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Life Lessons from “A Sand County Almanac”Aldo Leopold

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Nyack College, 15 April 2015

Dr. Carlos F. A. Pinkham, Professor Emeritus of Biology, Norwich University, Northfield, VT

http://www.news.wisc.edu/13501

http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/

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Lesson one:Once a (Pink) ham, always a (Pink) ham

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Lesson two:Aldo Leopold was one of several who looked back to look forward.

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Prior to 1850, exploration and exploitation1854

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods1860’s -1920’s, growing drive for conservation

1898Ernest Thomson Seton, Wild Animals I have Known

1911John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra

1920’s-1960’s, growing drive for wilderness preservation1949

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac1962

Rachel Carson, Silent SpringAfter 1960’s, growing environmental movement

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Lesson two:Aldo Leopold was one of several who looked back to look forward.

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Lesson three:There is a fine line

between Stellar and Stupid.

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Between the time I graduated from college, entered grad school and began my professional career, the

Environmental Movement transitioned from a loosely organize “Earth Day” to many firmly established national

laws.

Interestingly, all of the following came under one President

National Environmental Policy Act-1970Clean Air Act-1970

Water Pollution Control Act-1972Marine Protection, Research, & Sanctuaries Act-1972

Endangered Species Act-1973Safe Drinking Water Act-1974

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This same President is credited with other important accomplishments:

Detente with an enemy,Unilateral cessation of open air

testing of offensive chemical and biological weapons systems.

Who was he?

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Let’s have a little fun and see how many know.

Write your answer on one of the pieces of paper you were handed when you came in and

fold it in half with the answer to the inside.

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When I say “Go,” hand the paper to the person designated in the following diagram and continue to pass that paper on as indicated until I say, “Stop.”

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Who is holding a slip that says:

Eisenhower? (53-61) 34 8

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Who is holding a slip that says:

Eisenhower? (53-61) 34 8

Kennedy? (61-63) 35 2

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Who is holding a slip that says:

Eisenhower? (53-61) 34 8

Kennedy? (61-63) 35 2

Johnson? (63-69) 36 6

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Who is holding a slip that says:

Eisenhower? (53-61) 34 8

Kennedy? (61-63) 35 2

Johnson? (63-69) 36 6

Nixon? (69-74) 37 5

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Who is holding a slip that says:

Eisenhower? (53-61) 34 8

Kennedy? (61-63) 35 2

Johnson? (63-69) 36 6

Nixon? (69-74) 37 5

Ford? (74-77) 38 3

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Who is holding a slip that says:

Eisenhower? (53-61) 34 8

Kennedy? (61-63) 35 2

Johnson? (63-69) 36 6

Nixon? (69-74) 37 5

Ford? (74-77) 38 3

Carter? (77-81) 39 4

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Who is holding a slip that says:

Eisenhower? (53-61) 34 8

Kennedy? (61-63) 35 2

Johnson? (63-69) 36 6

Nixon? (69-74) 37 5

Ford? (74-77) 38 3

Carter? (77-81) 39 4

Regan? (81-89) 40 8

GW Bush? (89-93) 41 4

Clinton? (93-01) 41 8

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Who is holding a slip that says:

Eisenhower? (53-61) 34 8

Kennedy? (61-63) 35 2

Johnson? (63-69) 36 6

Nixon? (69-74) 37 5

Ford? (74-77) 38 3

Carter? (77-81) 39 4

Regan? (81-89) 40 8

GHW Bush? (89-93) 41 4

Clinton? (93-01) 41 8

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Who is holding a slip that says:

Eisenhower? (53-61) 34 8

Kennedy? (61-63) 35 2

Johnson? (63-69) 36 6

Nixon? (69-74) 37 5

Ford? (74-77) 38 3

Carter? (77-81) 39 4

Regan? (81-89) 40 8

GHW Bush? (89-93) 41 4

Clinton? (93-01) 41 8

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Who is holding a slip that says:

Eisenhower? (53-61) 8 34

Kennedy? (61-63) 2 35

Johnson? (63-69) 6 36

Nixon? (69-74) 7 37

Ford? (74-77) 3 38

Carter? (77-81) 4 39

Regan? (81-89) 8 40

GW Bush? (89-93) 4 41

Clinton? (93-01) 8 41

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Lesson three:There is a fine line

between Stellar and Stupid.

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Lessons four and five:Familiarity Does not

Breed Contempt & the Difference Between an OK Man and a Great Man is a Notebook.

http://edison.mpls.k12.mn.us/uploads/na_blank_map.gif26

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Woodlore Science knows little about home range: how big it is at various seasons, what food and cover it must include, when and how it is defended against trespass, and whether ownership is an individual, family, or group affair. These are the fundamentals of animal economics, or ecology. Every farm is a textbook on animal ecology; woodsmanship is the translation of the book.

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WoodloreWildlife Study

To band a bird is to hold a ticket in a great lottery. Most of us hold tickets on our own survival, but we buy them from the insurance company, which knows too much to sell us a really sporting chance. It is an exercise in objectivity to hold a ticket on the banded sparrow that falleth, or on the banded chickadee that may some day re-enter your trap, and thus prove that he is still alive.

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WoodloreWildlife StudyCamping

Man always kills the thing he loves, and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may, I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in. Of what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?

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WoodloreWildlife StudyCampingCanoeing

It is the part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it. To return not only spoils a trip, but tarnishes a memory. It is only in the mind that shining adventure remains forever bright. For this reason, I have never gone back to the Delta of the Colorado since my brother and I explored it, by canoe, in 1922.

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WoodloreWildlife StudyCampingCanoeingPlant Study

He who hopes for spring with upturned eye never sees so small a thing as Draba. He who despairs of spring with downcast eye steps on it, unknowing. He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance. …Sand too poor and sun too weak for bigger, better blooms are good enough for Draba. After all it is no spring flower, but only a postscript to a hope.

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WoodloreWildlife StudyCampingCanoeingBack PackingFishing

We found the main stream so low …and so warm that we could duck in its deepest pool without a shout…. We asked that stream for trout, and it gave us a chub. … Two hundred miles of hot, dusty road we had come, to feel again the impetuous tug of a disillusioned brook or rainbow. There were no trout. But this, we now remembered, was a stream of parts. High up near the headwaters we had once seen a fork, narrow, deep, and fed by cold springs …. What would a self-respecting trout do in such weather? Just what we did: go up.

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WoodloreWildlife StudyCampingCanoeingBack PackingFishingHunting

There are two kinds of hunting: ordinary hunting, and ruffed-grouse hunting. There are two places to hunt grouse: ordinary places, and Adams County. There are two times to hunt in Adams: ordinary times, and when the tamaracks are smoky gold. This is written for those luckless ones who have never stood, gun empty and mouth agape, to watch the golden needles come sifting down, while the feathery rocket that knocked them off sails unscathed into the jackpines.

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WoodloreWildlife StudyCampingCanoeingBack PackingFishingHuntingFalconry

The most glamorous hobby I know today is the revival of falconry. It has a few addicts in America….For two and a half cents one can buy and shoot a cartridge that will kill the heron whose capture by hawking requires months or years of laborious training of both the hawk and hawker.

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WoodloreWildlife StudyCampingCanoeingBack PackingFishingHuntingFalconryForaging

It is evident that our plant biases are in part traditional. If your grandfather liked hickory nuts, you will like the hickory tree because your father told you to. If, on the other hand, your grandfather burned a log carrying a poison ivy vine and recklessly stood in the smoke, you will dislike the species, no matter with what crimson glories it warms your eyes each fall.

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WoodloreWildlife StudyCampingCanoeingBack PackingFishingHuntingFalconryForagingFarming

The wielder of an axe has as many biases as there are species of trees on his farm. In the course of the years he imputes to each species, from his responses to their beauty or utility, and their responses to his labors for or against them, a series of attributes that constitute a character. I am amazed to learn what diverse characters different men impute to one and the same tree.

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WoodloreWildlife StudyCampingCanoeingBack PackingFishingHuntingFalconryForagingFarmingTeaching

The present educational marathon in memorizing the geography of bones is the aftermath of this perfectly logical process of competition. It has, of course, other justifications. Medical students need it; zoology teachers need it. But I contend that the average citizen does not need it so badly as he needs some understanding of the living world.

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WoodloreWildlife StudyCampingCanoeingBack PackingFishingHuntingFalconryForagingFarmingTeaching

Note taking*

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WoodloreWildlife StudyCampingCanoeingPlant StudyFishingHuntingFalconryForagingFarmingTeaching

Note taking*

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WoodloreWildlife StudyCampingCanoeingPlant StudyFishingHuntingFalconryForagingFarmingTeaching

Note taking*

WoodloreWildlife StudyCampingCanoeingPlant StudyFishingHuntingFalconryForagingFarmingTeaching

Note taking+

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Falconry Falconry

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Lesson four:Familiarity Does not

Breed Contempt.

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Note taking*Profusely

Published > 500 articles, essays and reports and his papers contain at least 500 more unpublished essays, reports, and memoranda of significance.

Note taking+

Very little

Published > 10 articles, essays and reports and his papers contain at least 25 more unpublished essays, reports, and memoranda of significance.

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Lesson four:Lesson five:

the Difference Between an OK Man and a

Great Man is a Notebook.

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Lesson Six: Scientists and Citizen-

Scientists can write beautiful prose.

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Odyssey, pp 111-114

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One way we seek to understand the relationship between deterministic and stochastic processes is to run our models many times for the same set of prescribed external climate forcings such as solar variability and changing greenhouse gas concentrations. We can then look at the multiple runs to identify which aspects are similar (or deterministic) and which are dissimilar (due to stochastic processes). What we findis that deterministic processes generally have long timescales on the order of a decade or more, while stochastic variability occurs on shorter timescales. --Ackerman, PSCF, 66(4), p 244

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One way we seek to understand the relationship between deterministic and stochastic processes is to run our models many times for the same set of prescribed external climate forcings such as solar variability and changing greenhouse gas concentrations. We can then look at the multiple runs to identify which aspects are similar (or deterministic) and which are dissimilar (due to stochastic processes). What we findis that deterministic processes generally have long timescales on the order of a decade or more, while stochastic variability occurs on shorter timescales. --Ackerman, PSCF, 66(4), p 244

Our models show us that from day-to-day or even year-to-year, our weather is variable because of random processes. But more forceful processes, working over longer periods of time, override the short-term, random fluctuations to give us confident predictions from decade-to-decade or longer.

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Lesson Six: Scientists and Citizen-

Scientists can write beautiful prose.

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Lesson Seven:God is calling all of us

to develop an environmental ethic!

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Goose Music, pp 228-232

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http://www.lloydspitalnikphotos.com/v/warblers/cerulean_warbler/cerulean_warbler_R2D2354.jpg.html

Woodthrush song

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“God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’” Gen 1:28

Global Population

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“God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’” Gen 1:28

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“God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’” Gen 1:28

“The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” Gen 2:15

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“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” 1 Peter 4:10

“God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’” Gen 1:28

“The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” Gen 2:15

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Species Extinction Rates Over Time

Lect 10

0.5 species out of every 1000 went extinct every 1000 yrs.

90 species out of every 1000 goes extinct every 1000 yrs.

7000 species out of every 1000 will go extinct every 1000 yrs!!!!

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Species Extinction Rates Over Time

Lect 10

7000 species out of every 1000 will go extinct every 1000 yrs!!!!

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Lesson Seven:God is calling all of us

to develop an environmental ethic!

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Thank You!

Questions?