Sand County Almanac Quotes

To understand where the motivation and passion to protect the environment was developed, one looks to the rapid deforestation of East Coast old-growth forests at the turn of the century. “As Gifford Pinchot expressed it, ‘The American Colossus was fiercely at work turning natural resources into money.’ ‘A

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.

In the pieces, “Thinking like a mountain” by Leopold and “Big mac and Tropical forests,” by Skinner both demonstrate a clear message through their writings. Although Leopold used strong points to get his message across, Skinner grabs his audience's attention by using factual evidence instead of a personal experience. In Leopold's “Thinking like a mountain” the author discusses a big issue today involving wildlife and deforestation, trying to convince his audience about how to realize the issue at hand. On the other hand, Skinner’s “ Big mac and Tropical forests” talks about how in today’s day and age the economy is more focused on making money from putting in unnecessary fast food chains in the spots of Tropical forests. Even though these writings are very different they still

Stegner wants to conserve the untouched land because he fears a world with no silence. He argues for the preservation of Robbers’ Roost country, as an example, “It is a lovely and terrible wilderness, such as wilderness as Christ and the prophets went out into… Save a piece of country like that intact, and it does not matter in the slightest that only a few people every year will go into it. That is precisely its value (Stegner, Wilderness Letter).” Saving the untouched lands, he contends, is a reminder of how uncontrolled the Earth is and how timeless it remains. Others disagree with this viewpoint, one of those people being American forester, Gifford Pinchot. In his writing “The Fight for Conservation,” Pinchot argues that conservation

Aldo Leopold is another American environmentalist who was dominant in the development of modern environmental ethics. Aldo was more for holistic ethics regarding land. According to him, “An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom action in the struggle for existence. An ethic, philosophically, is a differentiation of social from anti-social conduct.” He describes in his article that politics and economics are advanced symbioses in which free-for-all competition has been replaced by co-operative mechanism with an ethical content.” He thought that ethics direct individuals to cooperate with each other for the mutual benefit of all. Also he believes that community should be

In Wallace Stegner’s “Wilderness Letter,” he is arguing that the countries wilderness and forests need to be saved. For a person to become whole, Stegner argues that the mere idea of the wild and the forests are to thank. The wilderness needs to be saved for the sake of the idea. He insinuates that anyone in America can just think of Old faithful, Mt. Rainier, or any other spectacular landform, even if they have not visited there, and brought to a calm. These thoughts he argues are what makes us as people whole.

The relationship between people and their environment in A Land Remembered is one where the profit from land exploitation is naturally corrupting and exponentially increases the exploiters lust for larger profit, leading to the exploiter planning larger scale endeavors in the future. The author, Patrick D. Smith (1984), suggests the idea that communities naturally grow in a hedonic cycle to crave more resources to fuel loftier endeavors that require even more resources from the environment, an idea that is also discussed by Aldo Leopold in the Land Ethic as wholly negative, and that is also part of my world view that is rather more optimistic.

The book “Changes in the Land” by William Cronon in summary is based on environmental history where science, social science, the way society affects human nature and vice-versa is all combined into his narrative. With that being said, he believed that humans are dependent on nature, and nature is something that’s either made or broken by humans. Same goes for vegetation and land area. He wrote about conflicts between two cultures, where when the settlers came in to New England, they took over the Native American’s home. The power the settlers had over the Native Americans grew so strong that it got to a point where the rule of usufruct was put in place, where Native Americans could make use of any natural resource on earth as long as it wasn’t being needed by another person.

“We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in”- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (251)

I agree with his concern of people always looking to help those not local to them, and they do tend to not realize the help they can do locally as well. This concern easily applies to public health, where many seek to go overseas when they fail to realize how much help is needed locally or nationally. I also agree with how historically, people have changed their views on nature and the wilderness as this was often discussed in art history. However, I find that his view on the wilderness connotations are quite subjective. He viewed “wilderness” through human eyes as it is a culture we created and that we seek to conserve nature for selfish reasons to satisfy our romantic ideals: whether it be recreational sites, religious icons, spiritual healing, masculinity ideals, a place of paradise and escape, primitive ideals or for the

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

This theory is examined by David Cole, author of “Beyond Naturalness: Adapting Wilderness Stewardship to an Era of Rapid Global Change”. Wilderness may be defined as free from human intentions and lack of human effect and described as historical fidelity (Cole, 17). Historical fidelity is the hands-off stewardship used as support ladders to protect wilderness in a state similar to its virgin form. But being natural, untouched, and pure is incompatible with freedom from human desires. In reality, you cannot preserve wilderness without the use of human intervention. Why you may ask? Because it is the values that society has forced upon wilderness that causes its citizens to appreciate the wild when it provides incentives such as the “wilderness experience”. If the wild has nothing to offer, then there will be no reasons to preserve it. As a result, wilderness is a byproduct of social values which allows civilization to appreciate and protect

As a result Leopold knew from his travels that one can learn from the mistakes of what happened to animals like the passenger pigeon throughout North America and the bear in Escudilla things that happen locally can have a non-local effect like causing the deer population to rise. Leopold has not yet sufficiently talked about his opinion on manage for me to know with certainty what he thinks about management, it does look as though he will talk more about that in part III. Right now I would not be surprised to see him in favor of protection for animals and plants, because of the way he talks of the Passenger Pigeon and its monument, also the way he talks of the Wisconsin marshlands and the efforts of government via the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) during FDR’s administration to restore the

What exactly is land ethics? According to Leopold, “Land ethics expands the boundaries of ethics by including soils, waters, plants, and animals,” (Leopold, page 239). However, a land ethic cannot prevent the alteration, management, and the use of the resources stated above. Basically, Leopold states that land ethics change the role that we humans play from that of a land-conqueror to that of a citizen and member. In class, we learned that land ethics imply respect for the surrounding community. We as humans are important, and thus, have more responsibility to protect the environment.

As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, inclose it from the common. Nor will it invalidate his right, to say every body else has an equal title to it; and therefore he cannot appropriate, he cannot inclose, without the consent of all his fellow-commoners, all mankind….God and his reason commanded him to subdue the earth, i.e. improve it for the benefit of life, and therein lay out something upon it that was his own, his labour" (Locke, §32).