Land stewardship fails for lack of pride or shame in husbanding wild things

Evidence

I listened carefully for clues whether the West has accepted cheat as a necessary evil, to be lived with until kingdom come, or whether it regards cheat as a challenge to rectify its past errors in land-use. I found the hopeless attitude almost universal. 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. — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 558

Categorization

• XREF: Directly anticipates the ‘Land Ethic’ essay and is the connective moral framework of this polyad course. — connects to: Entrenched property-ownership ideals defeated the effort to treat land as a social resource — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 1077; Land-rights law can be redirected to steward rather than possess the land — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 1169
• APHORISMS: ‘We tilt windmills in behalf of conservation in convention halls and editorial offices, but on the back forty we disclaim even owning a lance’ is advice-grade wisdom about where conservation actually gets done.

Broader Connections

• Entrenched property-ownership ideals defeated the effort to treat land as a social resource #corroborates (0.75) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 1077
• Land-rights law can be redirected to steward rather than possess the land #expands (0.72) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 1169