Ecological Restoration: Carving a Niche for Humans in the Classic Landscape

Environmentalism has made much of the idea of community since Aldo Leopold proposed it as the crucial metaphor defining a healthy relationship between humans and the rest of nature. Community, however, far from being the solution to our environmental problems, is actually just a useful way of framing the problem. How, for example, do you form a working relationship with an ecologically obsolete system that owes nothing to you? The answer: You commit yourself to its restoration, cultivating a studied indifference to your own interests—a practice the author terms "holistic restoration."

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Salts, Sewage, and Sulfurous Air

West Germany and the Iron Curtain ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190690052.003.0005 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 125-158

Author(s):

Astrid M. Eckert

Keyword(s):

Water Pollution ◽

Sulfur Dioxide ◽

Ecological Restoration ◽

Industrial Waste ◽

Environmental Problem ◽

East Germany ◽

Environmental Problems ◽

West Germany ◽

German States ◽

East German

This chapter addresses a typical borderland environmental problem—transboundary air and water pollution. During the 1970s and 1980s, rivers carried eastern industrial waste and sewage into West Germany; the wind blew sulfur dioxide both ways. Their environmental interdependency forced both German states to the negotiating table, eventually producing the ineffectual Environmental Accords of 1987. The western encounter with eastern pollution through the interface of the inter-German border confronted West German authorities with early signs of East Germany’s dissolution. While they failed to grasp the message, their experience with East German pollution and the futile diplomatic efforts to curb it nonetheless generated the knowledge about the nature and extent of the GDR’s environmental problems that became the prerequisite for the post-1990 ecological restoration of East Germany.

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Stepping through the looking glass: A new relationship between professional foresters and forest technologists

The Forestry Chronicle ◽

10.5558/tfc79850-5 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 79 (5) ◽

pp. 850-852

Author(s):

E V Scoffield

Keyword(s):

British Columbia ◽

Key Words ◽

Working Relationship ◽

New Approach ◽

Looking Glass ◽

Professional Foresters ◽

Healthy Relationship

The regulation of forest professionals in British Columbia is undergoing dramatic change. The long-standing close working relationship between professional foresters and forest technologists is now entrenched in legislation. A new Foresters Act came into law on June 20, 2003. It authorizes the Association of British Columbia Professional Foresters to regulate forest technologists as well as professional foresters. This new approach to the regulation of the two groups will build upon their healthy relationship and strengthen the forestry team as it grapples with the challenges ahead. Key words: forest professionals, professional forester, forest technologist, British Columbia, Foresters Act, regulation

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The Gift of Tears: Loss, Mourning and the Work of Ecological Restoration

Worldviews Global Religions Culture and Ecology ◽

10.1163/156853511x553787 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

pp. 29-46 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Douglas Burton-Christie

Keyword(s):

Ecological Restoration ◽

Natural World ◽

Aldo Leopold ◽

The Gift

AbstractCan there be genuine and lasting ecological renewal without a deep expression of grief and mourning for all that is being lost? This easy draws upon the work of Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich, W.G. Sebald, Aldo Leopold, as well as the tradition of ancient Christian monasticism, to argue for the significance of mourning for long-term spiritual, social and ecological renewal. Genuine openness to what the ancient monks called 'the gift of tears,'—a deep piercing of the heart that creates a new sense of relationship with the whole—can help us recover a feeling for and commitment to the natural world.

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Stories From the Leopold Shack

10.1093/oso/9780190463229.001.0001 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Estella B. Leopold

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Ecological Restoration ◽

Land Management ◽

The United States ◽

Canada Geese ◽

Aldo Leopold ◽

Land Ethic ◽

Profound Impact ◽

Conservation Movement ◽

South Central

In 1934, conservationist Aldo Leopold and his wife Estella bought a barn - the remnant of a farm - and surrounding lands in south-central Wisconsin. The entire Leopold clan - five children in all - worked together to put into practice Aldo's "land ethic," which involved ecological restoration and sustainability. In the process, they built more than a pleasant weekend getaway; they established a new way of relating to nature. In 1948, A Sand County Almanac was published, and it has become a beloved and foundational text of the conservation movement. Decades later, Estella B. Leopold, the youngest of the Leopold children - she was eight when they bought the land - now reflects on the "Shack," as they called the repurposed barn, and its inhabitants, and recalls with clear-eyed fondness the part it played in her and her siblings' burgeoning awareness of nature's miracles, season by season. In Stories from the Leopold Shack: Sand County Revisited, she unforgettably recalls the intensity of those days: the taste of fresh honey on sourdough pancakes; the trumpeting arrival of migrating Canada geese; the awesome power of river ice driven by currents - and each description is accompanied by stunning photographs by her brother, A. Carl Leopold. As the Leopolds worked to restore degraded farmland back to its original prairie and woods, they noted and celebrated all of the flora and fauna that came to share the Shack lands. As first evoked in A Sand County Almanac, and now revisited in Stories from the Leopold Shack, the Leopold family's efforts of ecological restoration were among the earliest in the United States, and their work, collectively and individually, continues to have a profound impact on land management and conservationism. All of Aldo and Estella Leopold's children went on to become distinguished scientists and to devote themselves to a life of conservation; their work continues through the Aldo Leopold Foundation. Estella B. Leopold book offers a voyage back to the place where it all began.

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