"THE LAND ETHIC

As I finish up reading some essays by the famous Aldo Leopold, I am compelled to share some of the key points that struck me. Words in quotes are words from Leopold's essay titled "The Land Ethic" and words without quotes are mine. 

Photo: National Historic Landmarks

Ethics regarding the individual and how individuals are treated within communities has been developed greatly throughout the years. 
However, "there is as yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it."

Most of our ethics deal with people in regard to other people. But what about people in regard to the very land that makes them able to live?

Community is a large theme in Leopold's writing. "The individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in the community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate. The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land." 
Why do we restrain "community" to only pertain to the human-to-human interaction?

Conservation efforts do not work well using current tactics because "It defines no right-or wrong, assigns no obligation, calls for no sacrifice, implies no change in the current philosophy of values. In respect of landuse, it urges only enlightened self-interest."

It essentially has "no teeth" and leaves everything up to economic systems and the self-interest of humans. Is there more than just the human perspective?

"One basic weakness in a conservation system based wholly on economic motives is that most members of the land community, have no economic value. Wildflowers and songbirds are examples. Of the 22,000 higher plants and animals native to Wisconsin, it is doubtful whether more than 5 per cent can be sold, fed, eaten, or otherwise put to economic use. Yet members of the biotic community; and if (as I believe) its stability depends on its integrity, they are entitled to continuance. When one of these non-economic categories is threatened; and if we happen to love it, we invent subterfuges to give it economic importance."

The value of nature is in the form of love and respect for it, something that economic value simply cannot offer us.

"A guide the economic relation to land presupposes the existence of some mental image of land as a biotic mechanism. We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in. The image commonly employed in conservation education is `the balance of nature.'"

In order to place value on something that cannot necessarily be bought, traded, or "valued," one must put value in it using other means... passion, love, enjoyment, and overwhelming respect.

Bottom line... Get outside more, fall in love with the whistling wind and the beautiful mountains... it is a relationship that will never betray you and will always leave you will a heart full of love.