A Sand Country Almanac excerpt summary

    Aldo Leopold discusses in his article the ignorance of man and how we try re-shaping nature without realizing that nature knows best how to maintain a balance. We used to kill off the wolves from mountains thinking that less wolves means more deer, which is a hunters paradise. However in reality without the wolves to keep the deer's population in check, their numbers explode. Thus leads to the deer eating every edible bush and seedling which in tern leads to the mountain side being barren of any new edible plant growth. Once the deer have eaten everything they start dying off for lack of food and ultimately the decline of the entire eco-system on the mountain.

    The problem with people and our outlook towards the land is that we value it strictly from an economic point of view. When we think about sustainable land use we are still thinking economically. If we could step away from the idea of land as an investment and instead think of it as a living being upon which we share a emotional and physical connection with we may be able to get a better understanding of its operation and come up with better land ethics. Individuals have realized the importance of land ethics for many years, however society still has not realized this. Today's conservation movement is the first step society has made towards coming up with proper land use ethics and hopefully will change society's current economic view of land into a compassionate understanding for land and all of its creatures.