Salt Lake Community College

The Things Which Make Us Move

Fumie Yoshihiro
BIOLOGY 1120-403 Conservation Biology
Professor: Jessica Berryman
February 25, 2016

The Land Ethic started with Leopold talks about how Odysseus killed
his slave-girls with no mercy. He was explaining how those slave-girls were
just Odysseus' part of property and thou there was no big deal for him to get
rid of them. I believe most readers have similar feeling towards Odysseus
which is something like "What a horrible man he is!", and probably started to
feel sorry for those girls who was hanged for such a non-sense. Then,
Leopold started talking about his land ethic by reflecting slave-girls as nonhuman community members and human beings as Odysseus. As I read
through, I could clearly hear Leopold asking us, "If you can feel pity for those
girls, why can't you feel the same for natures and animals?"
There are two biggest lessons I learned from him. The first one is, to
recognize me as an equal member of this biotic community. The second one
is, to have a great understanding of the economic relationship between us
and the land will help us to have respect towards other community members.
In fact, these two lessons are well connected. As Leopold mentioned, a
human can only extend our ethical structure to something we can see, feel,
understand, love, and have faith in. Therefore, having a clear image of the
position where a human is standing in what Leopold calls the Land
Pyramid, allow me to actually see and understand how I relate to the other
members of the community directly and how we can give impacts on each
other. The Land Pyramid is one way to help us understanding other
communities as a biotic mechanism. However, to understand the fact that
we are standing in which is an equal position as others, we need to release
2

what Leopold calls, the key log. He says, Quit thinking about decent landuse as solely an economic problem. (PP224) We need to remember how
slave-girls were Odysseus' "resource" and how he could easily kill them
without disturbing his feeling. We should stop seeing other community
members as whether they are an economically benefit for us or not.
Otherwise, we never are able to see them and us as an equal member of the
community.
If I have to characterize my own conservation philosophy, I describe it
as receiving strong influence from my cultures religious belief. Through
growing up in Japan, I started to think about spiritual power existing in
nature. In Japan, we have small shrines everywhere. Many of small street
river have a name and history with tiny shrine where the spirit of the river
can rest. In a forest, we have proper shrine and temples for gods around that
area for the same reason. As I grew up, I heard many old tails about how
nature of gods have built up the great relationship with human and how
human has been afraid of tragic, we call it natural hazard now, which would
occur when a human makes the God or spirits of the land upset. We still
afraid of upsetting them in the 21th century now. Thats why when we tear
up ground and build new things, people invite a priest and pray for the spirits
and gods of that land before we actually start construction work. Me having
that kind of background build up the true interest in non-human elements
And that is one of the reasons why I'm interested in taking a conservation
biology course.
3

As Leopold mentioned, agriculture is one of the major ways people

treats the land as economic self-interests. I have been fascinated by the idea
of environmental vegetarianism since few years ago. The opportunity I
started to think about this philosophy was quite recently. When I moved to
the U.S., I was surprised by how cheap meats are and how much amount
they are sold at the supermarket. That gave me an opportunity of reading
articles and asking questions around to my vegetarian/vegan friends who are
into that culture. I still eat some meats when I go out, but I mostly stopped
purchasing meats.
This noticing the negative impact on our land we are giving and
started having our own philosophy to stop it from happening, I think, is the
practice of showing the respect for the other members of the community. We
cannot live without our land. We are the part of the biotic community. If we
only think about the efficiency, we dont need to do recycle as well. But most
of the places do mandatory recycling. Why? I believe that is because we care
about the environment and showing respect to them as a member of the
community.
Although the way people see the land has been changing, we can
easily point out the result of economic self-interests than respect to the land.
For example, after Japan had Tohoku earthquake in 2011, this hazard gave us
the opportunity of start discussing whether we should keep relying on the
nuclear power base or not. Solar energy was one of the first alternative
energy people started to apply on. First it went great. Then, things went to
4

negative. We started to see many landowners happily chop down trees and
started to build mega solar systems to take benefit from it. Mega solar gave
them money doing nothing. It didnt take much longer for this business to
spread all around Japan. I think this is a great example of people still use land
as their resource for an economical benefit. As Leopold explains, Mans
invention of tools has enabled him to make changes of unprecedented
violence, rapidity, and scope. (PP217)
Is that mean we failed to extend a communitys sensibilities to all
members of the community. As Leopold says in his Land Ethic? Luckily not.
We are the only members who evolved in the minds of a thinking community.
Just like environmental vegetarianism and recycling, people DO think about
extending a communitys sensibilities to other members of the community.
One of the examples is Wildlife crossings. Roads bring habitats
fragmentation for animals. Wildlife crossing is not only decreased the
number of collision between animals and vehicle but also allow them to
connect or reconnect habitats and have access to the resources. Another
example is, removing dams. The dam has been giving a great benefit on our
society. At the same time, Dam has been giving a great negative impact on
the other members of communities. Removing dams have been proving that
the human has been taking it more important to apply our ethic to the land
rather than taking the benefit out of it.
The right way which Leopold believes to extend that sensibilities are
to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. And if
5

it tends otherwise, it is wrong. I agree with how he stated up there. As we

look at the biotic pyramid, Land is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy
flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals.(PP216) Whether it has
economic benefits or not, if one plays an essential part of keeping the
stability, that member has to keep on existing since we rely on each other.
There is one apple farmer in Aomori prefecture in Japan where Fuji
Apple is famous for. What it made him famous for was the method of growing
his apples through a natural cultivation. He stopped using pesticides nor
fertilizers as well as compost nor manure. What he did was reproducing the
natural environment of forests on farmland. People thought it was impossible
to grow apples without chemicals, but he found out that the wild apple trees
growing in the natural environment grew much healthier and stronger. He
helped his apple trees to bring their own wild strength back by turning his
farmland as natural environment as possible. There were integrity and
stability in the community. It is very important to observe what its biotic
communitys relationship like before making any change in it.
So how can we motivate ourselves to extend sensibilities to nonhuman
in Leopold's word right way? I think it is a love which motivates us.
Obligations have no meaning without conscience, and the problem we face
is the extension of the social conscience from people to land. No important
change in ethics was ever accomplished without an internal change in our
intellectual emphasis, localities, affections, and convictions (PP210) I totally
agree with these sentences. Understanding the ethic is something anyone
6

can do. Only we have to do is just read the ethic and study about it. The
important thing is if you can take action to make any change or not. As I
learned earlier, we can only apply ethic to someone or something we care.
Why Odysseus killed those slave girls. It is because there was no ecological
conscience to apply for slave girls. Why there are people who started to
make action to protect our lands and animals and why there are people who
dont make any action although those two groups have learned about the
importance of protecting our earth? It is because the connections they have
between them and the rest of biotic members, the love they have towards
biotic members have a huge gap.
After all, if the love is the one to motivate us to apply our land ethic
it has to be a true interest in non-human elements to cooperate with it
primarily. We already learned that self-interest has been giving non-human
elements great negative impact. I believe that a true interest in non-human
elements recognizes us the respect of those elements. Since my land ethic
comes from the ideas which I learned from Leopold and my cultural
background, showing respects to other community members makes it
possible to apply my land ethic. And thou it emanates primarily from a true
interest in non-human elements rather than from self-interest.
Reading the land ethic was definitely challenging, but it really worth it.
I personally enjoyed The Land Pyramid part. For some reason, when I
learned about food chain or nature pyramid the first time in my junior high
school, I used to think the pyramid without human involving simply because
7

my textbook didnt include humans image in it. As I read the Land Ethic
through, I could reset my mind and had this simple idea of human is just a
member of community and saw the land as a biotic mechanism. It really
changed the whole concept of me and the world around me. At the same
time, I felt sympathy towards the attitude of respecting each other since
thats the main conscience I learned from my culture. Especially on a small
island in Japan, it is very important to learn how to live in a community. We
take a harmony as the most important rule and to maintain harmony, we
need to respect each other. Leopold make me realize that what I had been
applying for the other people, I can apply for the non-human.
As I discussed in earlier, its been about 70 years since Leopold wrote
his the land ethic, yet I think the conservation proceeds quite slowly. The
only negative critique I have for his article was that although there are so
many great ideas, it is very hard to read! I think his ethic is very important
and useful but as long as those people who own the lands, who has the top
authority of controlling those resources hasnt realized what Leopold talks
about, I feel it is very difficult to stop the impact which human has been
giving on the other community members. As a conclusion, I do recommend
reading this to others and I will probably get Japanese translated version of
the book when I visit Japan next time. And I strongly feel that it is our duty to
spread his idea to next generation.