Download Aldo Leopold's Ethics of Conservation: Reflections on the Natural World and more Exercises Esthetics in PDF only on Docsity! A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold Aldo Leopold suggests that the best definitions of a conservationist are written not with a pen, but with an axe: “A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke he is writing his signature on the face of his land” (68). After this Leopold speculates on why, when he comes upon the choice of the white pine or the red birch, he will always cut the birch, concluding that “I love all trees, but I am in love with pines” (70). While it would not be especially fair to say that if you like this sort of sentiment, then A Sand County Almanac is for you, it would not be altogether wrong. As he notes in his forward, “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.” This concoction of rambling meditations on the natural world were first published a year after Leopold’s death, and they range from the personal observations keyed to the months of the year to the philosophical, or some would say political, in the last quarter of the book, when he addresses such issues as the esthetics of conservation, wilderness, and “the land ethic.” Consider the following ethical advice Leopold offers near the end of his book: “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” (224-5). Or maybe this sort of passage appeals to you more: “Pines, like people, are choosy about their associates” (86). Or consider this almost casual observation in the small essay entitled “Thinking Like a Mountain,” when Leopold reflects on killing a wolf: “I was young then, and full of trigger-itch” (130). Whatever your preference, this important book deserves to be read closely and carefully. Author Information As Robert Finch observes in his introduction to the 1987 edition of A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold was both “a trained scientist” and “a schooled humanist,” and he possessed a “strong poetic sensibility.” Born in Burlington, Iowa, in 1887, Leopold received his master’s degree in forestry from Yale University in 1909 and joined the U.S. Forest Service. First posted to the Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico in 1911, he devised a handbook for forest service officers and became active in promoting enforcement of game laws and development of game refuges. He became Associate Director of the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1924, but in 1928 he left the Forest Service to work independently, and in 1933 was appointed to the chair in Game Management at the University of Wisconsin, a position he held for the rest of his life. In 1935 he purchased 120 acres of an abandoned farm on the Wisconsin River which was to become his retreat and personal nature preserve. While he lived with his wife and two sons in Madison, he restored the land and worked out of an old chicken coop he called “the Shack.” Leopold authored a classic text, Game Management (1933), which
