Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

The following piece neglects to mention it but Aldo spend most of his
career as a Forest Service agent in southwestern New Mexico, working with
an area that became the Leopold Wilderness.
http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&sec=wildView&wname=Aldo%20Leop
old

We drove by that area a few times when we lived down in Catron County, and
the Leopold Wilderness is a true wilderness, unspoiled and uncharted. Best
we could tell there are no roads it it at all. THIS  is where he developed
his philosophy of the land ethic, not at Wisconsin. 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
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The Land Ethic
http://www.wilderness.org/AboutUs/ethic.cfm?TopLevel=About
 
In 1949, America was introduced to A Sand County Almanac, a remarkable book
that would forever change the way many of us think about the land. In 1948,
its author, Aldo Leopold, a professor of wildlife management at the
University of Wisconsin in Madison and a founder of The Wilderness Society,
died. Fifty years later, The Wilderness Society honors the man and his
book.

In response to the relentless destruction of the landscape, A Sand County
Almanac redefined the relationship between humankind and the earth. It
described a groundbreaking concept Leopold called a land ethic. This notion
has inspired millions to protect our environment, and countless more to
live more lightly on the land.

The Wilderness Society has a special relationship with Leopold; he was a
founder. Leopold believed deeply in protecting wilderness, writing, "...a
militant minority of wilderness-minded citizens must be on watch throughout
the nation, and available for action in a pinch." And like Leopold, we,
too, believe that permanent protection of America's wild places must be
based on a land ethic.

The Wilderness Society fosters an American land ethic in so many different
ways. In Seattle, we work with communities of faith to protect Northwest
rainforests. In Maine, we sponsor an essay contest to encourage students to
delve more deeply into their own land ethic. In Utah, we push the Bureau of
Land Management to use not only the best science available to protect the
wilderness values of the red rock canyonlands, but Leopold's land ethic as
well.

Ultimately, we all must be messengers. Whether as activists campaigning to
save wilderness or in quieter, more personal ways, it is up to each one of
us to set the example by incorporating the land ethic into our own lives.
This is what Leopold said to us in A Sand County Almanac, and 50 years
later, his words ring truer than ever.
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