Book Review of The Land Ethic by Aldo Leopold
“The Land Ethic” by Aldo Leopold “The Land Ethic”is an individual essay that was collected from the major publication “The Sand County Almanac” written by Aldo Leopold during his life time, and it was published one year after his death in 1949. This essay was read by many people during his lifetime and was a powerful force in ecological sphere for many years. Leopold collected all his knowledge in this major publication, and in “The Land Ethic” he calls for people's attention in order to preserve the environment, protect the land from changing, and protect species from the extinction. Aldo Leopold in “The Lend Ethic” explains to his readers what is meant by land ethic. It's a sort of combination of rules about what is right and what is wrong, and Leopold writes that it “is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community” and “is wrong when it tends otherwise”. In the chapter “The Ecological Conscience” Leopold writes that this ecological set of “rules” can not be written down on a paper as a book of laws, because “obligations have no meaning without conscience, and the problem we face is the extension of the social conscience from people to land”. What the author means is that people must take action by following the rules either written on paper or not. “Education must precede rules” writes Leopold in his essay. People should be more educated regarding the conservations they have and understand that without land ethic there is going to be no “place to compete for”. In my point of view, Leopold is absolutely right at this point and as a result, we can see thousands of species that are already extinct forever from the face of the planet. Our future generations will not have a chance to see them. As an example, Wikipedia Encyclopedia gives a wide variety of those species that were extinct and will never be seen on this planet. The tragic part is that most of those species disappeared as a result of