1. American Conservation Philosophy and its Critique
07_08.ppt
American Conservation Philosophy and its Critique
Professor Bob Sandmeyer

2. Conservation Philosophies I
Review
Conservation Philosophies I
Muir – Conservation as preservation
Pinchot – Conservation as sustainable development

3. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies I
Three Important Figures
Theodore Roosevelt ( )
26th POTUS (President of the United States) –
The Conservation President
Protected 93 million hectares – primarily in the American West, established numerous reserves, parks, and forests, and fostered great irrigation projects
Exemplified an American machismo
"I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for the life of ease but for the life of strenuous endeavor." – "The Strenuous Life," April 1899
machismo: strong or aggressive masculine pride.

4. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies I
Three Important Figures
John Muir ( )
Private citizen: writer, naturalist
Sought to protect the most unique and important American wild areas, especially in the Sierras, from private commercialization and utilitarian governmental exploitation
Preservationist conservation ethic
"It is impossible to overestimate the value of wild mountains and mountain temples as places for people to grow in, recreation grounds for soul and body. They are the greatest of our natural resources, God's best gifts, but none, however high and holy, is beyond reach of the spoiler" - The Hetch Hetchy Valley, 1908.

5. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies I
Three Important Figures
Gifford Pinchot ( )
America’s first Chief Forester
Advanced Th. Roosevelt's Progressive Party conservationist ideals
Transferred USFS from Department of Interior to Department of Agriculture
In 1905 the forest reserves numbered 60 units covering 56 million acres (22.7 million hectares); in 1910 there were 150 national forests covering 172 million acres (69.6 million hectares).
Utilitarian conservation philosophy
With Henry S. Graves, established the Yale Forest School in 1900.

6. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies I
John Muir – Selected Readings
What is the Hetch Hetchy, and why does Muir want to protect it?
Is Muir a mystic in regard to nature?
Gifford Pinchot – The Fight for Conservation, excerpted
How does Pinchot's conception of the first duty of the human race differ from John Muir's conception of the human relation to nature?
What does conservation mean to Pinchot?

7. Conservation Philosophies II
Aldo Leopold and the idea of a land (i.e., an ecological) ethic

8. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
Aldo Leopold – The Land Ethic
What is land according to Leopold?
By what criteria does Leopold consider a thing (i.e., an act or a policy) right?
Leopold – Collaborative Conservation
What lesson does the Coon Valley Cooperative teach?
What does conservation mean to Leopold?

9. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
Aldo Leopold ( )
Important Writings
Game Management (1933)
A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There (1949)
Completed the “Great Possessions” in 1948
7 days before his death, Leopold received notification from Oxford University Press of the acceptance of his manuscript for publication – aka A Sand County Almanac (1949)
final editing overseen by his oldest son, Luna B. Leopold

10. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
Aldo Leopold ( )
Graduated Yale Forest School 1909
first job in newly formed US Forest Service in the Arizona and New Mexico territories
Became supervisor of Carson National Forest in New Mexico in 1912
Assigned game and fish management duties in US Forest Service in 1915
Recommended (1922) that Gila region of New Mexico be set aside as a wilderness preserve
Gila National Wilderness Area established in 1924
National Wilderness Act established in 1964, 40 years later

11. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
Aldo Leopold ( )
1924: transferred to Wisconsin in 1924 to work at the Forest Products Laboratory
1928: leaves Forest Products Lab to conduct game surveys of Midwestern states, funded by the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute
1933: Appointed chair of game management at University of Wisconsin – Madison in the Agricultural Economics Department

12. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
Aldo Leopold ( )
1935
Purchases shack, 80 acre used up farm
Practices conservation as restoration and maintenance of land health
My own farm was selected for its lack of goodness and its lack of highway; indeed my whole neighborhood lies in a backwash of the River Progress."
Background to much of A Sand County Almanac
Assists in founding of The Wilderness Society
1939: changes name of Department of Game Management to Department of Wildlife Management

13. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
Aldo Leopold ( )
1948: dies fighting a brush fire on neighbor's property
"It is warm being the driftwood now, for the wind has gone with the geese. So would I - if I were the wind."

14. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
Aldo Leopold ( )
"Conservation, viewed in its entirety, is the slow and laborious unfolding of a new relationship between people and land.”
Conservation best defined not with a pen but with an axe.
"A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke he is writing his signature on the face of the land."

15. "The Land Ethic" "The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the
community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals; or
collectively: the land." (204)

16. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
"The Land Ethic"
our first non-anthropocentric conservation philosophy
"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" (224-25)
What is land?

17. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
"The Land Ethic"
our first non-anthropocentric conservation philosophy
"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" (224-25)
What is land?
An eco-centric ethic

18. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
"The Land Ethic" – structure of essay
(Intro)
The Ethical Sequence
The Community Concept
The Ecological Conscience
Substitutes for a Land Ethic
Land Pyramid
Land Health and the A-B Cleavage
The Outlook

19. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
"The Land Ethic" – structure of essay
(Introduction)
Odysseus story
Odysseus returns home after 20 years away
Homer, The Odyssey – ancient Greek epic poem approx. 3,000 years old
Aim of Leopold's retelling?
"This hanging involved no question of propriety. The girls were property." (201)

20. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
"The Land Ethic" – structure of essay
Ethical Sequence
Evolutionary ethics
Earliest – inter-individual ethic
concerned relations between individuals
Developed – social ethic/politics
relations between individuals and society
A land ethic – ecological ethic
"an evolutionary possibility and an ecological necessity" (203)
Relations to Land
property relation (economic value)
ethical relation (philosophical value)

21. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
"The Land Ethic" – structure of essay
The Community Concept
Abrahamic ethics, Genesis 1:26-28
(26) "And God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and they shall rule over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the heaven an dover the animals and over all the earth and over all the creeping things that creep upon the earth. (27) And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."

22. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
"The Land Ethic" – structure of essay
The Community Concept
Abrahamic ethics, Genesis 1:26-28
(28) "And God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the sky an dover the beasts that tread upon the earth."

23. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
"The Land Ethic" – structure of essay
Ethical Sequence & Community Concept
Anthropocentrism
Strong
Locke
Weak
Muir

24. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
"The Land Ethic" – structure of essay
Ethical Sequence & Community Concept
the land pyramid

25. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
"The Land Ethic" – structure of essay
Ecological Conscience
Ecological concept of land as community
"A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects the conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to
understand and preserve this capacity."
(221)
"The 'key-log' which
must be moved to release
the evolutionary process for
an ethic is simply this: quit thinking
about decent land-use as solely an economic
problem." (224)
Abrahamic concept of land as a commodity

26. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
"The Land Ethic" – structure of essay
(Intro)
Odysseus story
The Ethical Sequence
Intro to evolution in our ethics
The Community Concept
Intro to land concept: biotic community
Ecological interpretation of history (KY)
The Ecological Conscience
Enlightened self-interest
Conscience (internal change)
Substitutes for a Land Ethic
Economic valuation of land
Ethical obligations (health, integrity)
Land Pyramid
Mental image of land mechanism
Land Health and the A-B Cleavage
Land as property
Land as biota
The Outlook
Value: narrow vs. philosophical sense
Intellectual and emotional change

27. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
"The Land Ethic" – structure of essay
The A-B Cleavage
Government regulation or policy – no substitute
"It assumes falsely, I think, that the economic parts of the biotic clock will function without the uneconomic parts." (197a)
Relations to Land
property relation (economic value)
ethical relation (philosophical value)
Conqueror
Defined by arrogance
paradigm of master/slave relations
slave has mere instrumental value in relation to master
Plain member and citizen
Defined by humility
plain member and citizen of biotic community
farmer as vanguard
requires an "internal change in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections, and convictions" (196)

28. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
farmer as vanguard
Enlightened self-interest → Ecological conscience

29. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
Coon Valley Farmer Cooperative
farmer as vanguard
Enlightened self-interest → Ecological conscience

30. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
"Coon Valley: an Adventure in Cooperative Conservation" (1935)
"The crux of the land problem is to show that integrated use is possible on private farms.
farmer as vanguard
C.C.C.
the Civilian Conservation Core
 Drought in 1930; by 1934, the Great Plains turned to dust

31. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
"Coon Valley: an Adventure in Cooperative Conservation" (1935)
A new approach to conservation
Old way: to impose a conservation plan on the land
New way: "to reorganize and gear up farming, forestry, game cropping, erosion control, scenery, or whatever values may be involved so that the collectively comprise a harmonious balanced system of land-use" (218)
Coon Valley – a demonstration of integrated land-use on eroded farms
Farmers, foresters, game managers, economists, engineers
Effort: to rebuild and stabilize a countryside

32. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
"The Farmer as a Conservationist" (1939)
"Conservation means harmony between men and land." (255)
One hand: conservation means wise use, i.e., restrained use
Other hand: conservation means "a positive exercise of skill and insight" (257)
"Ideas, like men, can become dictators." (259)
Conservation is the self-liberation from the doctrine of ruthless utilitarianism
Insight and skill
"conservation implies self-expression in that landscape, rather than blind compliance with economic dogma" (263)
mixture of wild and tame

33. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
"Conservation: in Whole or in Part" (1944)
"Conservation is a state of health in the land."
"the land should retain as much of its original membership as is compatible with human land use" (315)
Land-mechanism / land organism – too complex to be understood
"if conservation on private lands is to be motivated solely by profit, no unified conservation is even remotely possible." (317)
Conservation as a farming practice
Community obligation
Not merely an opportunity for profit

34. Unit Two: Conservation Philosophies II
Aldo Leopold – The Land Ethic
What is land according to Leopold?
By what criteria does Leopold consider a thing (i.e., an act or a policy) right?
Leopold – Collaborative Conservation
What lesson does the Coon Valley Cooperative teach?
What does conservation mean to Leopold?