The final essay in A Sand County Almanac regards the “Land Ethic” and the final section of that essay is called “The Outlook.” Below are some thoughts that I had while I read it.
We are constantly being shaped by our past and current physical, emotional, and informational circumstances and experiences. Therefore, I think that people are evolving in their notions and attitudes. Over time, like the ship of Theseus, are we the same person or a different person or a little of both? So too goes our relationship to the land and biotic community.
Over different time scales, but both me personally and society writ large have changed both in perceptions of the value of land and the biotic community. There are times and places where I viewed nature as a place to be dominated – like building a tree fort or catching frogs, to be conquered – with the canoe or hiking trip defined by the miles traveled, or to be ignored – when my attention and social environment was turned elsewhere. Over in recent years, I believe that my focus has shifted to embrace more of a land ethic, using my observations in the outdoors to guide greater learning about the biotic communities that I experience.
Leopold wrote, “These wild things, I admit, had little human value until mechanization assured us of a good breakfast, and until science disclosed the drama of where they come from and how they live.” I think that is true, until humans were secure in their survival and sustenance, nature was the adversary. An adversary could be respected and can be admired, but it the relationship was adversarial. Human impact on the landscape and biotic community did and still does boil down in large part to the density and intensity of use.
Actions previously taken to tame or extract form this adversary are now being rethought, but to some extent our ability to do so is a result of the advancements unleashed from those past actions. The dams that brought the electrification of many rural communities, have enabled those communities to prosper to the point where we can be rethinking the biotic toll that those dams have taken on our aquatic and riparian communities. The cost and excise of more intensive practices have led to renewed efforts to investigate and implement farming and forestry techniques that promote pollinators and regenerative practices for examples. More recently, as solar energy matures, solar solar farms are also getting a renewed look at the soil and biotic impacts of harnessing that solar energy before it reaches the ground.
In the words of Leopold, there is an “A-B cleavage” in the existence of a land ethic in the United States. The primary division is a person’s geographical locus – are they primarily surrounded by a natural community or a built urban environment? Furthermore, each of those groups can be sub-divided based upon a level of awareness of the biotic community. Using these dimensions, we can reach a quadrant system that encapsulates the current state of the American land ethic. “Stewards” routinely experience natural surroundings, see the challenges to the biotic communities and seek to address these challenges. Their neighbors who place less value on the environment, the “Extractors”, see biotic communities as a resource to provide, but not one that places further obligation upon the users. Those primarily in built environments lack experiential knowledge and context. “Consumers” who still place a high value on the biotic community suffer from this in one of two directions, they can consume the experiences without the foresight or training of their impacts (e.g. visitors to National Parks, climbers, through-hikers), or consume the idea of nature and wilderness without recognition of other populations, user groups, or stakeholders (e.g. arm chair preservationists). Lastly, the “apathetic” lack either the context of living in a natural setting or an existing value on the biotic communities, and therefore just don’t think or care to think about these questions, having no land ethic at all. By recognizing that the country simultaneously has different land ethics, maybe we can engage people starting with their current land ethic and work forward together.
Environment: ___Natural____Built____
High Value Stewards Consumers
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Low Value Extractors Apathetic