Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
7
The Web of Life:
Connections in
Space and Time
A
LDO
L
EOPOLD
,
THE FATHER OF MODERN CONSERVATION ETHICS
,
DID NOT
begin his career writing and speaking on the importance of conserving
ecosystems. Ironically, his first profession after graduating college was as a
predator control officer with the U.S. government.This job required that
he eradicate predators from wilderness areas with the express purpose of
enhancing the abundance of game species.This experience, however, left an
indelible and formative impression on him as he observed during his life-
time the consequences of systematic predator removal. He articulates that
impression in his essay “Thinking Like a Mountain” (1953), an essay that
represents the beginning of ecosystem conservation ethics.
He opens the essay by recounting his hearing a wolf 's “deep chesty bawl”
echo throughout the mountain canyons. He continues with a reflection:
In those days, we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf.... We
reached the [mortally wounded] old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire
dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was
something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and to the
mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer
wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters' paradise. But after
seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed
with such a view.
Since then, I have watched state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched
the face of many a newly wolfless mountain and seen the south-facing slopes
wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and
seedling browsed, first to anemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every
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