A Sand Country Almanac: Aldo Leopold and the Land Ethic

"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." Aldo Leopold 1887-194

City life is getting me down, and so after a heavy day calculating population genetic frequencies or writing notes on biodiversity flux models, an escape to the Americana-rich wilds of Wisconsin is a real treat. It was with a heavy heart then, that I turned to the last page of "A Sand County Almanac" yesterday, whose central message is still pressingly relevent 70 years after it was published. In his book, Aldo Leopold shares with the reader his tales of hunting game, anecdotes of natural history, and reflections on wilderness, before philosophically questioning the human-nature condition. And all of this with a savy deftness and lightness of touch.

The promotion and management of wildlife as an economic resource according to him, can only lead to its degradation. Rather than as a commodity, nature's value should be elevated to the upmost, for "humans will never be free if they have no wild spaces in which to roam". The final chapter sees Leopold proposing his Land Ethic; an extension of the ethical sphere we apply to man to include "soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land". By placing humans within the biotic community rather than above it, Leopold justifies the conservation of nature as the preservation of all life and not just our own.

Closing the cover, I asked myself whether any progress has been made in the last 70 years. Had the message been taken in, or are we still as detached as ever? As with all things, progress takes time. Leopold may have sown the seeds, but it is only now that we are beginning to see the shoots breaking the surface. Pounding the tarmac on my way home from the library, small signs of a land ethic were there, whether it was the organic fruit and veg shop, the carbon neutral bus, or the posters advertising Paris' Musée du Vivant. Change will come, not at the speed of a seasonal weed, but at the steady pace of a mighty oak.