A Taste for Country,
Aldo Leopold from: A Sand County Almanac, (1948)
------------------- from: Round River, (1953), pp. 31-33. &
Round River, From the Journals of Aldo Leopold, Luna B. Leopold, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
his criticism | aesthetics of seeing | defining terms | conserve | ethics | synopsis | conclusion
"History for them grows on campuses."
Thinking Like a Mountain | Country | Round River | Natural History | Conservation
Round River, From the Journals of Aldo Leopold, pp. 31-33.
"They look at the low horizon, but they cannot see it, as de Vaca did, under the bellies of the buffalo."
page 180.
"There is much confusion between land and country."
| word | Leopold's figurative meaning | literal definition |
| Land | is the place where corn, gullies an mortgages grow. | solid part of a terrain not covered by water |
| Country | is the personality of land, the collective harmony of its soil, life, and weather. | rural vicinity, or region |
Round River, page 78.
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"Ecological Accounting informs design" is the single most important criteria used by Van der Ryn for you to determine the value of ED.
Seeing behind the obvious, or below the surface, or beyond the commonly accepted norms is an essential ingredient in making up your criteria.
Testing your assumptions is critical, in that it is crucial to successful and effective reasoning.
You do this by
an extension of ethics from people to land as part of actively
developing an ecological conscience.
Heart of Leopold's argument:
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Property disposal, symbiosis and the extension of ethics to
the varied and -- often uneconomically -- productive sources of biological
wealth.
We must nourish an ecological conscience based on biogeochemical science which is necessary to change aesthetic conservation approaches and utilitarian cost accounting. That is because aesthetics and utilitarianism are insufficient safeguards in protecting the human codependency on the soil, air and water inherent in country.
A taste for country is a serious critique of 19th and 18th century roots of conservation: use and beauty combine to protect ecological integrity, wildlife diversity and the beauty of nature inherent in the biotic health of the country.
|
Agronomic |
Biophiliac |
perspectives |
|
economic |
ecological |
sciences |
|
rational |
emotional |
qualities of knowing |
|
narrow, quantitative |
wider, qualitative |
approaches |
|
isolated focus on money |
relations of sources to sinks |
methods |
§§§
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Leopold voices a call for the sanctity
of the land organism as a dynamic senior partner in a coexistence
of soil, society; biotic wealth and culture. He posits that humans and nature
the unaccountable or less valuable assets of the landscape may be what sustain
the long-term productive capacity of the land for self renewal.
He recognizes that the assimilative capacity of weal as the quality of habitat to absorb human harm and keep producing value is endangered. To remedy the situation a revival of harmony between people and the land is the basis of a new conservation, consisting of:
A "taste for Country" is refined to see more clearly the evolutionary direction and everyday function of wildlife as reflecting the health of this ecological seting composed of: Water, energy, air & land.
Stewardship is a biblical injunction from the book of Genesis, to "keep the garden" as Adam and Eve are commanded by God. But Leopold refers to Ezekiel and Isaiah too, for a source of earth ethics which he believes act as a means to guide people in restoring the inherent integrity, beauty and functional stability of the land organism.
And recognizing the land as a being
Synopsis of Leopold's argument
Natural history knowledge must motivate conservation and develop inherently a new biocentric & biophilia ethic.
Thinking Like a Mountain | Country | Round River | Natural History | Conservation
"Natural History, the Forgotten Science"
"The last tree was planted in the home marsh by lantern-light. There was still the milking."
stale news compared to a "farmer plants tamarack" (a swamp plant)
57
"Our farmers have been grubbing, burning, draining, and chopping tamarack since 1840. In the region where these farmers live the tree is exterminated. Why then should they want to replace it?"
Because after twenty years they hope to reintroduce sphagnum moss under the grove, nd then lady-slippers, pitcher plants and the other nearly extinct wildflower of the aboriginal Wisconsin bogs."
"Certainly no hope of gain motivated it. How then can one interpret its meaning?"
p. 57.
"I call it Revolt–revolt against the tedium of the merely economic attitude toward land. We assume that because we had to subjugate the land to live on it, the best farm is therefore the one that is completely tamed."
pp. 57-58.
"...the wholly tamed farm offers not only a slender livelihood but a constricted life. They have caught the idea that there is pleasure to be had in raising wild crops as well as tame ones."
p.58.
Our "modern natural history deals only incidentally with the identity of plants and animals, and only incidentally with their habits and behavior. It deals principally with their relation to the soil and water in which they grow, and their relations to the human beings who sing about 'my country' but see little or nothing of its inner workings. This new science of relationships is called ecology, but what we call it matters nothing."
pp. 63-64.
"The question is does the educated citizen know he is only a cog in an ecological mechanism? That if he will work with that mechanism his mental wealth and his material wealth will expand indefinitely? But if he refuses to work with it, it will ultimately grind him to dust?"
p. 64.
"If education does not teach us these things, then what is education for?"
p. 64.
Round River, From the Journals of Aldo Leopold, Luna B. Leopold, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. pp. 57-64.
Thinking Like a Mountain | Country | Round River | Natural History | Conservation
"Conservationists have, I fear, adopted the pedagogical [teaching approach] method of the prophets [the old testament Hebrew prophets]: we mutter darkly about 
impending doom if people don't mend their ways. The doom is impending alright; no one can be an ecologist, even an amateur one, without seeing it."
But do people mend their ways for fear of calamity? I doubt it. They are more likely to learn] to do it out of pure curiosity and interest. We shall be ready, I think to practice conservation when 'farmer plants tamarack,' is no longer news."
p. 64.
Conservation
"Conservation is a bird that flies faster than the shot we aim at it."
Conservation and Roosevelt, defining terms.
Conservation is a state of harmony between men [humans] and land. By land I meant all the things on, over, or in the earth. Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot conserve the waters and waste the the ranges; you cannot build the forest and mine the farm." [take more from the land than you invest in its well-being]
"Its parts are like our own parts, compete with each other and co-operate with each other. The competitions are as much part of the inner workings as the co-operations. You can regulate them–cautiously–but not abolish them."
p. 146.
"The outstanding discovery of the twentieth century...the complexity of the land organism."
p. 146.
"Have we learned this first principle of conservation: to preserve all the parts of the land mechanism? No, because even the scientist does not yet recognize all of them."
p. 147.
"American conservation is, I fear, still concerned for the most part with show pieces. We have not yet learned to think in terms of all the cogs and wheels."
pp. 147-148.
" The ivory-billed woodpecker, the California condor, and the desert sheep are the next candidates for rescue. The rescues will not be effective until we discard the idea that one sample will do; until we insist on living with our flora and fauna in as many places as possible."
p. 149.
"Foresters complain of periodic damage from too many rabbits. Why, then, continue the public policy of wolf-extermination? We debate such questions in terms of economics and biology. The mammalogists assert the wolf is a natural check on too many deer. The sportsmen reply they will take care of the excess deer. Another decade of argument and there will be no wolves to argue about."
p. 149.
"One conservation inkpot cancels another until the resource is gone. Why? Because the basic question has not been debated at all. The basic question hinges on 'a refined taste in natural objects.' Is a wolfless north woods any north woods at all?"
p. 150.
"No such ethical and aesthetic premise yet exists for the condition of the land these children must live in. Our children are our signature to the roster of history; our land is merely the place our money is made. There is as yet no social stigma in the possession of the gullied farm, a wrecked forest, or a polluted stream, provided the dividends suffice to send the youngsters to college. Whatever ails the land, the government will fix it."
pp. 156-157.
"I think we have the root of the problem. What conservation education must build is an ethical underpinning for land economics and a universal curiosity to understand the land mechanism. Conservation may then follow."
p. 157.
Round River, From the Journals of Aldo Leopold, Luna B. Leopold, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. pp.145-157.
Thinking Like a Mountain | Country | Round River | Natural History | Conservation
Parts of his "land ethic":
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Conclusion
Look at implements:
Awareness -- attitude -- behavior and action must
all mutually support our symbiosis with the land organism --- the biotic community
and the circuit of water, soils, air and energy that are the functional source
of our economic livelihood and social well-being.
Morality, Leopold thinks that ethics act as a limitation on people’s actions, they are not free to pursue their own ends in reckless disregard for the integrity of nature and the human rights of their neighbors.
Stewardship: We are the recipients of the land’s fruitful bounty and have a caretaker’s duty to properly steward the means of our survival as a whole species, not merely as a confident consumer.
A) comparing your assumptions to what the authors say: Leopold, Williams, Van der Ryn & Siry and then
B) asking people who work in agencies or for ecological protection organizations what they experience and believe, and
C) finding examples from the Indian River Lagoon (natural) management plan and the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council's (cultural) design elements for towns and villages.
Natural and cultural resources must be preserved (to the greatest extent feasible) in order for ecologically well designed structures, buildings or features to function well.
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