A Sand County Almanac: Part IV: The Land Ethic Summary & Analysis

Leopold proposes the construction of an ecological ethic. This would distinguish between “social” and “anti-social conduct,” and would encourage a cooperative view of humankind’s place in the natural world.

Leopold gives a brief history of ethics. At first, ethics concerned behavior between individual people. Eventually it extended to include the relationship between individual people and the society in which they lived. Leopold proposes extending ethics one step further, to include people’s relationship to “land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it.” The land ethic simply assumes the community extends to include the natural world—“soils, waters, plants, animals, or collectively: the land.”

Leopold points out that, at present, society’s relationship with the land is economical, not ethical. However, he thinks ethics are an “ecological necessity.” They would serve as a kind of guide for future behavior and policy. Where “animal instincts” guide an individual’s behavior, he argues ethics create a “community instinct.”

Leopold admits that a land ethic can’t prevent the use or alteration of the land, but it can help protect it from destruction. A land ethic ideally makes humans feel as though they are respectful citizens of the land-community, not conquerors. 

Leopold criticizes what he sees as an educated view that the earth exists to be exploited by humankind. Many people assume that experts and scientists know what is best for the environment. However, Leopold challenges the idea that humans always know what is best for themselves and for the land they inhabit.

Leopold discusses the European settlement of the Mississippi Valley, which taxed the land in such a way that it created an ecological void that was filled by the now famous Kentucky bluegrass. In contrast, in the Southwest, grazing animals ate so many native plants that they degraded the land and the soil, causing erosion which led to further destruction of plants. Leopold argues that if humans cannot even predict how their behavior will affect the landscape and the soil, they are hardly qualified to make decisions about the landscape’s future.

Leopold contrasts the Europeans’ treatment of the American landscapes with the Pueblo Indians’ treatment of the land which, perhaps because they didn’t have grazing animals, was less detrimental to the soil’s health. He also discusses parts of India that have preserved the landscape by cutting sod for cows to eat, as opposed to letting them graze freely.

Leopold hopes “the concept of land as a community” will soon “penetrate our intellectual life.” He is unhappy that conservation has not fully caught on. He thinks it is an issue not just of “volume” or education but of “content.” He thinks conservation is taught as though it is a simple matter of voting and leaving the rest up to the government. He complains that this style of conservation “assigns no obligation” and “calls for no sacrifice.”

Leopold shares a story about farmers in Wisconsin who were bribed into working to preserve the topsoil for five years with free labor and materials from the government. However, when the five years were up, the farmers stopped maintaining their conservationist practices. The Wisconsin legislature thought maybe farmers would be more motivated to maintain the environment if they wrote their own rules, but after turning over land-use legislation to the farmers, the farmers never wrote a rule to improve their treatment of the land. The only choices farmers made to save the soil were those which were also profitable and convenient, like renovating pastures and not grazing or cultivating hills that could easily erode from overuse.

Leopold worries, “in our attempt to make conservation easy, we have made it trivial.”

Leopold categorizes various substitutes for the land ethic he has observed. Economic substitutes are risky because most organisms, or “members of the land community,” have no economic value. Often, plants or animals are seen as having no importance unless they have economic value. Although Leopold finds this upsetting, he is happy that there seems to be a shift towards recognizing the “biotic right” of plants and animals to exist. Similarly, Leopold notes that predators have only recently been seen to have value.

In the United States many species of trees have been “read out of the party,” because they do not have as great an economic value as others, either because they do not sell for a lot of money, or because they grow too slowly. Leopold contrasts this with Europe, where some “valueless” trees have been found to enhance the soil and improve the environment. This is not necessarily a quality that can be measured economically, but it has value nonetheless.

Leopold also points out that certain ecosystems, like marshes, bogs, dunes, and deserts, are seen as being of little value. These can be saved by designating them as monuments or parks, or by private owners who choose to preserve the land. Leopold notes that occasionally these valueless areas turn out to have some hidden value, only revealed when an ecosystem is destroyed and has stopped some necessary function that previously benefited the greater landscape.

Leopold observes that American conservation gives much responsibility to the government. Leopold wonders if this is a sustainable model financially and logistically. He worries the government is too big to deal with the minutiae of land management, and again circles back to an ideal of a national (or global) land ethic, which would require every citizen to do their part to treat the land as a community. He concludes that a purely economic system overlooks the unquantifiable, or economically valueless, elements of a landscape. Furthermore, he thinks the government is ill-equipped to oversee conservation, and instead believes that private landowners need to embrace their ethical obligation to the land.  

Leopold believes humans can “be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.” To try and make the land seem more accessible, or more tangible, Leopold proposes the idea of a “land pyramid.” This is a visualization of the land as a physical pyramid. Energy flows from soil, on the bottom of the pyramid, to plants, insects, birds and rodents, and finally to apex predators, at the top of the pyramid.

Each level of the land pyramid eats and receives energy from organisms on the level below, except for plants, which also receive energy from sunlight. Within the food pyramid are additional food chains and food webs, “lines of dependency” that determine which animals eat what.

When the earth was younger, the land pyramid was simpler, but as more species have evolved it has gotten higher. Leopold argues that “the trend of evolution” is to “diversify the biota,” and therefore extend the land pyramid upwards. Changes in one part of the pyramid change the entire system. Sometimes the pyramid can adjust, when a change is on a slow, evolutionary scale, but it is harder to recalibrate to man-made changes, which were—and continue to be—of “unprecedented violence, rapidity, and scope.”

Leopold lists a few changes humankind has brought to the land pyramid, including the elimination of many apex predators, thereby shortening food chains. These changes also include agricultural practices, which strip the soil of its fertility, and polluting the water, which flows back into the pyramid and feeds its plants and animals. 

In summary, Leopold proposes that looking at “land as an energy circuit” is useful for three reasons: first, because it shows “land is not merely soil”; second, because it shows that native plants and animals help maintain a system, whereas invasive or nonnative organisms may not; third, because it demonstrates how changes wrought by humans are often much more violent and impactful than slower, natural, evolutionary changes.

Leopold has two primary questions: can the land adjust to manmade changes; and can the changes be enacted in a less violent way? Although he notices that many people believe an “indefinite increase” in human density will enrich the quality of human life, he disagrees. Instead, less dense populations will enact less violent changes on the environment.

Prairie flowers, formerly thought valueless, have been used to rebuild the soil of the dust bowl. He wonders how other, now economically valueless animals might one day be repurposed.

Leopold believes people who have yet to develop a land ethic can view the land in two distinct ways. He splits people into Group A versus Group B, where Group A sees humans as conquerors, and Group B sees man as the “biotic citizen.”

Leopold thinks it is essential that people love, respect, and admire the land. Only then can they see its non-economic value. He worries that the current economic and educational system teaches people to “outgrow” a love of the landscape.  

Leopold’s proposed solution is to stop thinking about land-use as an economic issue. Instead, questions about the land should be considered “in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right.” He goes on to say that “a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.” Leopold acknowledges that economics will always influence land-use, but he believes that it does not determine land use totally.

Leopold hopes that a land ethic can and will develop in America. Although he has set down some proposed rules, he understands that an ethic is a constantly evolving, organic concept that can soon be applied to all land-use.