A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (Mitchell Bundick)

Aldo Leopold was a biologist and conservationist known as the father of wildlife ecology and for his 1949 book A Sand County Almanac. This book criticizes humans' desire to conquer nature as opposed to living in harmony with it. Leopold challenges humanity to “think like a mountain”, meaning they should adopt a more holistic approach and recognize the complexity and interconnectedness of everything in a given ecosystem. In a mountain landscape, if wolves are removed, there would be an abundance of deer since they wouldn't have their natural predator. Humans might see this as "better," but this will result in deer consuming grass and vegetation at extremely high rates, leaving the mountainsides barren and unoccupied. This overgrazing would result in the landscape eroding over time, causing an extremely degraded ecosystem. Therefore, if humans "thought like a mountain", destruction of the ecosystem and the mountain itself would never have occurred.

When I was first introduced to the ideas of this book, I had trouble understanding what Leopold meant by thinking like a mountain. It is a somewhat abstract idea and requires thinking on an ecological level. After I began to understand it, it made sense to me why humans should adopt this way of thinking, as it favors the preservation of natural landscapes and the environment as a whole. The concept reminds me of the line between Arcadia and Suburbia as discussed in class. Humans make alterations to try to find Arcadia, but often times they create something more like Suburbia. I think if humans adopted Leopold's way of thinking, they won't have to worry about manufacturing Arcadia; Arcadia will come to us.

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