At one time Lyndon LaRoche, a somewhat problematic figure who ran for
President of the US on a platform slightly to the right of Generalissimo
Franco, called Leopold a Nazi sympathizer. LaRoche's descendents have turned
into the Heartland Institute http://www.heartland.org/ which they humbly
call "the solution to every public policy problem," quite a claim. My point
was that Leopold, at the height of his career, was seen as outside the
mainstream of conservation thinking (it was one reason he was never made
Head of the wood products lab in the USFS) and that thinking continues
today. We have a tendency (except for JT apparently) to deify Leopold in EE.
In particular his ideas about predator control still can evoke ire. Here is
how he ended the chapter on predator control in _Game Management_, written
well after the incident of the wolf in SCA.

        "Epicurus wisely observed: 'It is impossible but that those who are feared
by many should themselves be in continual fear of some.' If the sportsman
will ponder this well, he may get the point: to reserve his 'courage' until
he has determined as closely as possible where his own interests lie."

The chapter of GM is one of the most explicit statements of the need to
fully understand food webs and species interactions in the entire book. I
find the ending somewhat enigmatic, not fully endorsing predator control,
which as we know Leopold had questioned for some years by then, and not
fully opposing it either. Again, I think the answer lies in Leopold's desire
to see ecological/evolutionary thinking take the place of utilitarian
"scientific" management and to be used in the formulation of ethical natural
resource policy.

Steven

   On the other hand, prophets have a way of outlasting politicians. Gandhi
has outlasted Nehru, and it appears that Confucius will outlast Mao
Tse-tung.
                                Huston Smith

-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion forum for environmental ethics.
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Chris Perley
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2001 1:49 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: green fire


> Bissell here: Actually the incident of shooting the wolf took
> place early in
> Leopold's career. He states that it was from this point that he began to
> question predator control, but he actually still endorsed it for several
> decades. Along with the perceived need to control wild fire, this was an
> issue that Leopold took a long time to change his initial ideas,
> or at least
> to publicly express them. This could have been a political decision on
> Leopold's part, both predator control and fire suppression were
> (and to some
> extent still are) sacred cows in the US Forest Service, Dept. of
> Agriculture, and US Fish and Wildlife Service.
>
> I suppose there is something to the idea that SCA was Leopold's attempt to
> put all his most radical ideas into one format. I think that it's
> interesting that Leopold is still a figure of mixed feelings in the US
> Forest Service. A couple of years ago I saw, in print, the
> statement from a
> senior Forest Service administrator that Leopold's "ideas were
> like herpes;
> impossible to get rid of.
>
> Steven


CP here:  Leopold's "conversion" from a resourcism utilitarian forester (the
early Pinchot tradition - the agronomisation of forestry) to a view that saw
more than just the cabbages all in a row, is very interesting to me.
Leopold himself documents it a little in his A-B Cleavage section of The
Land Ethic.  I see all types in the forestry profession - from resourcism
agronomists (only thes crop of cabbages for the people matter - in fact,
only *these* people matter) to preservationists (bugger all the people -
except for the urban elites who pay me to rail against the peasants with
blood and sawdust on their hands).  Leopold sits in the middle in my view.
And without doubt the lack of environmental philosophy taught in the
forestry schools encourages (or did in the early 80s anyway) the agronomic
and quantitatively-obsessed "scientific management".  As a grad student you
assume such approaches are value free - until you delve into philosophy.
Tells you a little of where Steven's FS adminsitrator is coming from.  Tells
you that they should be teaching some mandatory environmental philosophy at
undergrad level as well.  CP