Quote

The road to conservation is paved with good intentions that often prove futile, or even dangerous, due to a lack of understanding of either land or economic land use.

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
Even
Prove
Paved
Good
Dangerous
Futile
Land
Conservation
Either
Intentions
Economic
Dues
Understanding
Intention
Use
Lack
Often
Road

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The wind that makes music in November corn is in a hurry. The stalks hum, the loose husks whisk skyward in half-playing swirls, and the wind hurries on.... A tree tries to argue, bare limbs waving, but there is no detaining the wind.
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Thus far we have considered the problem of conservation of land purely as an economic issue. A false front of exclusively economic determinism is so habitual to Americans in discussing public questions that one must speak in the language of compound interest to get a hearing.
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In that year [1865] John Muir offered to buy from his brother ... a sanctuary for the wildflowers that had gladdened his youth. His brother declined to part with the land, but he could not suppress the idea: 1865 still stands in Wisconsin history as the birth-year of mercy for things natural, wild, and free.
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Man brings all things to the test of himself, and this is notably true of lightning.
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The rich diversity of the world's cultures reflects a corresponding diversity in the wilds that gave them birth.
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Twenty centuries of 'progress' have brought the average citizen a vote, a national anthem, a Ford, a bank account, and a high opinion of himself, but not the capacity to live in high density without befouling and denuding his environment, nor a conviction that such capacity, rather than such density, is the true test of whether he is civilized.
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Wildlife administration, in this respect, is not yet a profession.
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To build a road is so much simpler than to think of what the country really needs.
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To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.
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How would you like to have a thousand brilliantly colored cliff swallows keeping house in the eaves of your barn, and gobbling up insects over your farm at the rate of 100,000 per day? There are many Wisconsin farmsteads where such a swallow-show is a distinct possibility.
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On motionless wing they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a final arc of sky, and settle in clangorous descending spirals to their feeding grounds. A new day has begun on the crane marsh.
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In our attempt to make conservation easy, we have made it trivial.
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There is time not only to see who has done what, but to speculate why.
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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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Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient.
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Your woodlot is, in fact, an historical document which faithfully records your personal philosophy.
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The landscape of any farm is the owner's portrait of himself.
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The first law of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts
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What a dull world if we knew all about geese!
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The hope of the future lies not in curbing the influence of human occupancy - it is already too late for that - but in creating a better understanding of the extent of that influence and a new ethic for its governance.
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