Encouraging a community to be aware of the wondrous surroundings and inhabitants is the main idea I perceive from Leopold's excerpt,
A Land Ethic.
This passage begins with Leopold calling out his country for claiming to have a strong love for it's land, yet he recognizing all of the upkeep that everyone is lacking on. Stating that there are pollutants in the water, hazardous pesticides in the crops and soil, or that some of the beautiful animals of our land are being "extirpated" (Leopold, 60), Leopold's message started to hit home. When put into a perspective like this, it almost makes you feel as if you're telling a lie, whether that be to other community members or to yourself. That is probably the incentive Leopold is trying to make humanity recognize and become an active part in the land ethic. The land ethic would not give us all of this control over the environment, but would instead create us as equals with the environment.
Further, Leopold speaks more on the lack of empathy we have for the environment, based mainly on how much land we choose to conserve (Leopold, 62). From personal experience in the classroom, I have been made aware of the amount of land-just nearby my place of school-that is conserved strictly to regulate the watershed we get in a large part of Florida. I was shocked with how much land is reserved just for this as well as how much land our University saves for conservation on campus. One could argue that there is consistent development nearby as well, but I do feel that there is already a large amount of conservation land seen just in Southwest Florida. Leopold does recognize that this is progressing, but it is at a very slow rate and that this slow rate is due to the lack of education everyone receives about land conservation (Leopold, 62). At FGCU, we're lucky to be part of this small number that receives education, I will admit that. But as of right now, I do not feel that the amount of land we conserve needs to be rapidly progressing because at this point, it seems as if Leopold want the land to take over, even where we already live. He may want to see our construction and development torn down just so we can carry out the land ethic, but at this point I feel that would be extreme.
...to an extent
I find it funny that Leopold extends the reasoning of land ethic to the birds, motioning that they have a biotic right. This is his segway into saying that we, as a country and community, need to have land ethic, seeing as we do not have it yet (Leopod, 65). But he further speaks of the economic advantage we hold (Leopold, 65). I'm not too clear on what he means by economic advantage, but I can conclude that he means we are the dominant species that controls the rest of the environment. I could see this as true, but because we are doing all of this legwork for the environment, isn't that making the birds and plants and ecosystems dominate us?
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