] 93 conservation is not enough 



ble human greed. Some despair; some hope that more 

 education and more pubhc works will, in the long run, 

 prove effective. But is there, perhaps, something more, 

 something different, which is indispensable? Is there some 

 missing link in the chain of education, law and public 

 works? Is there not something lacking without which none 

 of these is sufficient? 



After a lifetime spent in forestry, wild-life management 

 and conservation of one kind or another, after such a life- 

 time during which he nevertheless saw his country slip 

 two steps backward for every one it took forward, the late 

 Aldo Leopold pondered the question and came up with 

 an unusual answer which many people would dismiss as 

 "sentimental" and be surprised to hear from a "practical" 

 scientific man. He published his article originally in the 

 Journal of Forestry and it was reprinted in the posthu- 

 mous volume, A Sand County Almanac, where it was 

 given the seemingly neutral but actually very significant 

 title "The Land Ethic." 



This is a subtle and original essay full of ideas never so 

 clearly expressed before and seminal in the sense that 

 each might easily grow into a separate treatise. Yet the 

 conclusion reached can be simply stated. Something is 

 lacking and because of that lack education, law and public 

 works fail to accomplish what they hope to accomplish. 

 Without that something, the high-minded impulse to edu- 

 cate, to legislate and to manage become as sounding brass 

 and tinkling cymbals. And the thing which is missing is 

 love, some feeling for, as well as some understanding of, 

 the inclusive community of rocks and soils, plants and ani- 

 mals, of which we are a part. 



It is not, to put Mr. Leopold's thoughts in different 



