Today, with over 82 percent of the U.S privately owned,
it is clear that Leopold’s approach is an integral part of the
solution; if conservation is to happen, it must occur on largely
private property. But not just on farms and ranches; on all
types of private property, from the smallest city lot to the
most extensive corporate landscape. The U.S could become a
model for the rest of the world in this regard. We have paved
over an area larger than Ohio; we have airports twice the size
of Manhattan. Mega-farming was invented in the absence of
hedgerows, and the biological wastelands we call lawns are a
core symbol of wealth and status. If we can save biodiversity
here, where aggressive economic development has been the
goal for centuries, where McMansions have replaced modest
homes in affluent communities across America, we can
protect biodiversity everywhere.
Our relationship with the earth is broken. Leopold dreamt
of ways to fix it, but the conservation approaches developed
in the 20th century are not inclusive enough to realize his
dreams. We need a new conservation toolbox, packed with
new and more effective tools. New knowledge will be our
most important tool, followed by a cultural recognition that
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conservation is everyone’s responsibility, not just those few
who make it their profession. Every day we are learning more
about how to redesign both public and private landscapes in
ways that meet the aesthetic, cultural and practical needs of
humans without devastating the resources needed by other
species. We are learning how to convert at least half of the
area now in lawn to attractive landscapes packed from the
ground to the canopy with plants that will sustain complex
food webs, sequester carbon, manage our watersheds, rebuild
our soils and support a diversity of pollinators and natural
enemies. That is, we are learning how to create landscapes that
contribute to rather than destroy local ecosystem function.
These are exciting times. The necessary task of restoring
ecological function to the land lies mostly before us. But
it is an exhilarating, entertaining, and hugely rewarding
undertaking. Aldo Leopold once lamented that “the oldest
task in human history is to live on a piece of land without
spoiling it.” In the past, we have not known how to do this,
but we know now. Few of us cannot improve our relationship
with the land we ‘own.’ Most of us bought it already spoiled,
so now we must fix it. Aldo is not the only person who has
Naturally Kiawah