Aldo Leopold is considered the most important conservationist of the twentieth-century. He is the father of the national | dG1fSUdJSzI0TjdhcFE
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00 We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.
00:07 We were out here to conquer this country, not to make it better.
00:24 Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away
00:29 with them.
00:31 At the time where most of the country was abusing the land, Otto Leopold was saying,
00:37 "Hold on! We need to understand that our community is less without that."
00:44 When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and
00:52 respect.
00:59 It has taken, you know, 40, 50 or 60 years for us to catch up with the very clear meanings
01:11 of the words that he was writing, in some cases in the late 20s, the 30s and the 40s.
01:19 My wife got a book about Leopold. I thought, "Boy, if I'd just read this 30 years ago,
01:26 I could have saved a lot of time and effort."
01:29 Where a white pine and a red birch are crowding each other.
01:33 And the amazing thing is, after all these years, the interest in Leopold just continues
01:37 to grow. He's still read as a contemporary because his ideas are still not only so current,
01:42 they're still so far ahead of us.
01:45 We have lost sight of so much magic in the land, spiritual values. It is time to construct
01:52 or reconstruct an ethic.
01:56 I do not imply that this philosophy of land was always clear to me. It is rather the end
02:03 result of a life journey.
02:05 Otto Leopold.
02:07 [Music]
02:09 [Music]
02:11 [Music]
02:13 [Music]
02:16 [BLANK_AUDIO]