Aldo Leopold

If you were to take a survey of environmentalists, ecologists, or natural historians to ask which books most influenced their thinking on matters of wildlife and wildlands, three titles would appear again and again: Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (available through NMTC in NetLibrary, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac.

Leopold’s book was published six decades ago, in 1949, and in the years since its first publication it has come to be regarded as a true classic of nature writing. It has affected the policies and methods of natural-resource management. It has been read and closely studied by countless students of conservation biology. And it has been quoted chapter and verse by environmental activists, who cite a few choice Leopoldisms, especially his land ethic, an elegantly simple declaration of rights for soil, water, wind, plants, and animals: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”....

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If you'd like to know more about Aldo Leopold, we do have a biography in NetLibrary, Aldo Leopold and the Ecological Conscience.