Aldo Leopold (1921) The Wilderness and Its Place in Forest Recreation Policy, Journal of Forestry 19(7): 718-721

Abstract

There is no individual more closely associated with the articulation of the wilderness idea in modern America than Aldo Leopold. And with good reason: his luminous collection, Sand County Almanac And Sketches Here and There, contains essential insights into the complex relationship between humans and nature. His words were persuasive and well times. With others, he believed that wilderness must feed the culture's idea of freedom.

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There is no individual more closely associated with the articulation of the wilderness idea in modern America than Aldo Leopold. And with good reason: his luminous collection, Sand County Almanac And Sketches Here and There (1949), contains essential insights into the complex relationship between humans and nature. "Thinking like a Mountain," for example, offers a retrospective analysis of an episode in which, "full of trigger itch," Leopold gunned down a female wolf in the Arizona high country; it then details the impact of this event on his evolving conservation consciousness (Leopold 1949). That essay set up his more elaborate formulation of the significance of the wild in human affairs, most powerfully in "The Land Ethic" (Leopold 1949). Yet for all the clarity of its prose, Sand County did not become a bestseller until the 1960s when its author was "rediscovered" amidst the rise of 1960s environmentalism. But at least some of Leopold's contemporaries fully appreciated his stirring literary achievement. As the New York Times ... it, Sand County Almanac is a "trenchant book, full of beauty and vigor and bite," qualities that the Boston Globe also praised, arguing that his narrative style penetrates "directly to the heart of the subject and to the heart of the reader," establishing an emotional connection that made the book "one of the seminal works of the environmental movement." Just how important was it? The San Francisco Chronicle was convinced that Leopold's text belonged "on the shelf that holds the writings of Thoreau and John Muir."

That's much-deserved praise, but Sand County, for all its importance, embodied the mature expression of ideas Leopold had been working on for 30 years. Indeed, his conception of wilderness' vital character first appeared in the November 1921 issue of the Journal of Forestry. Don't be fooled by its unassuming title-"The Wilderness and Its Place in Forest Recreacional Policy" was declaration of profound importance. Notes Leopold biographer Curt Meine, its publication marks "a fulcrum point in the 150-year history of the public domain, and in American civilization's shifting view of its land, its development, and its own values" (Meine 1988).

Leopold could not have known the cultural import of his article, but he knew that the time had come to take a stand: did not the "principle of highest use. . .demand that representative portions of some forests be preserved as wilderness[?]" (Leopold 1921). In so arguing, Leopold, then head of operations in District (now Region) 3 of the Forest Service, deftly used the agency's prevailing ethos-"the greatest good for the greatest number in the long run"-to support his radical proposal to protect wilderness in the National Forests. "By 'wilderness,'" he declared, "I mean a continuous stretch of country preserved in its natural state, open to lawful hunting and fishing, big enough to absorb a two weeks' pack trip, and kept devoid of roads, artificial trails, cottages and other works of man" (Leopold 1921). Because the "argument for such wilderness areas is premised wholly on highest recreational use," Leopold urged the Forest Service to meet the legitimate needs of those who valued open ground and rugged terrain. "If we can foresee the demand, and make provisions for it in advance, it will save much cash and hard feelings," he declared. "It will be much easier to keep wilderness areas than to create them" (Leopold 1921).

Embedded in that last claim was Leopold's implicit recognition that his call for wilderness preservation came at the precise moment when rough country was under assault. Then at the height of the industrial revolution, the United States' economic growth was staggering; it demanded vast quantities of natural resources while drawing millions of immigrants to work in factories sited in mushrooming cities. This oncefrontier society, the Census Bureau confirmed in 1920, had become an urban nation.

The economic, environmental, and social implications of this turbulent era had inspired Leopold to assert the need to retain patches of wildness. Others in the Forest Service shared his concerns, one consequence of which was the creation of the Gila Wilderness Area in 1924, the first of many to gain their intellectual justification from Leopold's bold 1921 article in the Journal of Forestry.

His words were persuasive and well timed. With others, he believed that wilderness must "feed the culture's idea of freedom," observes Meine. "In an earlier day, it was the abundance and newness of the land that nurtured that idea. Now it would become the test of America's maturity whether it would have the wisdom. . .enough to preserve. . .the fountain of its own inspiration" (Meine 1988). With the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964, Leopold's fellow Americans demonstrated that from time to time they too could think like a mountain.

References

Literature Cited

LEOPOLD, A. 1921. The wilderness and its place in forest recreation policy. J. For. 19 (7): 718-721.

LEOPOLD, A. 1949. Sand County almanac and sketches here and there. Oxford University Press, New York. 269 p.

MEINE, C. 1988. Aldo Leopold: His life and work. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison. 638 p.