Quote

I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades.

Aldo Leopold

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Aldo Leopold
Age: 60 †
Born: 1887
Born: January 1
Died: 1948
Died: January 1
Academic
Author
Botanical Collector
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Forestry Scientist
Naturalist
Philosopher
University Teacher
Burlington
Iowa
Aldo Starker Leopold
Rand Aldo Leopold
Three
Fail
Suspect
Replacement
Two
Mountain
Pulled
Replacements
Doe
Failing
Suspects
Buck
May
Cause
Mortal
Herd
Better
Perhaps
Replaced
Wolves
Live
Causes
Mortals
Herds
Many
Lives
Range
Deer
Years
Fear
Decades
Bucks

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Land is not merely soil, it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals.
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We face the question whether a still higher standard of living is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free.
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A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter ordinarily has no gallery to applaud or disapprove of his conduct
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Education, I fear, is learning to see one thing by going blind to another.
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The practice of conservation must spring from a conviction of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right only when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the community, and the community includes the soil, waters, fauna, and flora, as well as people.
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If we lose our wilderness, we have nothing left, in my opinion, worth fighting for or to be more exact, a completely industrialized United States is of no consequence to me.
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When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may see it with love and respect. - Perhaps such a shift of values can be achieved by reappraising things unnatural, tame, and confined in terms of things natural, wild, and free.
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To those who know the speech of hills and rivers straightening a stream is like shipping vagrants—a very successful method of passing trouble from one place to the next. It solves nothing in any collective sense.
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We stand guard over works of art, but species representing the work of aeons are stolen from under our noses
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I confess my own leisure to be spent entirely in search of adventure, without regard to prudence, profit, self improvement, learning, or any other serious thing.
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No farmer-sportsman group is stronger than the ties of mutual confidence and enthusiasm which bind its members.
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The elemental simplicities of wilderness travel were thrills. They represented complete freedom to make mistakes. The wilderness gave those rewards and penalties, for wise and foolish acts against which civilization has built a thousand buffers.
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Bread and beauty grow best together. Their harmonious integration can make farming not only a business but an art the land not only a food-factory but an instrument for self-expression, on which each can play music to his own choosing.
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Every farm woodland, in addition to yielding lumber, fuel and posts, should provide its owner a liberal education. This crop of wisdom never fails, but it is not always harvested.
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Keeping records enhances the pleasure of the search and the chance of finding order and meaning in these events.
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Teach the student to see the land, understand what he sees, and enjoy what he understands.
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One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring.
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