Analysis Of Land Ethic By Aldo Leopold

For a long time human ignorance and our ethical values have destroyed and diminished the land that surrounds us. In the “Land Ethic” by Aldo Leopold, the need for an ethic directed towards the creatures and land around us is stressed upon. Leopold mentions how a lack of an ecological conscience, a valuation problem, and a restricted vision of community result in the hindrance of a comprehensive operating system, known as the land pyramid. The absence of our care for our natural surroundings can also be seen in the four forms of human denial of extinction mentioned in The Once and Future World by J.B. McKinnon. The forms of denial being, ascribing to God, refusal to believe in extinction, forgetting about a species itself, and scientific denial. …show more content…
This can be seen as handing over the responsibility to God for making sure that no species will go extinct, and that any destruction done by mankind will be fixed by God. In relation to an ecological conscience, ascribing to God prevents a developed conscience towards natural beings, due to the reliance placed on God. McKinnon specifically mentions Thomas Jefferson sending Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to find mammoths in the American West, “[a]s proof that the Christian God would not allow any of his flock to disappear from earth” (28). This example showing how even the most influential personalities were ascribing to God as a form of denial. The need for abolishing our dependence on God is crucial in order to understand the need for our care for the other species that inhabit the planet and is an obstruction in developing an ecological conscience and a Leopoldian land …show more content…
McKinnon speaks of the extinction of the thylacine and how scientists simply blamed it on the thylacine’s stupidity and its struggle to adapt with the rest of the ecological system (29). When in reality it was the fault of humans and our carelessness to not have taken care of the thylacine. The problem here is a restricted sense of community where the thyalcine was simply seen as an unnecessary evil and not just another being that could have been part of the community. McKinnon also mentioned how before colonizers, the Aborgines were able to live alongside the thylacine and how they were smart creatures and could also be great for pets (30). The inherent problem of scientific denial is that the ‘weak’ and the ‘unwanted’ are already excluded from a community that humans are already struggling to form. That blaming it on the animals themselves for their self-destruction causes us to break any chance of a combined community between species and a land