Key Ideas of Conservation
Aldo Leopold (c.1887-1948) was a naturalist who was ahead of his time. He was an early advocate for conservation and naturalism in America. Having been taught at Yale's School of Forestry to manage land he left with the strong feeling that land should not be managed but left wild. That it was important to save the wild places as they are and to protect them from the encroachment of man. His overall rule was to connect people back to the land so that they may understand its value and importance.
He wrote a thin journal of his experiences A Sand County Almanac over a 12 year span documenting his thoughts, observations, and philosophy. From this study arose the following ideas:
What is the Land Ethic? - To retain and preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community in partnership and preservation of the land. It is positive concept that we must work towards at all times in planning and development, living and being, connecting and integrating.
What is the Land Ethic? - To retain and preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community in partnership and preservation of the land. It is positive concept that we must work towards at all times in planning and development, living and being, connecting and integrating.
What is Conservation? - Conservation is the state of harmony between men and the land.
What are the 3 key ideas behind a Land Ethic?
1. Land is a community of all living things.
2. Land is to be loved and respected.
3. Land creates an ongoing awareness of the connection between it and humans.
What should be our response to promoting a Land Ethic? - Public conservation efforts have little chance of success until private individuals, organizations, and corporations feel a strong personal relationship for the health of the land. Promotion of this relationship may take many forms.
Greenfire is a promotional film describing Aldo Leopold's conservation efforts. It may be found here.
“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.
But when we see land as a community to which we belong,
we may begin to use it with love and respect.”
- Aldo Leopold
“The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants,
“The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants,
and animals, or collectively: the land... In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo Sapiens
from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect
for this fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.”
- Aldo Leopold
“Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land.
“Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land.
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. But when we see land
as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”
- Aldo Leopold
“A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe]
“A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe]
he is writing his signature on the face of the land.”
- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”
“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”
- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
“No matter how intently one studies the hundred little dramas of the woods and meadows,
“No matter how intently one studies the hundred little dramas of the woods and meadows,
one can never learn all the salient facts about any one of them.”
- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River
“We shall never achieve harmony with the land, anymore than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty
“We shall never achieve harmony with the land, anymore than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty
for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.”
- Aldo Leopold, Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold
“The problem, then, is how to bring about a striving for harmony with land among a people many of
“The problem, then, is how to bring about a striving for harmony with land among a people many of
whom have forgotten there is any such thing as land, among whom education and culture have
become almost synonymous with landlessness. This is the problem of conservation education.”
One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery,
and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”
- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, the stability, and beauty of the
“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, the stability, and beauty of the
biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
- Aldo Leopold
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| Caring for Grasslands of the Earth |
“Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them.
Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural,
Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural,
wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.”
- Aldo Leopold
“Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.”
- Aldo Leopold
- Aldo Leopold
“Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.”
- Aldo Leopold
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| Caring for the Seas of the Earth |
“Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-earth relationship with gadgets and middlemen that
that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry.”
- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River
“That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology,
but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.”
- Aldo Leopold
“Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent
this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet;
one need only own a shovel. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may
say: Let there be a tree - and there will be one.”
- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River
“Man always kills the thing he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we
- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River
“Man always kills the thing he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we
had to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in.
Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?”
- Aldo Leopold
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| Earth Care Interconnectivity |
“To those who know the speech of hills and rivers straightening a stream is like shipping vagrants -
a very successful method of passing trouble from one place to the next. It solves nothing in
any collective sense.”
- Aldo Leopold, For the Health of the Land: Previously Unpublished Essays And Other Writings
“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... The land is one organism.”
- Aldo Leopold
“At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree
useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant.”
- Aldo Leopold
“Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow... creation of new wilderness
in the full sense of the word is impossible.”
- Aldo Leopold
Join your local chapter or conservation group today
- Aldo Leopold
“Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow... creation of new wilderness
in the full sense of the word is impossible.”
- Aldo Leopold
Join your local chapter or conservation group today
promoting earth care and regeneration
Aldo Leopold: The Land Ethic
Aldo Leopold: Conservation Movement
Wildlife - Conservation: The Life and Legacy of Aldo Leopold
The GreenFire Film Project
The GreenFire Film Project