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Show WASATCH Professor Moose The Land Ethic By Jack Wright MOUNTAIN TIMES and Ethics are the judgments which apply to one tree and one acre, as well Mf land ethic,” said Aldo Leopold, “changes the role sapiens from conqueror community to plain of Homo of the land- member and citi- zen of it.” Aldo Leopold was one of the seminal environmental thinkers of the first half of the 20th Century. He brought his idea of land ethics to its most profound expression in his book, A Sand County Almanac, published in 1949 shortly after his death. The ecological arguments of A Sand County Almanac formalized the mission of the early conservation movement and brought together the diverse thinking of ecological pioneers such as John Muir and Henry David Thoreau, distilling that diversity into one simple concept: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends to do otherwise.” Professor Moose teaches a class, loosely based, I think, on Leopold’s land ethic - though she has never read his book. She is a wise lady with a vast store of accumulated wisdom. I sat on a log in the Professor's classroom in the Uinta Mountains and watched as she demonstrated what is meant by land ethics. Browsing upon a _ moose-high aspen, she curled her lips around a sprig and then lifted her head to strip the leaves into her mouth. This she did upon a sprig here, a sprig there. But long before the young aspen was permanently damaged, she left it and wandered to another. The aspen upon which she fed could then grow to adulthood and so provide a new crop of seedlings for Professor Moose’s own offspring. walk and as to the thousands, or for that matter, to the entirety of our world. Without ethics, corporations and_ individuals alike are guided only by immediate wants. Ethics can not be legislated. They are taught — they are one generations intangible gift to the next. Through her instincts to move about, she both used and preserved the forest. Land ethics. When the Mormons first fled the persecution of the gentiles and arrived in the arid lands of the Shoshone, they did what at the time was a very unAmercan thing: they proposed to use the land in an ethical way. “No man shall buy or sell the land,” decreed Brigham Young, delineating what became known as The Saint’s Land Law. Early Mormon Church officials ironically echoing the ideas of the Indians they displaced - looked upon the resources of nature as “gifts of God,” and men as merely stewards. And they were simply not lofting words. In 1850, a State of Deseret ordimance was passed, which read: “Any b Professor Moose teaches the Land Ethic SHAKE & RATTLE “THE FUGG" ~SUNDAY NEW YEAR'S EVE person wasting, burning or otherwise destroying the timber (in the Wasatch canyons) shall be subject to all damages, and to a fine of $100.” rom “no man shall buy or sell the land,” we are now approaching a virtual giveaway of our public lands to ski areas and other special interests. It is strange indeed that the modern LDS Church choeses to remain silent and apparently indifferent to such negation of those charter ethics of their own design. Brigham Young was foresight. He knew that land must be subject to precisely because it is define just why it must the nature of all ethical And a man of great the use of the an ethical code so difficult to be so. Such is behavior. what of the remaining Co into Fuggles on New Years Eve and help us throw the party of the year! Serving plenty of Garry’s great food. Kick wild up your heels with the Rattle Kings and dance into 1996. land. Would we who love it, close it to ourselves, even to our eyes, if such were necessary? Would we preserve it the top-most six feet for a Christmas tree, leaving a once healthy fir dead on the ground. More than once, I have untouched by human footfalls for no We suggest making reservations since we'll be one of the only places to party on Sunday. One charge covers all your food and other is what dancing. Save your cash and pay only $25 in advance, or pay $35 seen the forest community mourning this ignorant and foolhardy act. The answer is yes, because it must be ‘yes.’ In the long run, there is no other answer possible. This is what Compare this with the human who felled a 30-foot conifer and then took It is only one tree, the human would say. It is nothing. I recall the woman who, scornful of the protests over the removal of some 15 acres of wildlife habitat near Salt Lake City, commented: “It’s only a few acres. It’s nothing.” Yet our natural world has been destroyed to its depths in just this way, a few acres at a time. The popular example: tropical rain forests cleared one acre at a time. Yet collectively diminishing by acres each day. This is nothing? 200,000 reason than this is best for the “biotic community.” the day of the fun. Party Starts at 8:00 pm defines Leopold’s land ethic. Yet at any time, a simple legislative act can work to destroy the land. And thereafter, all the world’s legislatures, parliaments, dictators or kings cannot restore it. “The battle we have fought, and are still ly one eternal wrong, the end te For reservations call 363-7000 367 West Second South, Downtown Salt Lake City (21 years and older for the New Years Party) fighting,” said John Muir exactcentury ago, “is a part of the conflict between right and and we cannot expect to see of it.” @ PAGE C7 MICROBREWERY 7 |
