For the Health of the Land: Previously Unpublished Essays and Other Writings

For the Health of the Land: Previously Unpublished Essays and Other Writings

Editorial Reviews
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After helping to establish several federally protected wilderness areas and wildlife preserves in the American Southwest, the famed conservationist Aldo Leopold moved to Madison, Wisconsin, in 1924. There he worked for the U.S. Forest Service's Forest Products Laboratory, studying ways in which to make logging both more productive and less damaging. While in Madison, he also took time to write short articles for a newspaper, The Wisconsin Agriculturalist and Farmer. Many of them are gathered in this collection of previously uncollected prose pieces. Those who worked the land, Leopold believed, were best equipped to protect it; his essays touch on such matters as providing safe havens for migratory waterfowl and predatory birds, weighing the merits of artificially planted windbreaks against those of natural fencerows, and arguing that farmers should take care not to plow over plants that provide food for wildlife. Always he urges that his readers think ahead to consider the natural implications of both feast and famine. "Conservation," he notes,

is keeping the resource in working order, as well as preventing overuse. Resources may get out of order before they are exhausted, sometimes while they are still abundant. Conservation, therefore, is a positive exercise of skill and insight, not merely a negative exercise of abstinence or caution.

Admirers of Leopold's work will find much of value--but little that will be wholly new--in these pages. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Scientific American
Leopold (1886-1948) was an ecologist before ecology gained much recognition. As professor of game management (now called wildlife ecology) at the University of Wisconsin, he produced many essays on the management of land--particularly farmland--in such a way as to achieve a "harmony between men and land." The 53 essays that the editors present in this book amount to a manual on conservation. They also trace the development of modern ideas on ecology. "Doesn't conservation," Leopold wrote, "imply a certain interspersion of land-uses, a certain pepper-and-salt pattern in the warp and woof of the land-use fabric? If so, can government alone do the weaving? I think not. It is the individual farmer who must weave the greater part of the rug on which America stands." Exquisite drawings by Abigail Rorer of the wild plants and animals that were Leopold's chief concern add savor to the book. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

For the Health of the Land: Previously Unpublished Essays and Other Writings

For the Health of the Land: Previously Unpublished Essays And Other Writings,Aldo Leopold,Scott Russell Sanders,J. Baird Callicott,Eric T. Freyfogle,Island Press,1559637641,Ecology,Environmental Conservation & Protection - General,Environmental Studies,Essays,Nature,Nature/Ecology,Science / Environmental Science

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