For the Health of the Land: Previously Unpublished Essays and Other Writings Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

For the Health of the Land: Previously Unpublished Essays and Other Writings Book

After helping to establish several federally protected wilderness areas and wildlife preserves in the American Southwest, the famed conservationist Aldo Leopold moved to Madison, Wisconsin, in 1924. There he worked for the U.S. Forest Service's Forest Products Laboratory, studying ways in which to make logging both more productive and less damaging. While in Madison, he also took time to write short articles for a newspaper, The Wisconsin Agriculturalist and Farmer. Many of them are gathered in this collection of previously uncollected prose pieces. Those who worked the land, Leopold believed, were best equipped to protect it; his essays touch on such matters as providing safe havens for migratory waterfowl and predatory birds, weighing the merits of artificially planted windbreaks against those of natural fencerows, and arguing that farmers should take care not to plow over plants that provide food for wildlife. Always he urges that his readers think ahead to consider the natural implications of both feast and famine. "Conservation," he notes, is keeping the resource in working order, as well as preventing overuse. Resources may get out of order before they are exhausted, sometimes while they are still abundant. Conservation, therefore, is a positive exercise of skill and insight, not merely a negative exercise of abstinence or caution. Admirers of Leopold's work will find much of value--but little that will be wholly new--in these pages. --Gregory McNamee Read More

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  • Product Description

    Aldo Leopold's classic work A Sand County Almanac is widely regarded as one of the most influential conservation books of all time. In it, Leopold sets forth an eloquent plea for the development of a "land ethic"-a belief that humans have a duty to interact with the soils, waters, plants, and animals that collectively comprise "the land" in ways that ensure their well-being and survival.

    For the Health of the Land, a new collection of rare and previously unpublished essays by Leopold, builds on that vision of ethical land use and develops the concept of "land health" and the practical measures landowners can take to sustain it. The writings are vintage Leopold-clear, sensible, and provocative, sometimes humorous, often lyrical, and always inspiring. Joining them together are a wisdom and a passion that transcend the time and place of the author's life.

    The book offers a series of forty short pieces, arranged in seasonal "almanac" form, along with longer essays, arranged chronologically, which show the development of Leopold's approach to managing private lands for conservation ends. The final essay is a never before published work, left in pencil draft at his death, which proposes the concept of land health as an organizing principle for conservation. Also featured is an introduction by noted Leopold scholars J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle that provides a brief biography of Leopold and places the essays in the context of his life and work, and an afterword by conservation biologist Stanley A. Temple that comments on Leopold's ideas from the perspective of modern wildlife management.

    The book's conservation message and practical ideas are as relevant today as they were when first written over fifty years ago. For the Health of the Land represents a stunning new addition to the literary legacy of Aldo Leopold.

  • 1559637641
  • 9781559637640
  • Aldo Leopold
  • 31 August 2001
  • Island Press
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 264
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