Aldo Leopold, one of the founders of the modern environmental movement, was a forester, philosopher, writer, educator and conservationist. His name and his ideas have appeared in many of the books about nature and the environment that I’ve read over the last couple of years. So I decided to go back to the source and read Leopold’s most important work, A Sand County Almanac. Originally published in 1949, the version I read, A Sand County Almanac with Essays on Conservation from Round River, was first assembled and published in 1966. The wonderful illustrations by Charles W. Schwartz bring the book to life.

Leopold was born in 1887. He graduated from the Yale Forestry School in 1909 and worked for the US Forest Service for over 20 years. In 1933 he was appointed professor at the University of Wisconsin. He died tragically in 1948 after suffering a heart attack while fighting a wildfire on a neighbor’s property.

A Sand County Almanac
with Essays on Conservation from Round River
By Aldo Leopold
Ballantine Books, New York, 1966

Aldo Leopold is probably best known for his idea of the “land ethic” which I’ll get to in a moment. What really struck me is how prescient he was, how so many pivotal concepts about ecology and the environment can trace their origins back to this one book. Here are some examples with links to recent books that explore each topic in greater depth:

• The environment and nature must be understood as whole systems with complex interconnections and interdependencies among their constituent parts. (Big World Small Planet)

• Humans are part of, not separate from or superior to, the natural environment. (Crow Planet)

• The populations of wild animals are dwindling and many are going extinct due to human use and misuse of the land. (A Life on Our Planet)

• Organisms exist in intricately connected food webs. Killing off apex predators like wolves and grizzly bears can cause trophic cascades that have significant negative effects on entire ecosystems, like overgrazing by uncontrolled deer and elk populations. (How Wolves Change Rivers)

• Land can recover from human interventions like deforestation, but it takes a very long time and it often bounces back with a reduced level of complexity and biodiversity. The hardest part is recovery of the soil. (Rewilding)

• Road-building chops up wilderness areas and has negative consequences for ecosystem health and biodiversity. (Ever Green)

• Flood control systems like drainage ditches and levees prevent both natural water retention and soil replenishment. (Water Always Wins)

• Considering only the economic value of the natural environment is both futile and dangerous. (Doughnut Economics)

• Nature itself has a right to exist at some level of healthy functioning. (The Rights of Nature)

These subjects have all been researched and developed more fully since Leopold’s death, but the basic ideas are right here in this book. And he wrote it decades before we understood the dangers of climate change.

The first part of the book, the actual Sand County Almanac, is a collection of Leopold’s month-by-month observations of the seasons unfolding on and around his farm in Sand County, Wisconsin. It’s beautifully written.

In November, Leopold writes about geese migrating south for the winter:

“The flock emerges from the low clouds, a tattered banner of birds, dipping and rising, blown up and blown down, blown together and blown apart, but advancing, the wind wrestling lovingly with each winnowing wing. When the flock is a blur in the far sky I hear the last honk, sounding taps for summer.” [p. 71]

In December, he describes how pine trees appear to stay evergreen:

“Each species of pine has its own constitution, which prescribes a term of office for needles appropriate to its way of life. Thus the white pine retains its needles for a year and a half; the red and jackpines for two years and a half. Incoming needles take office in June, and outgoing needles write farewell addresses in October. All write the same thing, in the same tawny yellow ink, which by November turns brown. Then the needles fall, and are filed in the duff to enrich the wisdom of the stand. It is this accumulated wisdom that hushes the footsteps of whoever walks under pines.” [p. 92]

The remainder of the book, the essays from Round River, are part memoir, part natural history, and part environmental philosophy. The crazy idea of a “round river” is taken from one of the tall tales of Paul Bunyan, the mythical giant American lumberjack. Leopold uses it as a metaphor for the circle of life, for the flow of energy from soil to plants to animals and back to the soil again. Some of these essays overlap each other and I did skim over parts that I found repetitive or less interesting. I was also a little put off by anecdotes about Leopold’s hunting and fishing adventures. Some of this was related to his work for the Forest Service, and I understand that these were perfectly acceptable activities in previous generations. Still I don’t understand how someone so dedicated to conservation could enjoy or justify hunting wild animals.

The Land Ethic

The philosophical heart of the book is the essay titled “The Land Ethic.” In general, Leopold explains, ethics constrain or guide our behavior. They distinguish right actions from wrong actions. The earliest ethical codes, like the Ten Commandments, governed relationships between individuals. As communities grew larger, denser and more interdependent, we evolved new ethics that shape the relationships between individuals and society to ensure safe, productive cooperation. Leopold notes that the philosophical or moral roots of ethics have equally valid ecological analogs. Ecologically, an ethic is “a limitation on the freedom of action in the struggle for existence.” And social cooperation among people is analogous to symbiosis among organisms. However:

“There is as yet no ethic dealing with man’s relationship to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. Land … is still property. The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations.” [p. 232]

Leopold calls for the evolution of ethics to include the environment. Since our ethics already recognize the individual as “a member of a community of interdependent parts,” we simply need to enlarge the boundary of “community” to include the environment, which he calls “the land.”

“A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management and use of these ‘resources,’ but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state.

In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it.” [p. 240]

Leopold’s land ethic is probably best summarized in this well-known quote:

“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.” [p. 262]

A Sand County Almanac is a lament for the human-caused destruction of the natural world and a plea for the preservation of untouched wilderness for its own sake. Even though it was written 75 years ago, it’s still a foundational piece of environmental writing that’s well worth reading today.

Thanks for reading.

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