Author: JohnMatel

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Book Review: Elegance in Science

Good history of science, mostly tangential about elegance., July 16, 2016
By
John Matel
Verified Purchase
This review is from: Elegance in Science: The beauty of simplicity (Paperback)
I bought this book as part of my self-help search for elegance – title seemed to fit. Let me first reiterated that elegance in science is not necessary like elegance in dress or manners. The two connotations share the idea of beauty, but the scientific beauty is its simplify and capacity to explain in the fewest steps where the addition of anything else is unnecessary and the subtraction of anything is impossible w/o compromising the integrity. An example is the Ptolemaic universe versus Copernican. The astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, who worked in Roman Egypt in the second century, deigned a system to explain the movement of planets and stars. The ancients did NOT believe the earth was flat but they did think it was the center of the universe. The Ptolemaic system did a decent job of prediction, i.e. it worked, and it remained the vision of the universe for 1500 years. The problem was that it was very complex. Because it was actually not describing the heliocentric reality, it required lots of what we would unscientifically call tweaks or exceptions to make it go. When the Polish scholar Nicolas Copernicus overturned the Ptolemaic system, putting the sun at the center of what we now call the solar system, his explanation was not materially better in its predictive or explanatory power, given the generally crude measurements available at the time, but it was much simpler. Simple is usually better.
Turns out that his is an interesting book with tangential connection to elegance in science. It is most a history of scientific discovery. In that sense, the book succeeds. It was interesting relearn the stories of the great scientists on whose shoulders we all stand. The stories do touch on elegance in science in that they usually involve the tale of an insight that makes simple some great complex mess and so leads to a leap of understanding.
You can arrive at a lot of conclusions the hard way or the easy way. Elegant is usually easier. When describing one tedious and inelegant solution, the author uses a line that I indent to appropriate. “… the only reason you wouldn’t go crazy going it is that you would need to be crazy already to start.”
After going through elegant insights from Archimedes to Watson and Crick, the book ends on a cautionary note. Elegance is usually better, but not always. Watson and Crick in fact went down a blind alley in their explanation of the genome because they detected an elegant solution that did not require a lot of “junk” on the genome. This junk was actually needed. The genome developed thorough evolution, through going to the “adjacent possible.” No organism would ever develop an eye, for example, since it would be of no use in that function for most of the eons required to develop it. Rather what became eyes developed from other characteristics useful for other things. You need a lot of junk around that can be recombined in different ways. And let’s the distinction between junk and garbage. Junk is valuable, potentially useful. You go to a junkyard to find parts of materials. They are not waste.
Anyway, he says, “The moral of this story is that it is fine to get pleasure from elegant theories and elegant experiments, and it is find to create such theories and do elegant experiments – but don’t get seduced by elegance: an elegant theory is not necessarily true. As the philosopher Peter Lipton put it: ‘The loveliest explanation is not necessarily the likeliest.’”
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Book Review: Longleaf as Far as the Eye Can See

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful, infomative and even inspiring book, July 15, 2016
This review is from: Longleaf, Far as the Eye Can See: A New Vision of North America’s Richest Forest
All the beautiful pictures and the large format makes “Longleaf as Far as the Eye Can See” look like a coffee table book and it would serve that purpose well. The longleaf pine ecosystem is truly stunning, but read the text too. Text and picture are exceptionally well coordinated to give an understanding of the history, beauty, complexity and future of North America’s most diverse ecosystem.
Let me share a few key points of the book. Longleaf pine ecosystems are so diverse because they combine forest, prairie, marsh and bog components. A mature longleaf forest features widely spaced trees that allow lots of sunlight to reach the ground, where a rich mixture of grasses, forbs and flowers can grow.
Longleaf biomes were dominant along the coasts and into the piedmont from southern Virginia to Texas. Scientist are unsure of the exact range of longleaf, since much of the range was among the first areas to be settled. Jamestown was founded at the northern edge of the longleaf range and the Royal Navy’s need for timber and naval stores from the longleaf forests and their proximity to easily navigable rivers and inlets assured that this resource was exploited very early. When they were cleared, the area formerly occupied by longleaf proved good for cotton and other crops.Large areas of longleaf forests survived, nevertheless, until the 20th Century. It was in the late 19th Century when the forests of the Great Lakes region were timbered out and the country turns south for the wood needed to build the nation. They might have survived this too – after all trees grow back – except for the unfortunate battle against fire. Forest companies, state and Federal authorities almost unanimously agreed the fire was the scourge of forests. They worked hard and effectively to exclude fire. It was a well-coordinated public outreach. They ridiculed the “bad” Southern practice of setting fires in the piney woods and even could point to mass entertainment. Remember the terrifying fire in Walt Disney’s “Bambi.” You can imagine some poor guy trying to explain to his kids why he set fires.
The problem is that the longleaf pine ecosystem is not only fire adapted but fire dependent. The pines need regular fire in order to grow. And, fire really cannot be excluded. The choice is not between fire and no fire. The real choice is between infrequent big and disastrous fires and regular smaller ones that keep the area clean. But the public campaign worked too well. Longleaf did not regenerate because there was no fire.
But it got even worse for longleaf. Loblolly, longleaf, shortleaf, and slash pines are all classified as southern pine for timber purposes. Longleaf produces a better quality wood, but it grows slower at first. If you plan to harvest before around twenty years, i.e. pulp or pellets, there is no distinction between longleaf and loblolly. Loblolly grows faster and it was easier to establish (this is no longer true, BTW, because of developments in planting and nursery techniques.) Slash pine enjoys similar advantages, although over a smaller range. Foresters and landowners turned to these other types of southern pine.
That was then. In recent years, foresters and landowners have come to appreciate that longleaf pines are nearly impervious to drought, much more resistant to pine beetles and other pests and much less likely to break in storms. Scientists have begun better to understand the complex ecosystem and the importance of fire in maintaining it. Institutions such as the Longleaf Alliance, Wild Turkey Federation and the Nature Conservancy are working diligently to restore longleaf on private lands and reserves. And state and Federal authorities have developed programs that encourage the restoration of longleaf ecosystems. Longleaf will never again cover large areas of the American South, as far as the eye can see, but it will be back.
I would like to add a personal takeaway, something the information in this book has inspired me to do. The longleaf pine is not as shade intolerant as loblolly. While they do require significant direct sunlight, longleaf pine can and do grow in mixed age forests. Young longleaf can linger in relative shade for a long time and then they respond well to release if sun gets to them. What is required are relatively large but not massive open areas, in some ways similar to oak regeneration. The book described a method of gradually converting loblolly to longleaf. You start with a deep thinning, leaving only a few loblollies per acre. This provides income needed to justify the experiment and pay for the forestry. Longleaf are planted under the loblolly. The loblollies are spaced widely enough that they do not shade out the longleaf, but they are thick enough to shade out briars and blackberries. They also provide some protection from ice storms. Fire can be introduced into the system. The mature loblollies are big enough not to be killed by the fire, but the fire will eliminate loblolly seedlings and control other woody vegetation. I am planning to thin around 80 acres in 2017. I think I will try this method on that tract. I already have five acres of longleaf there, planted in 2017. It might be interesting to make the whole thing longleaf.
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Book review of "Half Earth" by E.O. Wilson

We cannot abdicate our responsibility to act wisely, July 6, 2016
By John Matel
This review is from: Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life (Hardcover)
This book is beautifully written. It is erudite & detailed in describing the wonders of the natural world. You realize that you are in the presence of greatness when you read Wilson’s words. All these things cleverly hide the fact that Wilson is wrong when he goes after what he calls the “new conservationists.” He very effectively proves, and demonstrates with stunning examples, that nature is complex and that humans do not now and probably never can adequately understand the relationships within even simple ecosystems. He goes on ostensibly to advocate humility when presuming to manage nature. So far, so good. But his attack on the “new conservationism” is an extrapolation not supported by the evidence Wilson presents.
Wilson writes in such detail because he loves his subjects and wants to add interesting literary vignettes, even if they are often beside the point. But I don’t believe he is unaware of the of the rhetorical value. These vignettes show his deep knowledge. Wilson wants you to think something like, “This guy knows so much more than I do. He must be much smarter than I am and I should accept his conclusions.” All this detail produces an impressive high wall designed to keep you from seeing the logic hole at the base.
As the title implies, Wilson advocates that we give over around half the earth to nature. He heaps significant vitriol on those he labels “new conservationists,” scientists and naturalists who love nature but think that nature cannot be separated from human influence and so must be managed at least to some extent. The attack, however, is not on the ideas of the new conservationists but on a caricature. Wilson mentions some of the new conservationists by name. It would be useful for readers to look them up and get their point of view first hand. Among his most prominent targets is Peter Kareiva, from the Nature Conservancy, whom Wilson treats as an apostate for recognizing the need for humans to be involved in the management of nature in ways that benefit both nature and humanity. Wilson then goes on to advocate a very much human managed nature. He just calls it something else and would manage to make it unprofitable for human intervention and so unsustainable in the real world.
Wilson advocates protecting and restoring key ecosystems. This is great. But he is fixated on the world before humans or in some cases before modern humans. He wants to set the clock back. This cannot be done completely, but to the extent that it is possible it takes massive human intervention. We cannot erase the last ten thousand years. There exists no ecosystem on the planet unaffected by humans. Wilson acknowledges this, but then ignores it. Even if an ecosystem could be completely isolated from humans (which Wilson, paradoxically does NOT advocate. He would have humans as visitors and observers using technology) human influence could never be excluded.  It is carried in the seas and in the air itself. The genie is out of the bottle. All of earth’s systems are affect by human influence climate change. Most are affected by factors such as nitrate deposition. Invasive species have already gotten through the gates and usually cannot be extirpated (Wilson specifically and repeatedly rejects novel ecosystems.) In short, nobody can restore an ecosystem to what it was at the end of the last ice age or what it was in 1066 or 1607. But we CAN restore and create sustainable ecosystems. This is a noble and good task. Wilson is foolish to reject the good we can achieve in pursuit of what he considers perfect, but is impossible.
Among the ecosystems Wilson nominates for restoration and subsequent preservation is the longleaf pine biome of the American South. (This is something I very much appreciate. I am personally restoring longleaf to some of my land in Virginia.) Wilson completely misses the point that the longleaf ecosystem was, is and will be a human-created paradise. He understands and mentions the key role of fire in maintaining the pine savanna, but mendaciously refers to the fires are “lightning sparked.” Some fires were started by lighting, but Native Americans set most of them. If want to restore longleaf, we need humans to fight invasive species and set the woods on fire every few years. Nature left on its own will not produce longleaf savannas over the wide areas they once occupied. It is true that logging eliminated much of the ecosystem but lack of fire prevented it coming back. If we rely on nature today, we can forget about longleaf as known in the past.
Wilson’s commitment to improving the environment and his love of nature are evident and laudable. Reasonable people share his goals. His proposed solutions, however, are unlikely to achieve what he wants. Wilson seems offended that humans dominate the earth and we can understand his emotion. But humans DO dominate the planet and the choice is not whether or not to manage nature but whether to manage well or poorly.
We often use the term stewardship in relation to nature. Wilson uses the term in his book. Consider what it means to be a steward, what stewards do. They do not merely guard the walls and keep hands off what goes on inside. No, good stewards make thoughtful decisions today that will shape tomorrow. In natural systems, the best decisions are those that work with ecological processes, decisions based on knowledge, experience and continual learning. Observe – participate – reflect – observe … repeat. We can be good stewards only if we accept the idea that stewards have the responsibly to make decisions, not just fence off the property and let it go.
Read the book for the beauty of Wilson’s descriptions. Understand his legitimate passion. But do not accept his conclusions.
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Server farms & tree farms – Boydton, Virginia

Boydton used to be a bigger deal until the I-85 went through and made South Hill the big city. It is still the county seat, but there are only about 500 people living there. That is why I was a little surprised to learn that Microsoft was building its server farm, its cloud that will serve much of the East Coast right there in “suburban” Boydton.

I was in the area to visit the Virginia Department of Forestry office. This is the one that is responsible for Brunswick County and I was there to see what I could do with them to make our forests better. Government has a legitimate role to play in forestry. Forest perform lots of ecological services that help make our environment work, but they do it on a time-scale that is difficult for individual humans to appreciate or manage. State foresters can give good advice and they have programs that create incentives for long-term good land management.

SaveThe State of Virginia is trying to encourage restoration of longleaf pine ecosystems for example. Longleaf pine is relatively hard to grow and we are learning how to do it in Virginia while doing it. The Department of Forestry can help with things like release and prescribed burning. I signed up for some help burning under the 2012 generation longleaf on the Freeman property and burning the seedlings on the Brodnax place. We want to do it in January, when the fire will be cooler and the trees dormant. After the first time, we can do growing season burns. The DOF folks were especially interested in working on our land because we have a variety of ages and – more importantly – the places I want to burn are not near houses or roads.

Returning to the server farm, they chose Boydton because land was inexpensive and the site was close enough to power lines and good highway connection (HWY 58 & I-85). Server farms don’t really need to be very near the places they serve, but they do need lots of electric power to run the servers and the air conditioning to keep them cool. Microsoft will invest half a billion dollars in this facility. It will not create too many jobs, unfortunately. It just does not take too many people to run these things. But it will help the tax base.

My first picture shows the water tower at the Microsoft site. They evidently need it for cooling. Next is the site itself. Changing gears, picture #3 is the bulldozer and trencher they use for fires. The trencher forms the firebreak. The last picture is the forester and me. The odd part is that the bucolic looking forestry center is right up against the server farm.
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Loblolly pine seedlings & Garland Gray Forestry Center

Garland Gray Forestry Center will ship 30 million loblolly seedlings for planting next spring. The weather has been favorable for the seedlings and there will be more than ever, but demand still will exceed supply. These trees have been developed for the specifics of Virginia climate and conditions.

Loblolly pines grow naturally from Florida to New Jersey, but the trees that grow well in Florida are not ideal for colder Virginia. Virginia’s weather is unreliable during the spring planting season. The trees from Garland Gray go completely dormant during the winter, so that will not as easily perish if there is a cold snap or prolonged dry spell. This cost a little in terms of growth. A Florida loblolly pine will be quicker out of the start, great if the weather is warm and moist, deadly if not. A Virginia loblolly seedling may turn reddish brown if it gets cold before its roots are established, but it will usually come back.

We are past the third generation of loblolly pine in Virginia. In the first generation, they just gathered cones. The idea was simple reforestation and the ordinary native true was okay. But they improved, taking the seeds from the strongest, straightest and fastest growing.

The newest generation of loblolly is as different from the first as a Chihuahua is from a German shepherd. They are the same species but you wouldn’t know to look at them, even after only a few years. The natural loblolly is a bit of a weedy tree. It tends to grow crooked and branches. It is also susceptible to various maladies. The newer versions just genetically superior. They grow better on the same sites with less fertilizer.

The loblolly became the premier tree of the American South for good reasons. These reasons were man-made as much as natural. As mentioned above, the varieties developed are much better than the natural tree. On the “natural” side, the loblolly is relatively easy to manipulate genetically. It breeds true to its parents’ characteristics. (A contrary example is an apple. Apples do not breed true and the apple you plant from a side will not closely resemble its parents. For that reason, almost all the apples we eat come from clones.) The loblolly also responds especially well to fertilization and release, i.e. if you cut the trees around a loblolly it will grow more rapidly. Most other species do not respond as well.
This is not all to the good. Loblolly has replaced other timber trees in wide areas. The more worrying trend, IMO, relates to the length of rotations. This has more to do with prices than with the trees themselves, but the rapid development of loblolly may facilitate it. Let me explain.

The standard loblolly rotation used to be about thirty-five years in Virginia. This meant that you thinned the trees twice, at about fifteen years and again at twenty-four, and then harvested saw timber at the end. This is not a very long rotation, but it does provide a relatively mature forest. When combined with stream management zones, largely left perpetually uncut, you provided a productive wildlife habitat and good protection for soil and water.

New developments permit the use of smaller diameter wood. The prices of saw timber, i.e. bigger logs, and the smaller pulp timber have been converging. You do not get that much more money from saw timber. This means that the payoff from growing trees longer is less but the risks have not diminished. There is also the time value of money. Waiting an additional fifteen or twenty years for the payoff from your forestry requires patience and maybe you will be dead before you get the benefit of your investment. Some experts are advising that we harvest trees on shorter rotation, maybe as little as twelve years. The trees never mature and we never have a true forest. We just maximize fiber production. It is more like a field crop. I don’t like this even a little. While I can see the profit possibilities, I did not get into forestry for this. But I digress.

The loblolly seedlings have also improved over the years. You can see from the pictures that the soil at Garland Gray Forestry Center is very sandy. This make cultivation much easier. They have a machine that trims the roots underground, both horizontally and vertically. The roots are trimmed to about five inches long. This is because most of the tools used to plant trees dig down about seven inches. This makes planting more effective and prevents the development of “J-roots”. They also trim the tops so that seedlings are uniform height. In the old days, they would need to plant more than 700 trees per acre because many were expected to die. Today, they plant only around 450 because almost all of them survive. Loblolly pines need to planted deep, even below the root collar. This is a contrast to longleaf that need to be planted shallow. All the loblolly pines produced at Garland Gray are bare root. All longleaf for Virginia are grown in North Carolina and they are containerized.

Only five people work at Garland Gray. Most of the work is done by machines. They are precise. It is very important that the rows be straight, so that the fertilizer can be applied and so that the machines that lift the seedlings can be used properly.

My pictures show the little pine trees. They have a machine that plants them. It works kind of like a paint brush. You can see the size in relation to my pen. They remind me of those little trees that they use in model train sets. Picture #3 shows the sign for the Garland Gray Center. The last picture shows a longleaf plantation. They represent trees from various states to show which grow the best in Virginia.

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Tree farm visit June 2016 (2)

Continuing with notes from my recent forest visit.

I have no plans to do much this year except manage the vines and brush. Next year, early in the year, I plan to burn under the 2012 generation longleaf and we will second thin about 80 acres on the Freeman farm late in the year.

Thinking farther ahead, I want to try some shortleaf on the Brodnax place. Shortleaf is the most widely distributed pine in the U.S. but it gets less respect. It grows slower than loblolly and does not have the cache of longleaf. Like longleaf, it is fire dependent, but its ecology is different. As seedlings, longleaf burns to the nub and then regrows. Shortleaf burns to the ground and then regrows. I think it is the only pine to do that.

My pictures show some of the contrast. In the first picture you see shortleaf on the left and loblolly on the far right. Some hardwoods are in the middle. Next is what I like to think of as an “Old Virginy” grove. It has some big shortleaf, native hardwoods like a variety of oaks and gum, and under-story trees like holly. Nobody has cut that for a while and I will not either, but you can see the natural succession. The pines will be gone when the current generation dies. Picture #3 is a closer look and picture #4 is a view of the maturing loblolly in front of a wildlife plot. Our land has these things interspersed in the forests, usually less than an acre, creating the forest-edge communities wildlife likes.

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Tree farm visit June 2016 (1)

I was down on the farms today cutting vines and inspecting things.

Many people oppose clear cutting and I understand their concern. But it is important to recall that clear cutting is an important tool in forestry. If you want to grow shade intolerant pines or fir, you need to clear cut significant acreage. And if you want to grow shade semi-intolerant oaks, you need to clear some. The fact that nature produced forests of pine, fir, oak or hickory indicates that there have been “natural” disturbances in the past.

A clear cut is a stage in a forest, not the end. It ends only if the land is turned over to non-forest uses.

We clear cut 46 acres exactly a year ago. My first picture show what a clear cut looks like in Virginia after twelve months. We planted 21,000 trees (loblolly & longleaf) in March. You cannot see them under the other growth. Nature is resilient. We will need to treat/burn soon. My second picture shows the where the cut stopped. The third picture is a clear cut after thirteen years. I have been taking this picture with my truck as comparison since 2008. The last picture shows a clear cut after nineteen years, i.e the loblolly in the back of the truck. The longleaf pine in the foreground were planted in 2012 on five acres that was clear cut the year before. I took that photo during with winter, which is why the grass is not green and you can more easily see the longleaf. The last picture shows a longleaf seedling planted in March. You can find them only in the open areas. As you can see, they look like grass and they call this the grass stage for obvious reasons. There are more of them in that bush, but you cannot see them.



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Working with Aldo Leopold

I am in Baraboo at a two-day seminar at the Aldo Leopold Foundation. Leopold is the founder of an important stream of conservation, although I am not sure he would have taken credit for it.

Leopold’s “land ethic” is both simple and profound. We all live in the natural world and should be mindful of the choices we are making, both actions and inaction. Things we do that tend to improve the biotic communities on the land are good and those that harm them are bad.

The profound and ostensibly paradoxical part is that Leopold wrote that you cannot write a land ethic in a book. A land ethic has to be written on the land. You leave your signature on the land you manage and you learn from the land you are walking on. You learn from being involved. It is a melding of thinking and doing.

Observe – participate – reflect – observe … It is circular and endless, but even when I write it in this order it is misleading, since they overlap and merge in the practice.

The other point that Leopold made about the land ethic applies to most sorts of practical philosophy. It is dynamic. The process is constant; the conclusions are mutable depending on the interactions and the circumstances. I am thinking about this and I don’t suppose I can explain it in writing. But I think I understand some of it from my interaction with environments all over and from working on my own land.

I have owned my forest land for more than ten years now. I have seen many changes on the land and changes in how I view land, my own and others. I appreciate Leopold’s thinking on this more than I did, more than a could have, before I had the responsibility on my own property.

Anyway, Leopold summed up ethics by explaining that acting ethically meant that you did the right thing even when nobody is looking, even when doing the wrong thing is perfectly legal and maybe acceptable to others. Of course, he did not originate this thought, and never claimed it was original. But it is good to recall and reiterate.

My first picture is the Leopold Foundation buildings. Much of the wood is from trees Leopold planted. The buildings are designed to use lots of natural light and take advantage of the site for climate control. The next picture is a sedge meadow in Stevens Point. This is a wetland dominated by grass and forbs, generally w/o trees. Standing water is present only episodically, but the soils are generally saturated.

I like the Leopold ethic. It fits in well with my mindful boots-on-the-ground philosophy. You have to go to the places, experience them. You gain knowledge through practical experience, and it is always contingent on what happened before. That is why you need to absorb the context. However, while experience is mandatory, learning is optional, which is where the reflection and thinking comes in.

This picture is our group photo. It was taken just before our work pulling invasive plants out of the prairie to get some of that hands-on experience. That is why some of us have gloves. Right after we finished the field work, we discussed Leopold’s essay “Axe in Hand” where he talks about making choices in conservation and understanding how we are affecting the land. The work helped with understanding and internalizing the essay.
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New forestry frontier

My latest contribution to “Virginia Forests” Magazine. This issue concentrates on urban forestry. They will no doubt edit and improve it, but the draft is what I wanted to say.
The new forestry frontier
The American Tree Farm System had a rural upbringing with people living on the land, experiencing nature first-hand, often and intimately. Today about 80% of Americans live in urban areas.

These are not necessarily places bereft of nature. You can find big trees and inspiring natural landscapes within urban boundaries. They are managed, protected and often pampered by local authorities, and this is precisely the challenge of urban forestry. People’s relationships to nature are shaped by interactions. In an urban area, people often interact with nature episodically and as spectators. Their activities are limited; stay on the path, don’t touch, leave nothing and take nothing. People are guests, passive. They leave decisions to professionals.

Tree farming is participatory. Tree farmers are responsible for the ground they stand on and they feel it. They put things onto the land and take them off, make decision about what will happen years after they are gone. The great conservationist Aldo Leopold wrote about this in when describing his land ethic in Sand County Almanac. “A conservationist,” he wrote “is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of an axe] he is writing his signature on the face of the land.”

Eight out of ten Americans live in cities. This is a cause of concern but not despair.
Leaders in urban centers are developing more sophisticated understanding of nature in the context of a human-built environment. They are coming to appreciate the value of so-called green infrastructure for both the bottom line and also for their more elusive but indispensable contributions to the human spirit.

We live within a system of constraints, natural and societal, and a world of opportunities. The ingredients are fixed; genius lives in the right mix. The essence of sustainability is prospering within constraints. Profit is the price of survival. We must “sell” the economic value of green infrastructure and we can. Working with nature can often save millions of dollars, as governments and private firms are coming to appreciate. The more we understand, the better it gets.

There need be no long term-conflict between conservation and economic utility. It is an art and a source of human happiness to find the elegant solution that sustains and progresses both. This is a role for urban forestry. We could imagine trees being harvested sustainably and helping educate people about the constancy of change and the requirement to get involved. Good green infrastructure principles can be (and increasingly are) applied to things like control of invasive species, urban wildlife and the prosaic but crucial storm water diversion. Forests connect these things.

The missing piece is education, not only in school but in the living and experiential sense. Being involved in nature’s complexity, being a conservationist in Leopold’s definition, protecting nature while calming and ennobling the human spirit.

An ethical relationship to our environment requires love of our land and gratefulness for our part in its changing face, as well as a recognition of its economic value and value beyond economics. We can find a trail-head in classrooms and books but come to a fully-developed relationship only with boots-on-the-ground participation in natural processes over significant time. Tree farming has been capstone education for those lucky enough to do it, but this is not the only path on this pilgrimage. Mindful involvement in world around us is the key. It may be easier to see on tree farms, but nature exists everywhere, also in cities. Since that is where the people are, cities are where human-nature relationships will develop and prosper and cities are where conservationists also need to be.

My pictures are from the Aldo Leopold Foundation. The first one is Leopold’s shack. You can see it in the middle if you look very closely. He planted the trees. They have grown very big. Next is one of the oak savannas maintained by periodic fire. Picture #3 is the Wisconsin River from Leopold’s farm and finally is the memorial where Aldo Leopold died fighting a fire. Fire can be a useful friend or a deadly enemy, but it cannot be ignored or excluded. He died of a heat attack, not as the result of the fire.
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Aldo Leopold Foundation

I attended a program at the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo. We discussed conservation and how to communicate it with a more general public. The sessions are based on Leopold’s thinking and also his methods. He believed in learning actively. Observe – participate – reflect – observe … repeat.

 I like it. It fits in well with my mindful boots-on-the-ground philosophy. You have to go to the places, experience them. You gain knowledge through practical experience, and it is always contingent on what happened before. That is why you need to absorb the context. However, while experience is mandatory, learning is optional, which is where the reflection and thinking comes in.

Anyway, the picture is our group photo. It was taken just before our work pulling invasive plants out of the prairie to get some of that hands-on experience. That is why some of us have gloves. Right after we finished the field work, we discussed Leopold’s essay “Axe in Hand” where he talks about making choices in conservation and understanding how we are affecting the land. The work helped with understanding and internalizing the essay.

I am in Baraboo at a two-day seminar at the Aldo Leopold Foundation. Leopold is the founder of an important stream of conservation, although I am not sure he would have taken credit for it.

Leopold’s “land ethic” is both simple and profound. We all live in the natural world and should be mindful of the choices we are making, both actions and inaction. Things we do that tend to improve the biotic communities on the land are good and those that harm them are bad.

The profound and ostensibly paradoxical part is that Leopold wrote that you cannot write a land ethic in a book. A land ethic has to be written on the land. You leave your signature on the land you manage and you learn from the land you are walking on. You learn from being involved. It is a melding of thinking and doing.

Observe – participate – reflect – observe … It is circular and endless, but even when I write it in this order it is misleading, since they overlap and merge in the practice.

The other point that Leopold made about the land ethic applies to most sorts of practical philosophy. It is dynamic. The process is constant; the conclusions are mutable depending on the interactions and the circumstances. I am thinking about this and I don’t suppose I can explain it in writing. But I think I understand some of it from my interaction with environments all over and from working on my own land.

I have owned my forest land for more than ten years now. I have seen many changes on the land and changes in how I view land, my own and others. I appreciate Leopold’s thinking on this more than I did, more than a could have, before I had the responsibility on my own property.

Anyway, Leopold summed up ethics by explaining that acting ethically meant that you did the right thing even when nobody is looking, even when doing the wrong thing is perfectly legal and maybe acceptable to others. Of course, he did not originate this thought, and never claimed it was original. But it is good to recall and reiterate.

My first two pictures are the Leopold Foundation buildings. Much of the wood is from trees Leopold planted. The buildings are designed to use lots of natural light and take advantage of the site for climate control. The third picture is a sedge meadow in Stevens Point. This is a wetland dominated by grass and forbs, generally w/o trees. Standing water is present only episodically, but the soils are generally saturated.

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