Aldo Leopold: The North American Conservation Movement

Aldo Leopold was a conservationist, forester philosopher, educator, writer and outdoor enthusiast and was among the founding fathers of the North American conservation movement during the first half of twentieth century (Leopold, 1981). He argues that humans are part of a community that includes the land, from the soil to the rivers and seas (Leopold, 1981). According to Leopold (1981), until humans recognize that they are part of the land and act accordingly, they will continue to negatively impact the environment and their own health by extension (Leopold, 1981) Leopold (1981), believed ethics in general rest upon the sole value that an individual is part of a community and while there may be a driving need to compete within that community for resources, ethics encourage cohabitation and collaboration within the community. Leopold (1981) describes the idea of land ethics as taking this sense of community and extending it to include land, water and animals and not just humans. By embracing land ethics, Leopold (1981)
Because humans can control the environment and have bested threats to their mortality, humans become disconnected from the balance of nature. Leopold (1981) discusses how the mountain may fear the pack of deer that is uncontrolled by wolves and in this analogy correlates this example to that of human beings, no longer fearful of natural threats, over grazes the land until there is nothing left. Like humans, in our quest for safety and security, mankind has avoided the wolf and are now the deer, unabashedly scouring the land of grass and trees, unable to see that the mountain and forests may not be able to keep up with the loss (Leopold, 1981). Mankind, according to Leopold (1981) has become further disconnected from nature as he has become more