Selection 4

A Sand County Almanac

Aldo Leopold

In the start of this selection Leopold comes to realize over time that wolfs create a dynamic balance of deer on the mountain. After he sees the wolf disappear and the deer population increase the mountain becomes ravished and stripped of all its resources. He realizes that a buck killed by a wolf will be replaced in three years but a mountain destroyed by too many deer will take decades to replenish. He realizes that what humans perceive to be a better solution for everybody is not always correct.

Ethics play an important role in human environment. An ethic may be regarded as a mode of guidance for meeting ecological situations. Ethics between individuals and society, and man's relation to land, along with the extension of ethics have caused many different arguments between philosophers. What is also important is that all ethics involve the individual as a member of a community of interdependent parts.

We must quit thinking about land-use as an economic problem and examine each question in terms of what is ethically right. The belief that economics determines all land use is not true. The evolution of land ethics is an intellectual and emotional process. Good intentions can be futile but also dangerous which is what Leopold came to realize after witnessing the wolf population decrease.