A Sand County Almanac Summary

Although Leopold’s love of great expanses of wilderness is readily apparent, his book does not cry out in defense of particular tracts of land about to go under the axe or plow, but rather deals with the minutiae, the details, of often unnoticed plants and animals, all the little things that, in our ignorance, we have left out of our managed acreages but which must be present to add up to balanced ecosystems and a sense of quality and wholeness in the landscape.

The affect of environmental issues occur everyday and in particular deforestation is becoming a highly ranked subject. From animals to the human race, the alacrity of trees that are cut down affects every individual in a variety of ways. Not only do people need to help the planet but they need to help themselves and further generations to come, such as children and grandchildren because these natural resources that are being taken away from society are as well shaping the future. For comprehensible reasons, forests use to make up the world, until man made creatures started to destroy and destruct the most important supply to human kind which are trees. Trees are crucial to every living entity for the reason of providing oxygen to all.

If everyone thought this way our wildlife, animals, nature, and environment would be in better the way you would want them to be treated. This saying is simply stating to people love to have nice things and when we get them we like to keep it that way. So in relation to Leopold we have a nice beautiful environment in which we should keep it that way. Think of our environment as a condition than what it is now. Aldo Leopold was right when he said “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and the beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”(Sand CountyAlmanac, pg. 224-225). It is important for people to reach and follow the values of Leopold explaining that beauty is not just scenery, stability does not mean unchanging for change is essential to nature and the natural world and integrity is wholeness, having all the parts. These three simple values will change our perspective of the

When reading the chapters about Fall, the one that struck a chord was the chapter about October. I chose this section because it really seemed to paint a picture that reminded me of what the fall is like. In “Smoky Gold”, the writer discusses hunting for birds. This is defiantly something that I associate with the month of October. In “Too Early,” the author discusses what a person who chooses to go out into the wild before dawn can witness. In “Red Lanterns,” the author discusses a pheasant hunt. All of these readings give a feeling of fall. They reflect the month for which they were entitled and they help to paint a picture of what I believe fall is. That is why I chose to write about this specific section of A Sand County Almanac.

* The year 1865 is the birth year of all things natural, wild, and free. Leopold gives it this name because in that year, John Muir offered to buy from his brother, who then owned a farm 30 miles East of Leopold’s oak, a sanctuary for wildflowers that had gladdened his youth. His brother declined but could not suppress the idea. (February, pg. 17)

“People who will not sustain trees, will soon live in a world that cannot sustain people”(Bryce Nelson). Deforestation is the permanent destruction of forests in order to make the land available for other uses. Deforestation has overtime become a leading environmental problem in the U.S. It is estimated that at the beginning of the european settlement, in 1630, the area of forest was 423 million hectares. By 1907, the area had declined to 307 million, according to,”U.S forest facts and historical trends”. Deforestation is caused and will affect the human who call the U.S home. Issues with the environment such as global warming, the thinning of the ozone, and deforestation all contribute to critical problems in the U.S. deforestation highly

Unlike many other rodents the flying squirrel does not hibernate. Instead they group together during the winter and cold month’s to maintain warmth. Northern flying squirrels usually communicate with a soft low chirp but also cluck just like other squirrels when distressed. These squirrels also use scent and touch to communicate with one another; utilizing their excellent senses of hearing, smell, vision, and touch to correspond with the signals they emanate. “A major food source for the squirrels are mycorrhizal fungi (truffles) of many different species, though they also eat lichens, mushrooms, all mast-crop nuts, tree sap, insects, carrion, bird eggs and nestlings, buds and flowers. The squirrels are special in that they can find truffles by olfaction, which is the use of smell. They also seem to use clues such as the presence of wood debris, indicating a decaying log, and spatial memory of locations where truffles were found in the past. The northern flying squirrel is also known to stash food for when food supplies are lower such as in the winter. These caches can be in cavities in trees, as well as in the squirrels' nest, or even within the ground. Lichens and seeds are the commonly stored items” (9). Yet in this relationship the most important functions of this squirrel are to provide food for the owls, and in addition, to greatly

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise,” said by none other, Aldo Leopold. In A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, an American environmentalist, brought a new idea to the environmentalist’s table: “land ethic.” His idea of a land ethic is a moral responsibility of humans to the natural Earth. Leopold’s idea has been discussed since the publication by a wide variety of people, from the public to scholars. Since

Within Aldo Leopold’s Thinking Like a Mountain and Annie Dillard’s Living Like a Weasel there is a communal theme, which incorporates the conflict between people and nature. Throughout Dillard’s piece, she uses comparisons between the life of humans and the life of a wild weasel while applying the theme of freedom of choice. After an unexpected encounter with a weasel, Dillard concludes that humans can learn from the wild freedom of weasel. She states, “...I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive” (Dillard 8). In Aldo Leopold’s writing, his overall motive is to communicate to the reader that we humans must not destroy the wilderness, as

“Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land… harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left” (Pg 189). In less than three sentences, to me this quote summarizes everything that Leopold is trying to say in his novel. Metaphorically, the quote is talking about two friends. In regards to the novel, Leopold is saying that humanity cannot take and use the lands resources without making a conscious effort to replenish them. The non-fiction novel A Sand County Almanac written by Aldo Leopold characterizes the importance in loving, caring and understanding our environment, land and ecosystems that surround us.

Can you imagine a land without any source of water, barren and vegetation? Andrew P Duffin brings a book called “Plowed Under: Agriculture and Environment in the Palouse.” Which speaks about the transformation of a land of the Palouse region that is unproductive and not useable into something totally different that is landscape and agriculture. Today, the Palouse region stands with freedom and independence with farmers that provide many benefits to the culture of agriculture and to the population that live in the Palouse region of Washington and Idaho. It brings a sustainable future to the community and to the region.

Would I recommend A Sand County Almanac to someone I know? Depending upon who it was, I would definitely recommend this book. I think I would suggest this book for someone who enjoys the outdoors. But someone who does not appreciate the outdoors, in my opinion, would not get as much out of the book. The reason I would recommend this book is because I thought it did a splendid job describing the tinniest things and making them interesting. Who would have known that reading about chickadees feeding or describing a bur oak would be interesting to read? The first part of the book is broken down into months, while the final part really goes into Leopold’s land ethics.

Three to six billion trees are cut down each and every year! Deforestation is a huge problem in the rainforests. Because these forests are home to much of the Earth’s species of life. Covering 30 percent of our land forests provide homes, protection, and oxygen for humans and other wildlife in the forests. There are 7.125 billion people that count on the benefits provided by the forest, which is: food, clothing, traditional medicine and shelter. If something isn 't done soon to reduce our carbon footprint, we will not have forests of any type to soak up the carbon dioxide(CO2) in the atmosphere.

More importantly is that by doing my service learning at the Gladys Porter Zoo and by observing the behavior of the animals inside a cage, is that I make a connection with the three novels that we read in class, Oceans The Threats to Our Seas and What You Can Do to Turn the Tide, A Sand County Almanac and Monkeys Are Made of Chocolate. The novel Oceans explains the importance of the oceans and how Jon Bowermaster gives examples towards society to inspire them and take an action to find a solution in order to change the tide. Not only Bowermaster describe this, also Leonardo DiCaprio, Alexandra Cousteau, Christopher Mann, Callum Roberts, and Captain Paul Watson who made a contribution to the book. On the other hand, the novel A Sand County Almanac explains the view that Aldo Leopold has about the green fierce fire, the importance of Land Ethics, and how society needs to use the land ethic with a little help of humility in order to save our earth.

During his time, Aldo Leopold was a conservationist who believed in the longevity of the land and that we should protect it, even if we must protect the land from ourselves. While this was an unpopular opinion, realizing that the land and animals naturally work together in a symbiotic relationship to protect one another was very apparent to Leopold. He believed that humans should be doing our best to lessen our impact on the environment. Time has caught up with Leopold’s ideologies and it is time that our efforts and contributions to the earth did too.