Aldo Leopold
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Categories: 1887 births | 1948 deaths | American naturalists | American environmentalists | People from Iowa
Aldo Leopold (January 11, 1887 - April 21, 1948) was a United States ecologist, forester, and environmentalist. He was influential in the development of modern environmental ethics and in the movement for wilderness preservation. Aldo Leopold is considered to be the father of wildlife management in the United States and was a life-long fisherman and hunter.
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Life and work
Aldo Leopold was born in Burlington, Iowa. He grew up in contact with the outdoors – the fields, trees, meadows, creeks, and rivers. His nature writing is notable for its simple directness. His portrayals of various natural environments he had moved through, or had known for many years, displayed impressive intimacy with what exists and happens in nature. He seemed to know a landscape the way an audiophile knows his sound system and music collection, or the way a mother knows the bodies and personalities of her young children.
For secondary education Leopold attended the prestigious Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, NJ, after which he moved on to the Yale University School of Forestry. He received his Master's degree in Forestry in 1909. Leopold developed an appreciation for nature in terms of ecology, beauty, and mystery, as well as in terms of a source of resources. Thereafter, his professional life encompassed forestry, ecology, and writing.
Leopold served for 19 years in the United States Forest Service, working in the American Southwest (New Mexico and Arizona) until he was transferred in 1924 to the Forest Products Lab in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1928 he left the Forest Service and started doing independent contract work. He mostly did wildlife and game surveys throughout the U.S.
In 1933 he was appointed Professor of Game Management in the Agricultural Economics Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He lived in a modest 2-story home close to the campus with his wife and children, and taught at the University until his death. Today, his home is an official landmark of the city of Madison and is occupied by Elizabeth Loniello. One of his sons, Luna, went on to become a noted hydrologist.
An advocate for the preservation of wildlife and wilderness areas, he became a founder of the Wilderness Society in 1935. Named in his honor, the Aldo Leopold Wilderness lies within the boundaries of the Gila National Forest, in New Mexico. Together, these two tracts are often considered the starting point for the modern wilderness-conservation movement throughout the U.S.
Leopold offered frank criticism of the harm he believed was frequently done to natural systems (such as land) out of a sense of a culture or society's sovereign ownership over the land base – eclipsing any sense of a community of life to which we humans belong. He felt that the security and prosperity resulting from "mechanization" now gives people the time to reflect on the preciousness of nature and to learn more about what happens there.
A Sand County Almanac
Leopold wrote A Sand County Almanac (hardcover ISBN 0195053052, paperback ISBN 0345345053), which has been read by millions and has informed and spurred the environmental movement and a widespread interest in ecology as a science. By the same token, the Wilderness Society and Leopold’s work in it were important precursors to the environmental movement that coalesced around the time of the first Earth Day.
Published shortly after Leopold's death in 1949, A Sand County Almanac is a combination of natural history, scene painting with words, and philosophy. It is perhaps best known for the following quote concerning ecological ethics: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."
Conservation
In "The Land Ethic," a chapter of A Sand County Almanac, Leopold delves into conservation in "The Ecological Conscience" section. He wrote: "Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land."
Leopold felt it was generally agreed that more conservation education was needed; however quantity and content were up for debate.
As it seemed to Leopold, curriculum-content guidelines current at the time he was writing (late 1940s) boiled down to: obey the law, vote right, join some organizations and practice what conservation is profitable on your own land; the government will do the rest. He was critical of this "formula." To him, it appeared to serve self-interest but it did not address ethical questions.
Social conscience, ecological conscience
According to Leopold in "Land Ethic" "An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence." Leopold explains that the first ethics dealt with relationships between individuals. Later they dealt with the relationship between individuals and society. However, according to Leopold "There is as yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations." Leopold believed that development of such an ethic had begun with the start of the conservation movement Leopold's classic identified the need for education as necessary prior to rules being written and supported by the community. Leopold noted that various community obligations other than land-use ethics rose above economic self-interest and did indeed gain community support. This fact brought him to the conclusion that obligations have no meaning without conscience, and the problem we face is the extension of the social conscience from people to land. At the time he was writing, he believed that, without benefit of philosophy and religion, conservation had been minimized.
Ethical issues
With the hopes of addressing ethical issues as well as educational challenges, Leopold put forward an example in the issue of Wisconsin's southwestern topsoil slipping seaward. In 1933 the public offered assistance to farmers who adopted remedial practices for five years, which was widely accepted. Once the five-year period was completed, the farmers only continued practices that offered economic gain for themselves, disregarding practices which were profitable for the community. In response, the Wisconsin Legislature passed the Soil Conservation District Law in 1937 that allowed farmers to write rules for land use themselves. Even with the additional incentives of free technical service and the availability of specialized machinery for loan, rules that would benefit the community continued to be ignored as no rules were written. A small amount of progress did occur, but not enough to address the pertinent problems.
