Wildlife Conservation
Simply defined, conservation means the wise use of natural resources without wasting them.
Walden Pond
The philosophical origins of conservation arose with ancient civilizations (perhaps as far back as Biblical times or during Kublai Khan’s 13th century dynasty) and persisted in Native American beliefs. Writers like Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Muir championed conservation ideals in the mid-1800s. During this time, wildlife conservation emerged as a social and political movement in the United States as “sport hunters” decried the devastating losses of wildlife caused by “market hunters” who hunted for profit.
In the latter years of the 19th century, conservation was promoted as an ethical relationship between people, land and resources where wise use of lands and resources preserved their capacity to serve future generations. Advocates for this idea included sportsmen and outdoor enthusiasts like Theodore Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnell, Aldo Leopold, William Hornaday and Gifford Pinchot.
Progressive thinking by these men and others resulted in the first national conservation laws, formation of government agencies to manage natural resources and lands in the public trust, and establishment of the extensive system of national forests, parks, wildlife refuges and public lands that now encompass about one-third of the United States.
In this framework, Aldo Leopold proposed a seminal idea that populations of wild animals and plants could best be perpetuated through the active study, protection and, where necessary, restoration of their habitats. Building on his idea that wildlife conservation was more than stringing along a dwindling supply of animals, more recent conservation efforts take an expanded integrative approach that draws on appropriate biological, ecological, philosophical, social and economic principles in efforts to wisely use, protect, manage and restore our renewable natural resources.
Press the play button (►) above to start the video.
Video Transcript
Transcript for Aldo Leopold
On screen: Aldo Leopold
Producer: Gary Schafer
“There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.
I’m glad that I will not be young in a future without wilderness.”—Aldo Leopold
Speaker: Considered by many to be the Father of Wildlife Management and of the United States Wilderness System, Aldo Leopold was a conservationist, forester, philosopher, educator, writer, and outdoor enthusiast.
Jim Paxon, Arizona Game & Fish Department: Aldo Leopold was born in Burlington, Iowa, in 1887. Aldo spent his youth roaming the marshes of the Mississippi River. His dad taught him how to hunt. His mother taught him how to explore and how to pursue creative things like opera. In fact, he couldn’t get binoculars, so he used her opera glasses to watch birds when he was a young man.
Speaker: His mother also assured that he had a background in philosophy.
“We shall never achieve harmony with the land, anymore than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people.
In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve, but to strive.”—Aldo Leopold
Speaker: When Aldo was young, he reveled at exploring swamps and wetlands. He was disturbed by the plowing of prairies, by the damming of rivers, by the draining of wetlands, and the changes those actions brought on the landscape. He attended Yale, where he was trained as a forester to manage lands.
Jim Paxon: Aldo Leopold arrived in Holbrook, Arizona, after graduation from Yale Forestry School. He came to the White Mountains right where we’re standing.
Speaker: When he arrived in Arizona, he began to see things differently. He began to see a bigger picture. He began to see himself as a member of a larger community that included the land and the animals. He was more about ecosystems. He was more about man as a member of an ecological community, not a conqueror or a dictator, but one who worked in concert with his surroundings.
Jim Paxon: There was considerable conflict between the ranchers and the fledgling forest service over the regulation of grazing. Aldo married into a ranching family that grazed sheep on the Santa Fe, but from that union came harmony and understanding.
Speaker: Aldo also saw that the very things that were used to decimate wild lands—the axe, the plow, the cow, and fire—can be used to restore wild lands if used appropriately and ethically.
“The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively, the land.”—Aldo Leopold
Speaker: Ethics direct individuals to cooperate with each other for the mutual benefit of all. One of his philosophical achievements was the idea that this community should be enlarged to include non-human elements such as soils, water, plants, and animals, or collectively, the land.
“That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.
A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land.”—Aldo Leopold
Jim Paxon: Leopold’s greatest contribution was a “Land Ethic,” an essay that’s in Sand County Almanac. And yet, his premise is that man is a member of the community. The ecological community—it’s the land, it’s the animals, it’s the plants, and man’s a member. And we have to treat that community with respect and be a partner in the management of it.
Nina Leopold Bradley, Ecologist and Daughter of Aldo Leopold: The land ethic is a result of understanding the interrelationships of the natural system. It’s not something that Dad all of a sudden realized. It took him a lifetime to understand how interrelated we are with the natural system, and never did we have perspective on this until we finally grew up.
Speaker: In 1935, Aldo and his family initiated their own ecological restoration experiment on a worn-out farm along the Wisconsin River, outside of Baraboo County, Wisconsin.
Jim Paxon: It was totally decimated. All it had on it was an old shack. Everything was in bad shape. There, he began to evolve in his philosophies on caring for the land, and he was active with his family in restoring that area to be productive.
Speaker: Planting thousands of trees, restoring prairies, and documenting the ensuing changes in the flora and fauna further informed and inspired Leopold. To conservationists, that shack has come to symbolize man’s effort to build a healthier relationship between people and nature. Today, people come from all over the world to see what Aldo started so many decades ago.
Nina Leopold Bradley: It's astonishing to me and exciting to see how the shack has attracted people. My father would be absolutely amazed.
Speaker: Aldo was a hunter from his youth to his very last year of his life. He found reason in hunting.
Jim Paxon: Aldo and the district ranger Wheatley shot some wolves, and they got there in time to watch the green fire and the old she-wolf die. Aldo was a hunter. He thought less wolves meant more deer. Neither he nor the mountain agreed in later years.
“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and I’ve known ever since that there was something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and to the mountain.
I was young then, and full of trigger-itch. I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise.
But after seeing the green fire die, well I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”—Aldo Leopold
Jim Paxon: We need the wolf. But it must be managed. We need to be able to have the right number of wolves with the right number of elk with the right number of deer. It’s a study in contrasts.
“Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.”—Aldo Leopold
Jim Paxon: We gained many perspectives from Aldo Leopold and a base from which to grow. But science can’t stop. It’s an ever-evolving basis of how to manage these lands so that they are here for our children and our grandchildren and even their children. It’s a science that’s going to grow, and we must continue to strive forward.
I think that we’ve come through an era of conflict—the 80s and 90s and even into this century. We need to get away from that. We need to come to the table. We need to attack issues instead of each other. We need to be busy about seeking solutions. The land depends on us to help out with the management, as do the animals that reside on the land.
Remember, we’re one part of the community and we always want to seek solutions for the betterment of the land and the communities that live on it.
“Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them.
Now we face the question whether a still higher “standard of living” is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free.”—Aldo Leopold