Abstract
Creative interdisciplinary thinkers in the history of both ecology and ethics have ventured beyond their disciplinary boundaries and into the zone where they overlap. Prominent among these was Aldo Leopold. While serving as president of the Ecological Society of America in 1947, Leopold called for a “land ethic” that integrated insights from ecology, history, ethics, and aesthetics. Prompted especially by developments in science and technology following World War II, Leopold was part of a broader community of contemporaries concerned with these portentous changes. In retrospect, we can see Leopold’s special contribution as a defining moment in the discourse connecting conservation science, ethics, policy, and practice. That discourse continues, especially in emerging interdisciplinary fields, even as our critical environmental concerns renders the need for integrated thinking ever more apparent and immediate.
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Notes
- 1.
All correspondence quoted here can be found in the Ecological Society of America files in the Aldo Leopold Papers of the University of Wisconsin Archives. The Leopold Papers are available on-line at http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/AldoLeopold. Portions of this essay were originally presented in Minding Nature (2009), the on-line journal of the Center for Humans and Nature, at http://www.humansandnature.org/august-2009---vol-2--num-2-minding_nature-7.php
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Acknowledgments
For their helpful insights and suggestions on this essay, I thank my colleagues J. Baird Callicott, Bruce Jennings, Estella Leopold, and Stan Temple, as well as the many attendees at the 2011 Cary Institute Conference, and the support provided by the National Science Foundation (SES-1058163, DEB −1057538) and the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity ( ICM-P05, and CONICYT-FB 023).
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Meine, C. (2013). Aldo Leopold: Connecting Conservation Science, Ethics, Policy, and Practice. In: Rozzi, R., Pickett, S., Palmer, C., Armesto, J., Callicott, J. (eds) Linking Ecology and Ethics for a Changing World. Ecology and Ethics, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7470-4_14
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