Ecological Restoration, Aldo Leopold, and Beauty

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Oelschlaeger ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
William R. Jordan

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."


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Burton-Christie

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.


Author(s):  
Estella B. Leopold

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.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Robert M. Anderson ◽  
Amy M. Lambert

The island marble butterfly (Euchloe ausonides insulanus), thought to be extinct throughout the 20th century until re-discovered on a single remote island in Puget Sound in 1998, has become the focus of a concerted protection effort to prevent its extinction. However, efforts to “restore” island marble habitat conflict with efforts to “restore” the prairie ecosystem where it lives, because of the butterfly’s use of a non-native “weedy” host plant. Through a case study of the island marble project, we examine the practice of ecological restoration as the enactment of particular norms that define which species are understood to belong in the place being restored. We contextualize this case study within ongoing debates over the value of “native” species, indicative of deep-seated uncertainties and anxieties about the role of human intervention to alter or manage landscapes and ecosystems, in the time commonly described as the “Anthropocene.” We interpret the question of “what plants and animals belong in a particular place?” as not a question of scientific truth, but a value-laden construct of environmental management in practice, and we argue for deeper reflexivity on the part of environmental scientists and managers about the social values that inform ecological restoration.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-84
Author(s):  
Issam Touhami ◽  
Ali El khorchani ◽  
Zouheir Nasr ◽  
Mohamed tahar Elaieb ◽  
Touhami Rzigui ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Miranda M. Hart ◽  
Adam T. Cross ◽  
Haylee M. D'Agui ◽  
Kingsley W. Dixon ◽  
Mieke Van der Heyde ◽  
...  

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