11:374:279 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Land Ethic

• School: Rutgers University
• Department: Environmental Policy, Institutions, and Behavior
• Course: 11:374:279
• Professor: Schoolman

Document Summary

A land ethic reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for health of the land. Health is the capacity for the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity. In each field one group (a) regards the land as soil, and its function as commodity-production; another group (b) regards the land as a biota, and its function as something broader. Group b sees forestry as fundamentally different from agronomy because it employs natural species, and manages a natural environment rather than creating an artificial one. Group b feels the stirrings of an ecological conscience. It worries on biotic as well as economic grounds about the loss of species. For group a the basic commodities are sport and meat; the yardsticks of production are cipher of take in pheasants and trout. Group b worries about a whole series of biotic side-issues.