Leopold's Article #11

Soil, plants, & sunshine

After reading Aldo Leopold’s excerpt from “A Sand County Almanac”  I began to realize how the majority of the population views conservatism and was given some insight on what needs to be done to change people’s thought and actions regarding conservation of our environment. Since the environmental movement has been brought to our attention, the general population has been viewing the environment more as a business rather than the fragile land pyramid Leopold brings up where each part of the environment is part of an organized biotic structure. We’re looking at the environment economically as if it were a corporation and we’re all accountants trying to find the economic value in each resource, which tree or plant is more economically useful than the next one. The major problem with that approach toward the environment though is that you can’t use up one resource without affecting the other. The capitalistic approach to our land will benefit it’s people temporarily but cause problems for our environment in the long run and deplete us of our resources as well.

            I strongly believe in Leopold’s Land Pyramid theory which goes to show how delicate and complex the cycle of energy is in our environment. Using up one resource such as the soil in one particular area can restructure the circle of energy, having a domino effect on the whole ecosystem and destroying important plants and animals that are crucial to our environment. We can’t be picky about which resources we need to salvage because they are more economically important than the other 95% of  resources that have no direct economic importance to humans. In the future we will start to see more thorough education on environmental conservation and more accountability will be taken for people’s actions toward how resources are being used rather then just what makes more sense economically.