The local weekly gazette mentioned that the Mountain Conservation Trust of Georgia (MCT) was screening a new documentary on Aldo Leopold. I was interested that Pickens county, where my property is, was the HQ of MCT an environmental group and I wanted to learn more about it. Also, I vaguely knew the name Aldo Leopold but was unsure what he had done.
Last Saturday at the event I met with several board representatives. Their mission, as I understand it, is to encourage large local landowners to place conservation easements on their land, which will protect the watershed and wild life, and also confer a tax benefit to the owner. These easements do not provide public access. Commendable.
I then watched the documentary and, though I have a tendency to doze off, I stayed awake throughout its 1 hour plus length. And learned how a forester/hunter came to appreciate the significance of wild life and importance of caring for the land. The latter is referred to as the “land ethic”. The former gave rise to the title “green fire” which was the fading green light in the eyes of a wolf he had shot, the import of which only evolved within him many years later. The documentary catalogs the wide scale elimination of wolves, which were considered destructive predators (this opinion later revised) as well as the elimination of the passenger pigeon of which there were billions in huge migratory flocks until hunting and habitat destruction made them extinct. We have little to be proud of when our talents and needs extinguish a species. But now some of us are learning our errors and making redress.