Wildlife research is a new sport that outflanks mechanization and multiplies cultural value.

Evidence

If we regard outdoor sports as a field of conflict between an immensely vigorous process of mechanization and a wholly static tradition, then the outlook for cultural values is indeed dark. But why cannot our concept of sport grow with the same vigor as our list of gadgets? Perhaps the salvation of cultural value lies in seizing the offensive. I, for one, believe that the time is ripe. Sportsmen can determine for themselves the shape of things to come. … The last decade, for example, has disclosed a totally new form of sport, which does not destroy wildlife, which uses gadgets without being used by them, which outflanks the problem of posted land, and which greatly increases the human carrying capacity of a unit area. This sport knows no bag limit, no closed season. It needs teachers, but not wardens. It calls for a new woodcraft of the highest cultural value. The sport I refer to is wildlife research. — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 644

Categorization

• SEED: Essential intuition for the reading-landscape course: observation/research is the sport whose resources are not consumed but generated — directly parallel to ch21’s ‘perception is the one recreation that does not consume its resource.’ Could anchor an essay connecting citizen science to field pedagogy.
• XREF: Pays off ‘Perception is the one recreation that does not consume its resource’ (ch21) — research as the culminating case of non-extractive recreation. — connects to: Amateurs studying local wildlife have repeatedly outdone professionals in discovery. — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 647; Science and mechanization gave wild things their human value — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other…, 4; Field science can function as a path to cross-species kinship. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 923 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Science and mechanization gave wild things their human value #qualifies (0.75) — Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 4
• Field science can function as a path to cross-species kinship. #expands (0.75) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 923
• Postindustrial society shifts value from utility to cultural distinctiveness. #corroborates (0.72) — Michael H. Goldhaber, The Attention Economy and the Net, 9
• Humanist technological progress assumed an environment crowded with humans at nature’s expense #corroborates (0.72) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 714
• Cultural value is historically mobile as forms move between elite and popular #corroborates (0.72)