Book review: Leopold writings remain hauntingly true

For those who have thought long and hard about how Aldo Leopold's land ethic plays out in today's agricultural climate, For the Health of the Land-a collection of previously unpublished and rarely read essays-provides a feast for the mind. Prepared by philosophers J. Baird Callicott and Eric Freyfogle, this collection paints a vivid picture of Leopold's evolving philosophy about the land and how private landowners might effect his vision of land health.

Several practical pieces on game management were published between 1938 and 1942 in the Wisconsin Agriculturist and Farmer. Other essays appeared in conservation and related professional publications. Had Leopold not met a premature death in 1948, many of these pieces may have found a home in a book or manual to guide land-use practices of farmers and other rural landowners. Leopold illustrates, admonishes, cajoles, but as always, is straightforward in his message to landowners:

Science knows what chemical elements occur in each star, but not why one species shrinks while another becomes a pest. If more scientists were farmers we might make faster headway on the second problem. (p. 135)

For the reader who is both hunter and land manager, the essays that appear in "Part I: Conserving Rural Wildlife" spell out how conservation and game farms can form a happy marriage, through common sense management of cover and by cooperative partnerships with landowner neighbors. Leopold defines a farmer as "one who determines the plants and animals with which he lives."

For those more interested in following the threads of Leopold's philosophies toward those that eventually comprised A Sand County Almanac, Parts II and III of the collection may prove more satisfying. For example, the well-known meditation on the mating dance of woodcocks found in A Sand County Almanac is presaged in this collection by "Sky Dance of Spring." It ends with the benediction, "More people should learn the sky dance; we cannot conserve what we do not know exists."

Perhaps most haunting are uncanny references to issues such as drought, industrialized agriculture, and land degradation for which Leopold identified and proposed solutions more than 50 years ago. He suggests that conservation may be "an interspersion of land uses, a certain pepper-and-salt pattern in the warp and woof of the land-use fabric." This sounds a lot like today's ecological diversity discussions! Leopold also looks at human factors that affect the integrity of the land. He poses the dichotomy of farm as a "food factory" and "farm-as-a-place-to-live," commenting on the former:

It was inevitable and no doubt desirable that the tremendous momentum of industrialization should have spread to farm life. It is clear to me, however, that it has overshot the mark, in the sense that it is generating new insecurities, economic and ecological, in place of those it was meant to abolish. In its extreme form, it is humanly desolate and economically unstable. These extremes will some day die of their own too-much, not because they are bad for wildlife, but because they are bad for farmers. (p. 218)

Particularly in "Part III: Conservation and Land Health," Leopold presents a good argument for pursuing "wholeness in the farm landscape," and for using both restraint and vision in the employment of land resources. "Conservation, then, is keeping the resource in working order, as well as preventing overuse," he writes, "[and] is a positive exercise of skill and insight, not merely a negative exercise of abstinence or caution."

For the Health of the Land offers wisdom and wit for anyone concerned about the state of Iowa's land and economy. While the remedy for a troubled landscape lies with those who manage the land, this collection provides instruction into the relationship of land, people and conservation for any citizen. - E. Anne Larson