Sustainable Dreams
W
By Doug Tallamy, University of Delaware
hen Aldo Leopold moved from his
job as a forester in New Mexico to the
faculty at the University of Wisconsin,
he flourished. Shortly after his arrival in
1924, Leopold initiated a program in game management,
wrote the first and arguably most famous textbook on
wildlife management, and founded the Wilderness Society.
Despite his successes, he was deeply disturbed by what
he saw around him; in almost every way people were
destroying the natural world he loved so dearly. Society’s
relationship with what he famously called “the land” was
not a relationship at all, but a unidirectional exploitation
of resources without giving anything in return. Farming
techniques encouraged catastrophic erosion; rangelands
were overgrazed; rivers were sewage receptacles; wetlands
were drained, and grasslands were plowed. Clearcutting
transformed majestic forests into
wastelands, and wildlife was
slaughtered in such numbers.
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Photo by Sue Corcoran