perspective in History,” Journal of American History 76, no. 4 (1990): 1087–1106; W. Cronon, “Modes of Prophecy and Production: Placing Nature in History,” Journal of American History 76, no. 4 (1990): 1122–1131; and D. Worster, “Seeing beyond Culture,” Journal of American History 76, no. 4 (1990): 1142–1147.
- 24.
AL, “A Criticismof the Booster Spirit,” RMG, p. 105.
- 25.
AL, “The Conservation Ethic,” RMG, p. 189.
- 26.
The last recorded observation of a wild passenger pigeon was in Ohio in 1900; the last captive specimen died in 1914.
- 27.
AL, “On a Monument to the Pigeon,” SCA, pp. 108–112. In 1940 Vannevar Bush was FDR’s chief advisor on wartime military research, promoting the idea that technical innovation was the key to national security. He took control of America’s secret research on the atomic bomb and pushed for greater use of scientists and engineers in military planning. See G. P. Zachary, “Vannevar Bush Backs the Bomb,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist 48, no. 10 (1942): 24–31.
- 28.
AL, “Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest,” RMG, p. 97.
- 29.
AL, “The Conservation Ethic,” RMG, p. 188.
- 30.
AL, “Suggestions for American Wildlife Conference,” attachment to a letter from AL to Seth Gordon dated 27October 1935, p. 2, LP 10-6, 16.
- 31.
AL, “Wilderness,” SCA, p. 188; AL, “Wildlife in American Culture,” SCA, pp. 177–187.
- 32.
AL, “A Criticism of the Booster Spirit,” RMG, p. 104.
- 33.
Leopold’s progenitors, the Leopolds, Runges, and Starkers, emigrated to America from Germany in the 1830s and 1840s. His mother, Clara Starker Leopold, privately educated in German culture, gardening, and the fine arts (she was especially fond of grand opera), exposed her children to the homemaking skills, literature, and music of their European heritage. German was the household language of Aldo’s family until he was enrolled at age five in Prospect Hill School in Burlington. His reading list included German literature, philosophy, and poetry, perhaps including some version of the Nibelungenlied. See Meine, Aldo Leopold, pp. 3–16.
- 34.
R. Lichtenstein, trans., The Nibelungenlied (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991).
- 35.
AL, personal journal, p. 51, LP 10-7, 1 (15).
- 36.
AL, “The Conservation Ethic,” RMG, p. 192.
- 37.
Leopold’s 1933 “Conservation Ethic” was reprinted in September 1946 in the Journal of Heredity (37, no. 9:275–279) under the title “Racial Wisdom and Conservation.” It is uncertain whether Leopold gave permission for the publication; he held a copy in his scrapbook of reprints. The introduction to the 1946 publication, written anonymously by someone other than Leopold, urged readers to consider what it might take to stimulate a “general constructive interest in eugenics and the conservation of our race,” noting that Leopold’s “‘Conservation Ethic’ is envisioned as an emerging stage in the evolution of ethical concepts.”
Also, in 1947 Leopold’s close friend William Vogt urged him to read a book on semantics by Alfred Korzybski, founder of the Institute of General Semantics. The institute was dedicated to fostering human potential and building a new, more exacting science of man, promoting research and education. Vogt bought for Leopold a subscription to ETC, the institute’s periodical, and Leopold stated that he had “got a great deal out of” Korzybski’s book and would “certainly examine [the periodical]with care and with interest”; AL, letter to William Vogt, 8 January 1947, LP 10-1, 3; AL, letter to William Vogt, 8 February 1946, LP 10-1, 3.
- 38.
AL, “The Conservation Ethic,” RMG, p. 192; see J. Ortega y Gasset, ed., The Revolt of the Masses (New York: W.W. Norton, 1957).
- 39.
Ibid., pp. 61–74.
- 40.
Ibid., pp. 14–15.
- 41.
AL, “The Conservation Ethic,” RMG, p. 182.
- 42.
Ibid., p. 185.
- 43.
AL, “Conservation Education: A Revolution in Philosophy,” unpublished fragment, LP 10-6, 17.
- 44.
AL, “A Modus Vivendi for Conservationists,” unfinished manuscript, n.d. (ca. 1941?), p. 1, LP 10-6, 16.
- 45.
Ibid.
- 46.
Ibid., p. 2.
- 47.
See AL, “Motives for Conservation,” class lecture for Wildlife Ecology 118, ca. 1940s, LP 10-6, 14.
- 48.
Ibid.
- 49.
AL, “Armament for Conservation,” 23 November 1943, p. 1, LP 10-6, 16.
- 50.
AL, “The Community Concept,” SCA, p. 204.
- 51.
Great Plains Committee, The Future of the Great Plains, 75th Cong., 1st sess., Document No. 144 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 10 February 1937).
- 52.
Committee participants included engineer Morris Cooke, head of the Rural Electrification Administration; economist and land planner Lewis C. Gray; collectivist brain truster Rexford Tugwell; and social scientist Hugh H. Bennett.
- 53.
Great Plains Committee, Future of the Great Plains, p. 1.
- 54.
D. Worster, The Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 82.
- 55.
Ibid., p. 94.
- 56.
Great Plains Committee, Future of the Great Plains, pp. 64–65.
- 57.
Ibid., p. 6. Also see Worster, Dust Bowl, p. 195.
- 58.
Quoted in Great Plains Committee, Future of the Great Plains, p. 63.
- 59.
Ibid., pp. 63–64.
- 60.
Ibid., p. 11.
- 61.
Ibid. See also Worster, Dust Bowl, p. 195.
- 62.
Worster, Dust Bowl, pp. 195–196.
- 63.
AL, “Ecology as an Ethical System,” (unfinished), ca. 1940s, LP 10-6, 17.
- 64.
Vogt’s book stirred up both controversy and concern nationally with its thesis that a rising population of machine-equipped humans was well on its way to pushing past the earth’s resource limits. (See “Eat Hearty,” Time, 8 November 1948—a controversial commentary on Vogt’s book and Our Plundered Planet by Fairfield Osborn.) Vogt’s publisher asked Leopold for comment on the book, which Leopold gladly provided, writing: “I have, of course, not seen Bill’s book, but I have followed his thoughts with intense interest. … I notice the trend of Bill’s thinking is distinctly visible in the thinking of many other ecological people who are deeply concerned with the land… . In other words, Bill has beaten them to it, and that is the makings of a book because the appetite for it will exist before hand. I am willing to bet it will have a large sale.” AL, letter to Eric Swenson, 9March 1948, LP 10-1, 3.
- 65.
AL, letter to William Vogt, 25 January 1946, LP 10-1, 3. See W. Vogt, Road to Survival (New York: William Sloan Associates, 1948).
- 66.
AL, “The Ecological Conscience,” RMG, p. 338. For a thorough and modern treatment of problems within the conservation movement, also drawing on many of Leopold’s ideas, see E.T. Freyfogle, Why Conservation Is Failing and How It Can Regain Ground (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).
- 67.
For a similar assessment see Worster, Dust Bowl, p. 6.
- 68.
AL, “The Ecological Conscience,” RMG, pp. 338–346; AL, SCA, pp. 207– 210.
- 69.
Leopold included “aerial space” along with soils, waters, plants, and animals in his list of what “land” includes in “Ecology as an Ethical System,” p. 1.
- 70.
AL, “The Ecological Conscience,” RMG, p. 342.
- 71.
AL, “Conservation: In Whole or in Part?” RMG, p. 315.
- 72.
AL, “The Ecological Conscience,” RMG, p. 343.
- 73.
AL, “Motives for Conservation,” p. 2, LP 10-6, 14.
- 74.
AL, SCA, p. 214.
- 75.
AL, “Motives for Conservation,” p. 2.
- 76.
AL, “The Ecological Conscience,” RMG, pp. 340–341.
- 77.
AL, “The Farm Wildlife Program: A Self-Scrutiny,” ca. 1937, p. 7, LP 10-6, 14.
- 78.
AL, “Conservation and Politics,” ca. 1941, p. 3, LP 10-6, 14.
- 79.
AL, “Motives for Conservation,” p. 2.
- 80.
AL, “Conservation Blueprints,” American Forests 43, no. 12 (December 1937): 596.
- 81.
AL, “The Ecological Conscience,” RMG, p. 338.
- 82.
AL, “Farm Wildlife Program,” pp. 7–8.
- 83.
Ibid.
- 84.
AL, “The Farmer as a Conservationist,” FHL, p. 168. Leopold in 1938 also suggested a detailed land management policy to the Huron Mountain Club for land use that promoted together wilderness, scientific, wildlife, and timber values on their lands. Not only could this be done, he argued, but it was also the club members’ obligation as private landowners to do so in the public interest. Wilderness recreational and timber values might belong to the private club, but wildlife values were shared with neighbors because animals ranged across ownership boundaries. The club also had an obligation, Leopold believed, to preserve the public scientific values of one of the last remaining large remnants of old-growth maple-hemlock forest, which was under its care as landowners. AL, “Report on Huron Mountain Club” (1938), printed by Huron Mountain Club, Michigan; reprinted in Report of Huron Mountain Wildlife Foundation, 1955–1966 (n.p., 1967), pp. 40–57. See also Flader, Thinking Like a Mountain, pp. 156–163, and Meine, Aldo Leopold, pp. 385–386.
- 85.
AL, “The Farmer as a Conservationist,” FHL, p. 167.
- 86.
Ibid.
- 87.
AL, “The Conservation Ethic,” RMG, p. 192.
- 88.
AL, “Motives for Conservation,” p. 1; AL, “Farm Wildlife Program,” p. 7;
AL, “The Farmer as a Conservationist,” FHL, p. 168.
- 89.
AL, “Motives for Conservation,” p. 1.
- 90.
Ibid.
- 91.
AL, “Farm Wildlife Program,” p. 7.
- 92.
AL, “The Farmer as a Conservationist,” FHL, p. 172.
- 93.
AL, “Farm Wildlife Program,” p. 8.
- 94.
AL, “The Conservation Ethic,” RMG, p. 191.
- 95.
AL, SCA, pp. 210–211; AL, “The Farmer as a Conservationist,” FHL, pp. 172–175.
- 96.
AL, “The Farmer as a Conservationist,” FHL, p. 174.
- 97.
AL, “Motives for Conservation,” p. 3.
- 98.
AL, SCA, p. 202.
- 99.
AL, “The Ecological Conscience,” RMG, p. 346.
- 100.
AL, “Conservation Blueprints,” p. 596. See also AL, “Armament for Conservation,” p. 1; AL, SCA, p. 225.
- 101.
AL, SCA, p. 225. See also AL, “Conservation Blueprints,” pp. 596, 608; AL, “Armament for Conservation,” p. 1.
- 102.
AL, “The Ecological Conscience,” RMG, p. 345.
- 103.
See AL, “The Conservation Ethic,” RMG, p. 181; AL, “The Ecological Conscience,” RMG, p. 345; AL, SCA, pp. 201–202, 224.
- 104.
AL, “The Ecological Conscience,” RMG, p. 345.
- 105.
AL, “Farm Wildlife Program,” p. 1.
- 106.
Fragment, ca. 1940s, LP 10-6, 16.
- 107.
AL, letter to Morris L. Cooke, 17 March 1948, 10-1, 1. The letter concerned a recent disagreement between Leopold and Cooke about a “Conservation Credo” that Morris was circulating for signatures of support. Leopold had not signed the document and criticized it for supporting what he believed were prospects in opposition to ecological conservation—“comprehensive development of river basins for flood control” and FDR’s brand of “democratically managed river and power control.” See also AL, letter to William Vogt, 24 February 1948, LP 10-1, 3.
- 108.
See “Ecology and Economics in Land Use,” unfinished, unpublished, ca. 1940s, LP 10-6, 17.Leopoldwasworking out his conservation philosophy in this manuscript. “Conservationists of ecological viewpoint,” he wrote, seemed to have “tacitly agreed upon a set of premises from which they measure the phenomena of land-use.” No one person was entitled to write a conservation movement “constitution,” he acknowledged, but he believed it was necessary for someone to make a start. He ventured five progressive premises: First, “Soil built the flora and fauna and was in turn rebuilt by them. Conservation must consider the biota as a whole, not as separate parts.” Second, “Man must assume that the biota has a value in and of itself, separate from its value as human habitat. The only alternative is to assume it was all built for him, an arrogance hardly compatible with the theory of evolution.” Third, “Respect for this value probably precludes an ethical society from exterminating its constituent parts. It certainly precludes their needless extermination. Conservation is respect for biotic values.” Fourth, “Self interest, on the other hand, requires any society to alter and manage the biota on the areas needed for habitation. The motivation for such alterations and management is referable to economics; the technique to agriculture; but the obligation to restrain these alterations and to respect biotic values underlies both, and is referable to ethics. The basic motivation for conservation is therefore not economic, but ethical.” Finally, “Science facilitates alteration of the biota, but this is not its sole function. It also explains the biotic mechanism, and thus should enhance both respect for and appreciation of that mechanism. In the elaboration of machines there are indications that scientific effort may be subject to a law of diminishing returns, but in the illumination of the universe, returns are still proportional to achievement.”
- 109.
AL, “Motives for Conservation,” pp. 4–5; AL, SCA, p. 202.
- 110.
AL, Game Management, pp. 4–5.
- 111.
Ibid., pp. xxxi, 21, 391–392.Gamemanagement and to some degree ecology were, in the first place, responses to needs associated with rising human population density and uses of increasingly powerful technology.
- 112.
AL, “Motives for Conservation,” pp. 3–6; AL, SCA, pp. 202–203.
- 113.
AL, letter to Douglas Wade, 23October 1944, LP 10-8, 1.
- 114.
AL, “State of the Profession,” RMG, p. 280. AL, letter to Morris Cooke, 30 September 1940, 10-2, 4. Leopold wrote to his friend Morris Cooke in 1940 commenting on a manuscript of Cooke’s titled “Total Conservation”: “I take issue with you on one point. You assume, by implication at least, that the ‘total job’ [of conservation] can be done without rebuilding Homo sapiens, or, to put it conversely, by government initiative alone. I do not believe it can… . The steps [taken by the Soil Conservation Service) are toward this end, but they will not reach it until we have a new kind of farmer, banker, voter, consumer, etc.”
- 115.
AL, “The Ecological Conscience,” RMG, p. 338.
- 116.
Ibid., pp. 345–346.
Reference
Leopold, A. Game Management. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933.
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Warren, J.L. (2016). The Germ and the Juggernaut. In: Aldo Leopold’s Odyssey, Tenth Anniversary Edition. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-754-4_9
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