No Matter How Intently One Studies The

How Would You Like To Have A Thousand Brilliantly Colored Cliff Swallows Keeping House In The Eaves Of Your Barn, And Gobbling Up Insects Over Your Farm At The Rate Of 100,000 Per Day? There Are Many Wisconsin Farmsteads Where Such A Swallow-show Is A Distinct Possibility.

A Land Ethic...reflects The Existence Of An Ecological Conscience, And This In Turn Reflects A Conviction Of Individual Responsibility For The Health Of The Land. Health Is The Capacity Of The Land For Self-renewal. Conservation Is Our Effort To Understand And Preserve This Capacity.

One Of The Penalties Of An Ecological Education Is That One Lives Alone In A World Of Wounds. Much Of The Damage Inflicted On Land Is Quite Invisible To Laymen. An Ecologist Must Either Harden His Shell And Make Believe That The Consequences Of Science Are None Of His Business, Or He Must Be The Doctor Who Sees The Marks Of Death In A Community That Believes Itself Well And Does Not Want To Be Told Otherwise.

Conservation Is Getting Nowhere Because It Is Incompatible With Our Abrahamic Concept Of Land. We Abuse Land Because We Regard It As A Commodity Belonging To Us. When We See Land As A Community To Which We Belong, We May Begin To Use It With Love And Respect. There Is No Other Way For Land To Survive The Impact Of Mechanized Man, Nor For Us To Reap From It The Aesthetic Harvest It Is Capable, Under Science, Of Contributing To Culture

There Is, As Yet, No Sense Of Pride In The Husbandry Of Wild Plants And Animals, No Sense Of Shame In The Proprietorship Of A Sick Landscape. We Tilt Windmills In Behalf Of Conservation In Convention Halls And Editorial Offices, But On The Back Forty We Disclaim Even Owning A Lance.