A Summary of Aldo Leopold's "Sandy County Almanac"

            Have you heard the howling of the wolf? It means a lot of things for different species: for some it means the promise of the next meal; for others it means mortal danger is near; and sometimes it means a threat to livestock. It was on one faithful day when Aldo Leopold was out in the mountains, and finally heard the cry of the wolf and saw his surroundings from a new perspective: he realized that “a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain lives in mortal fear of its deer." An epiphany arose for Leopold. He used to assume that fewer wolves meant more deer, but that is not the case—because over time, more deer meant a more degraded land and fewer deer in the long run. It takes much longer for a mountain to revive than the death of one deer. Leopold now encourages mankind to strive for “peace in our time.” But what does this entail?

            There are ethical quandaries that arise when we debate the use of natural resources. With surging populations and new technologies, these issues become more complex than ever before. Ethics continue to evolve over time. The first ethic dealt with the relation between individuals; the second ethic later dealt with the individual and society; but there has been no ethic, so far, that has dealt with “man’s relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it." The issue with land and the individual has, Leopold argues, been based purely on economic terms.

            Leopold urges that the embrace of the land ethic is not only possible, but an ecological necessity. The current societal landscape does not agree on its importance. The issue is so new—so complex—that the individual cannot relate and does not see the urge or expediency to ameliorate the problem at hand. Where the community concept of ethics rests on the premise that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts, the natural instinct for the individual is to compete for a place in the community; ethics, on the other hand, implies that we cooperate.

            An ethical relation to the land cannot exist without an appreciation rooted on principles of “love, respect, and admiration” and a “high regard for its value.” The lack of educational understanding of the issues and an economically driven world are the main impediments to the land ethic. Distracted by a world of gadgetry, the outlook is dire. There is a fallacy that economics determines land use, and it is more important than ever that the land ethic takes place as a social evolution. A growing fondness for ecology is not only an intellectual pursuit, but an emotional one—and unless we think critically of our choices and the consequences of those actions, the present predicaments will only worsen over time.

Critical Thinking: What is the basic lesson of Aldo Leopold’s “Thinking Like a Mountain?”

The anecdote provided by Leopold of the wolf, the deer, and the mountain, conveys a message of dependence: we are connected with each other as species, and we depend on each other more than we know it. It is from viewing nature from a different perspective—that we depend on nature for our nourishment, our way of life—that strongly enforces this message. The interconnectedness of the landscape described by Leopold outlines the fragile balance of life on Earth. Whereas the wolf depends on the deer, the deer depends on the mountain, and without the wolf, the mountain will suffer of natural degradation from the deer. We must conserve and preserve natural landscapes for the greater good—one that involves more than humanity itself. 

Works Cited

Leopold, Aldo. “A Sand County Almanac.” Sources: Selections in Environmental Studies. Ed.
                     Thomas Easton. United States, 2014. 23-25.