There is no doubt that as ecosystems become squeezed due to human interference and depleting natural resources that each cache of land (defined as "...the place where corn, gullies, and mortgages grow." p31) grows weak in diversity. What he calls the, "...the complexity of the land organism." p146.
Aldo Leopold was an Outdoorsman.
He sought game with the metered stealth of one tracking his prey through the contours of the country, noting the climate, the grade of the hills, the berries on the trees, the senses of the dog at his knee, and the idea that the, "common denominator of all hunters is the realization that there is always something to hunt." p128.
Aldo Leopold was an Ecologist.
He saw the natural landscape as a series of interrelated parts that form a whole. He defines ecology as the, "...new science of relationships," and then asks this nagging question, "...does the educated citizen know he is only a cog in an ecological mechanism?" p64.
In the end Aldo Leopold was a Conservationist.
A sort of public Ecologist who works in some way for change and hopes to educate the public on what human intervention is doing to the environment. He clearly states his vision that this idea of Conservation may only be achieved if a, "...aesthetic premise...exists" and, "...conservation education must build...an ethical underpinning for land economics and a universal curiosity to understand the land mechanism." pp156-157
This series of journals and short essays put context into the wanderer of A Sand County Almanac. While he is always a humanist and a poet, "and when the dawn-wind stirs through the ancient cottonwoods, and the gray light steals down from the hills over the old river sliding softly past its wide brown sandbars-what if there be no more goose music?" Leopold is also a pragmatic dreamer who sees the relationships between human carelessness and a need to understand the, "Country," to achieve, sustainable, "Land" management.
I am not a hunter. I don't seek the deer around the bend, the duck in the sky, or study the reaction of the dog. Instead I look around and attempt to silently absorb the landscape and become a part of the larger system that surrounds my senses. I think Aldo Leopold did the same thing, only he carried a shotgun in case a covey of quail are flushed from the ragweed.
You do not have to read this book to enjoy ASCA, but the context lends itself to an ecological understanding of the relationships that exist between Leopold's beliefs and ultimately his groundbreaking conclusions.
A four for the folksy prose and five for the content....4.5 Goodreads! Grr.
Aldo Leopold was a Hunter.
There is no doubt that as ecosystems become squeezed due to human interference and depleting natural resources that each cache of land (defined as "...the place where corn, gullies, and mortgages grow." p31) grows weak in diversity. What he calls the, "...the complexity of the land organism." p146.
Aldo Leopold was an Outdoorsman.
He sought game with the metered stealth of one tracking his prey through the contours of the country, noting the climate, the grade of the hills, the berries on the trees, the senses of the dog at his knee, and the idea that the, "common denominator of all hunters is the realization that there is always something to hunt." p128.
Aldo Leopold was an Ecologist.
He saw the natural landscape as a series of interrelated parts that form a whole. He defines ecology as the, "...new science of relationships," and then asks this nagging question, "...does the educated citizen know he is only a cog in an ecological mechanism?" p64.
In the end Aldo Leopold was a Conservationist.
A sort of public Ecologist who works in some way for change and hopes to educate the public on what human intervention is doing to the environment. He clearly states his vision that this idea of Conservation may only be achieved if a, "...aesthetic premise...exists" and, "...conservation education must build...an ethical underpinning for land economics and a universal curiosity to understand the land mechanism." pp156-157
This series of journals and short essays put context into the wanderer of A Sand County Almanac. While he is always a humanist and a poet, "and when the dawn-wind stirs through the ancient cottonwoods, and the gray light steals down from the hills over the old river sliding softly past its wide brown sandbars-what if there be no more goose music?" Leopold is also a pragmatic dreamer who sees the relationships between human carelessness and a need to understand the, "Country," to achieve, sustainable, "Land" management.
I am not a hunter. I don't seek the deer around the bend, the duck in the sky, or study the reaction of the dog. Instead I look around and attempt to silently absorb the landscape and become a part of the larger system that surrounds my senses. I think Aldo Leopold did the same thing, only he carried a shotgun in case a covey of quail are flushed from the ragweed.
You do not have to read this book to enjoy ASCA, but the context lends itself to an ecological understanding of the relationships that exist between Leopold's beliefs and ultimately his groundbreaking conclusions.
A four for the folksy prose and five for the content....4.5 Goodreads! Grr.