Aldo Leopold, 1887-1948

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• Aldo Leopold, 1887-1948
• Grew up in Iowa, hiking and hunting with his
  father, Carl, along Miss. River marshes.
• Went to Yale, majoring in forestry, then joined
  Forest Service, working in the Carson Natl
  Forest in NM in 1911.
• Albuquerque, Grand Canyon, etc. Secretary of
  Albuquerques Chamber of Commerce, writing,
  surveying, game improvement plans, soil
  conservation
• From after WWI to 1924, oversaw all federal
  forests in the West.

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• 1922, wrote argument to permanently preserve
  750,000 acres of Gila River Valleyfather of
  National Forest Wilderness System

The GILA NATIONAL FOREST is one of the nation's
largest (approximately 3.3 million acres, nearly
one-fourth of which is set aside as designated
wilderness) and most scenic year-round recreation
and natural areas. It contains more federal land
than any other national forest outside Alaska,
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• 1924, transferred to Madison.
• 1928, quit, worked writing, consultant on
  conservation and game
• Game Management, 1933, forged a new
  interdisciplinary science
• Travels to Germany, Mexico
• Founds Wilderness Society
• 1935, buys worn out farm The Shack near
  Baraboo, WI, the sand counties
• 1948, dies of a heart attack while fighting
  neighbors brush fire
• SCA published posthumously

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• Leopold family, 1939, The Shack

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Roaring Twenties

• Progressive regulations lapsed or ignored
  business left to itself
• President Harding presided over one of the most
  corrupt administrations no concern for
  conservation
• Electric motor, internal combustion engine, cars
• Travel increases
• Park Service shoots mountain lions so tourists
  can see more elk in Yellowstone
• Agriculture increases 250 over 1914 levelsGreat
  Dust Bowl

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New Ecology

• Sir Arthur Tansley 1871-1955

Trophic levels pyramid structure food chains
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The Varmint Question 1915

• It is well-known that predatory animals are
  continuing to eat the cream of the growers
  profits, and it hardly needs to be argued that,
  with a game supply as low as it is, a reduction
  in the predatory animal population is bound to
  help the situationWhatever may have been the
  value of the work accomplished by bounty systems,
  poisoning, and trapping, individual or
  governmental, the fact remains that varmints
  continue to thrive and their reduction can be
  accomplished only by means of a practical,
  vigorous, and comprehensive plan of action.

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• But in later writing, even just in 1925, he
  claims that this conservationist picture is
  wrong ecology teaches us that nature is
  interconnected and even alive
• Hence by SCA he regrets the time when he was
  young and full of trigger-itch instead we must
  think like a mountain.

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Sand County Almanac

• Dubos the Holy Writ of American
  conservationists
• Foreman not only the most important
  conservation book ever written, it is the most
  important book ever written
• Stegner one of the prophetic books, the
  utterance of an American Isaiah
• Read by millionscomparable to Walden and Silent
  Spring

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• The mouse who knows that grass grows in order
  that mice may store it as underground
  haystacksthe hawk, who has no opinion why
  grass grows, but he is well aware that snow melts
  in order that hawks may again catch mice (4)
• Abraham knew exactly what the land was for it
  was to drip milk and honey into Abrahams mouth.
  At the present moment, the assurance with which
  we regard this assumption is inverse to our
  degree of education (220)

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• When the private landowner is asked to perform
  some unprofitable act for the good of the
  community, he today assents only with
  outstretched palm. If the act costs him cash
  this is fair and proper, but when it costs only
  forethought, open-mindedness or time, the issue
  is at least debatableA system of conservation
  based solely on economic self-interest is
  hopelessly lopsided. It tends to ignore, and
  thus eventually to eliminate, many elements in
  the land community that lack commercial value,
  but that are (as far as we know) essential to its
  healthy functioning. It assumes, falsely, I
  think, that the economic parts of the biotic
  clock will function without the uneconomic parts.
  It tends to relegate to government many
  functions eventually too large, too complex, or
  too widely dispersed to be performed by
  government.
• An ethical obligation on the part of the private
  owner is the only visible remedy for these
  situation. (230)

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• Life cycle of an oak tree
• How important the tree diseases are for the
  health of his farm

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• We cannot discern these patterns in the
  individual, or in short periods of time. The
  most intense scrutiny of an individual rabbit
  tells us nothing of cycles. The cycle concept
  springs from a scrutiny of the mass through
  decades.
• This raises the disquieting question do human
  populations have behavior patterns of which we
  are unaware, but which we help to execute? Are
  mobs and wars, unrests and revolutions, cut of
  such cloth?
• It is reasonable to suppose that our social
  processes have a higher volitional content than
  those of a rabbit, but it is also reasonable to
  suppose that we, as a species, contain population
  behavior patterns of which nothing is known
  because circumstance has never evoked them.
• Ecology is now teaching us to search in animal
  populations for analogies to our own problems.
  (186-187)

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Themes

• Preservation/ conservation
• Individual responsibility regulations can only
  do so much
• Ecology and interconnectedness of parts of nature
• Our ignorance of the ecological webs
  precautionary principle?

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Land Ethic

• extension of ethics the land ethic simply
  enlarges the boundaries of the community to
  include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or
  collectively, the land.
• We need to admit that birds should continue as a
  matter of biotic right

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• 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.

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Similarities to Gaia Hypothesis
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Ethical Interlude

• A subject is morally considerable if and only
  if??
• Male property owner of certain race
• Male or female of certain race
• Male or female of any race

• Utilitarianism says that one should judge an
  action morally by its consequences one should
  maximize the good. An action is right if the
  consequences of its contribution (for those
  morally considerable) are no worse than its
  alternatives consequences.
• Rights-based views. Those who are morally
  considerable are bequeathed certain basic rights.
  Libertarianism negative rights.
  Egalitarianism negative and opportunity rights.
  

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Who is Morally Considerable?
Anthropocentric People (adult rational homo
sapiens)?
Non-anthropocentric People and upper
mammals? Conscious beings capable of
suffering? Living animals? More?
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• Who is morally considerable?
• Leopold biotic community

individuals
Non-anthropocentricists
collectives
New battle line E.g. Can animal
rights-advocates be environmentalists?
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Virtues

• Killing a mosquito is not so bad
• Saving a species in a zoo without an existing
  ecosystem not so good
• Learns lesson of misinformed land management
• Comprehensive system with clear-ish decision
  procedure based to some extent on science

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Criticism I

• Is/ought gapecological facts, by themselves,
  dont prove that ecological integrity and
  stability are ethical values
• Response Hume-Darwin-Leopold moral
  sentimentalism?
• Why is the preservation of an energy circuit or
  food chain a good in itself?
• What ecological model is he using, and why is it
  normatively distinguished?
• Is the integrity of an ecosystem a well-defined
  term of ecology?

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Criticism II

• Ethical holism is totalitarian (Kheel), or
  environmental fascism (Regan). Subverts rights
  of individuals to right of the wholefollowed to
  its logical extreme, it condones genocide.

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Leopold and Hunting

• there are four categories of outdoors men deer
  hunters, duck hunters, bird hunters, and
  non-huntersThe deer hunter habitually watches
  the next bend, the duck hunter watches the
  skyline the bird hunter watches the dog the
  non-hunter does not watch
• The Deer Swath, 208.

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Ecology

• Does it really suggest the picture Leopold finds?

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(Re)Interpreting the Land Ethic

• Responses. Marietta good of biotic community the
  only good? A good? An important good?
• Norton anthropocentric re-interpretation of
  Leopold
• Audience of the book

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• In 1935, there were only 25 nesting pairs of
  sandhill cranes in Wisconsin.
• "The ultimate value in these marshes is
  wildness, and the crane is wildness incarnate,"
  he wrote. "Some day, perhaps in the very process
  of our benefactions, perhaps in the fullness of
  geologic time, the last crane will trumpet his
  farewell and spiral skyward from the great marsh.
  High out of the clouds will fall the sound of
  hunting horns, the baying of the phantom pack,
  the tinkle of little bells, and then a silence
  never to be broken, unless perchance in some far
  pasture of the Milky Way.
• Today there are 12,000 sandhill cranes in
  Wisconsin.