Introduction
The words wildlife management, conservation, and endangered species conjure for many of us dark thoughts about the bureau of land management, the national park service, and other enormous departments, helpless agencies, and harmful services. However, wildlife management is not a government agency, neither is land conservation solely the state’s responsibility. On the universes’ 6th day of existence, God finished his work and called all of it—from stars to starfish—very good. This implies both stars and starfish are worth taking care of. In Genesis 1:22 God commands the first human couple to “fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Based on God’s pronouncement of “very good,” clearly dominion must primarily involve tending the good gifts of the natural world God has given. All Christians then should be true conservationists, because God commanded us to take dominion. However, Aldo Leopold contends that humanity, in general, is largely failing in its task to tend the earth: Christians and our current society are “like a hypochondriac: so obsessed with its economic health that it has lost the capacity to remain healthy” (xix). A shift of values is necessary for conservation, and Aldo Leopold in the Sand County Almanac proposes our values shift back to an Abrahamic concept of land: land as a community, land as a cultural harvest, and land as something loved and respected. Leopold teaches directly through essays, and indirectly through examples ‘in the field’ how to value the land and save it from the modern mechanized man.
Sections I and II: Science Before and After Darwin
The first thing to notice about Leopold’s Almanac is his writing. As Leopold is a college graduate in the natural sciences, one does not expect a skunk’s tracks to be described “as if [the skunk’s] maker had hitched his wagon to a star and dropped the reins” (3). Nor does one expect someone invested in science to tell you about “two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace” (6). Spiritual warnings and whimsical invocations of a skunk’s Maker are surprises to us because we are used to Darwinian science. If Darwin is correct and all there is to a thing is its physical properties (that which is built of atoms), then science is simply understanding how the machine works and listing all the parts. This mechanization of the natural world removes any scientific value for beauty, since beauty is merely accidental, and not relevant to the cogs of the animal machine. As a result, science textbooks are dreary, drab, and ironically, excellent at repelling anyone who would desire to know more about science. Leopold effectively reverses this by reintroducing beauty, and thus excellent writing, as central values to acquainting oneself and valuing the natural and wild world.
We moderns are also used to considering the study of nature a discipline solely learned from the classroom. In fact, it is quite the reverse: it is the classroom that learns from the farmer and woodsman. In Leopold’s words, “let no man jump to the conclusion that Babbett must earn his Ph.D. in ecology before he can ‘see’ his country. On the contrary, the Ph.D. may become as callous as an undertaker to the mysteries at which he officiates” (291-292). Leopold again: “science knows little about the home range: how big it is in various seasons, what food and cover it must include, when and how it is defended against trespass...these are the fundamentals of animal economics or ecology. Every farm is a textbook on animal ecology; woodmanship is the translation of the book” (86). Classrooms on biology, ecology, hydrology, and the rest are essential for doctors and veterinarians and the rest, but they are no substitute for experiential knowledge of the outdoors. Home ranges, individual characteristics, and habits, life, and death cycles are knowledge surrounding and easily accessible to the average man. They are not knowledge monopolized by colleges.
Sections III and IV: Land Conservation
Leopold is writing in defense of the land and the foundation for healthy civilization from “mechanized man.” The mechanized man wants progress (progress to what still remains unclear), and will achieve this progress by uprooting anything in its path: “the modern dogma is comfort at any cost” (76). The mechanized man (including modern conservationists) overall values land for its economic value: Leopold again: “to me an ancient cottonwood is the greatest of trees because in his youth he shaded the buffalo and wore a halo of pigeons...but the farmer’s wife (and hence the farmer) despises all cottonwoods because in June the female cottonwood clogs the screens with cotton” (76). Thus any plant or animal that has no immediate economic need (like the vast majority of native and wild flora and fauna) is disposed of in the name of either convenience or progress. Ironically, because land is a single organism that depends on the uneconomic parts of the organism, from microbes in the soil to shrubs, without those uneconomic species the land becomes sick: soil erodes, crops produce less and smaller numbers, species move on or disappear. Prairie flora has no economic uses, and yet its removal has sickened the lands that once gave the “prairie empire” of crops to early farmers. Here's Leopold again: “Someday we may need this prairie flora not only to look at but to rebuild the wasting soil of prairie farms...we have our hearts in the right place but we do not yet recognize the small cogs and wheels” (194).
The problem then is mechanized man’s values. The solution? For Leopold, ethics and curiosity will shift our values: “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” (202). Leopold has labored in this book quite effectively to bring value to the valueless by highlighting flora and fauna’s particular beauty, and by illustrating how species aid economically by making the land that produces crops healthy. But what if every species of plant and animal and microbe is not absolutely necessary to the general health of the particular land: why conserve any of these species? Or why should we not value comfort and our own immediate gain higher than the long-term livelihood of animals, or wilderness beauty? In the beginning, I mentioned Genesis 1 where God commanded man to care for creation, and commanded it because all of it, economic purpose or no, is created good. Therefore land is valued by God, and we must (to our great joy and benefit) submit to his will. The solution to mechanized man is indeed an ethical underpinning for land economics: that ethical foundation for conserving the wild is Christianity, and the road to saving the woodcocks and cedar trees from mechanized man is a renewal of understanding God’s commands for how we steward his land.
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