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Aldo Leopold on Land Conservation

The following passage entitled "Conservation" was written by Aldo Leopold in the fall of 1946 in response to a request from Horace Fries, a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin. Fries was a member of the "National Educational Committee for a New Party," an idealistic political group that aimed to initiate a new national political organization. John Dewey was named as the part's Honorary Chairman, and A. Philip Randolph as the Temporary Chairman. Aldo Leopold was asked by Fries to propose a conservation platform for the party. -- Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work. pp. 480-481, University of Wisconsin Press, 1988

"We urge that two concepts, heretofore largely ignored, be built into the national program of conservation.

The first is that the average citizen, especially the landowner, has an obligation to manage his land in the interest of the community, as well as in his own interest. The fallacious doctrine that the government must subsidize all conservation not immediately profitable for the private landowner will ultimately bankrupt the treasury, or the land, or both. The nation needs and has a right to expect, the private landowner to use his land with foresight, skill, and regard for the future.

The second concept is that the health of the land as a whole, rather than the supply of its constituent "resources," is what needs conserving. Land, like other things, has the capacity for self-renewal (i.e. for permanent productivity) only when its natural parts are present, and functional. It is a dangerous fallacy to assume that we are free to discard or change any part of the land we do not find "useful" (such as flood plains, marshes, and wild floras, and faunas). Too violent modification of the natural order has repeatedly disorganized the land's capacity for self-renewal. Floods, erosion, dustbowls, and pests are not only evils in themselves, but symptoms of such disorganization.

Conservation education does not, as yet, deal with these basic concepts of harmony between land-use and land-health. It must do so if we are able to achieve a stable land-economy."