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Shelford's main problem with the WS was its promotion of rough-rider wilderness
recreation, which he viewed with something of the same contempt that present-day
leave-no-trace wilderness adventurers view snow-mobile and dirt-bike off-road rec-
reation. And that was indeed so big and so real a problem, Leopold realized, as to be
a deal breaker. Leopold thus had to lead the members of the wilderness society
toward a more refi ned form of wilderness recreation and to convince Shelford that
such a change was afoot. Leopold ( 1941 , p. 3) ends “Wilderness as a Land
Laboratory” with these three sentences: “All wilderness areas, no matter how small
or imperfect have a large value to science. The important thing is to realize that
recreation is not their only or even their principal utility. In fact, the boundary
between recreation and science, like the boundaries between park and forest, animal
and plant, tame and wild, exists only in the imperfections of the human mind.” With
the fi rst sentence Leopold addresses the scale issue—small preserves are also good
and should not be snubbed by WS members. With the second, he downgrades the
importance of recreation for future WS policy.
The third sentence cryptically suggests that recreation and science might not be
altogether distinct activities. In two essays, “Conservation Esthetic” and “Wildlife
in American Culture”—one antedating “Land Laboratory,” one following it, both of
which eventually found their way into A Sand County Almanac —Leopold ( 1938 ,
1943 ) envisions wildlife research and husbandry to become the ultimate form of
outdoor recreation or sport. In his initial pitch to the ESA, Leopold put it this way:
The [Wilderness] Society as now constituted is interested mainly in wilderness recreation .
Another group, the Ecological Society, is interested mainly in wilderness study . There is
little or no cooperation between the two groups, though both need the same changes in
public policy.
What needs to be done, I think, is to persuade both groups that wilderness recreation is
destined to become more “studious,” and wilderness studies more and more appreciative of
esthetics, i.e., recreation. Therefore the two groups should get acquainted ( fi d e Warren
2008 , p. 98).
Note that Leopold here indicates that the membership of the ESA could also
stand some refi nement. A hallmark of Leopold's worldview is that embedded within
the sciences of evolutionary biology and ecology—both in the practice of those sci-
ences and in what those sciences reveal about nature—is a vast reservoir of aesthetic
and spiritual potential, which most scientists fail to actualize. Just at the moment
that he was attempting to ally the WS and the ESA, Leopold indulged himself in a
little public fi t of frustration at the insensitivity of science and scientists to the quasi-
religious nature of their vocation and the deeply moving beauty of their revelations.
Addressing his fellow-members of the Wildlife Society at its annual meeting,
Leopold ( 1940 , p. 338, emphasis added) said point blank, “We are not scientists. We
disqualify ourselves at the outset for professing loyalty to and affection for a thing:
wildlife. A scientist in the old sense may have no loyalties except to abstractions, no
affections except for his own kind.” He went on with palpable pique:
The defi nitions of science written by, let us say, the National Academy, deal almost exclu-
sively with the creation and exercise of power. But what about the creation and exercise of
wonder, of respect for workmanship in nature? I see hints of such dissent, even in the
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