A Sand County Almanac: Part IV: Conservation Esthetic Summary & Analysis

Leopold observes that people are more passionate about their recreation than they are about nearly anything else. While he has spent the book arguing about the importance of getting back to nature, he also has observed the problem of too many city-dwellers flooding the countryside. He worries “recreation has become a self-destructive process of seeking but never quite finding.” As people search for wilderness to relax in, they end up destroying it. 

Recreation can often be evaluated in economic terms. Governments will measure how much the public spends pursing it, or how much it costs to live or buy land in a recreational area. However, there is also an ethical component to recreation. Leopold has observed the evolution of “outdoor manners,” and a code of sportsmanlike conduct.

Leopold understands that humans receive joy from interactions with nature. However, he also sees that there are many different perspectives on how to conserve nature. The Wilderness Society wants to exclude roads from many areas, whereas the Chamber of Commerce wants to extend them. Both groups, ironically, make arguments “in the name of recreation.” Similarly, game-farmers often want to kill hawks that attack their animals, whereas bird-lovers want to protect them. Both, again, base their positions on protecting recreation.

Leopold breaks down the idea of recreation into five components. First he looks at the act of trophy gathering. This includes hunting or fishing, taking photographs, or collecting plants or rocks. Trophy hunting allows the recreationist to take home a “certificate” proving that they spent time in the wilderness, and to demonstrate some skill in the process. It is easy to generalize and say that “mass-use tends to dilute the quality of organic trophies like game and fish,” but a greater volume of participants does not dilute some trophies, like photographs, which can be taken again and again by different people.

The second enjoyable aspect of recreation is “the feeling of isolation in nature.” Leopold defines a wilderness area as being without roads except on the borders. Ironically, extending roads into the wilderness to make it accessible destroys the wilderness, making it even rarer.

Leopold contrasts the idea of wilderness as a place to isolate oneself with the idea that recreation can provide “fresh-air and a change of scene,” the third component of recreation. This simply means that people go into nature as a contrast to city or suburban life. Mass-use does not dilute the ability of a landscape to provide fresh-air to visitors.

A fourth facet of recreation is its scientific study. This can be the study of evolution (how things came to be) or ecology (how the environment has maintained itself). Although this field is in its early stages, Leopold hopes nature study will help “the mass-mind towards perception.” 

Leopold notes that recreation “is not the outdoors, but our reaction to it.” A person’s experience in nature is partially based on the world around them, but also based on their perception of it. Ecological science has opened the eyes of those who study it to “incredible intricacies” of the natural world and the “intrinsic beauty” of the American landscape. Leopold believes “the only true development in American recreational resources is the development of the perceptive faculty.” In other words, it is not the wilderness that needs to be changed, but how visitors see it.

Leopold believes that people can learn to appreciate nature anywhere. Weeds growing in the city, grasses in a pasture, redwoods in a forest—all of these can offer a viewer the opportunity to truly “see” the natural world. A person does not need a Ph.D. to become an expert in ecology, since perception “grows at home as well as abroad,” and “cannot be purchased with either learned degrees or dollars.”

The fifth component of recreation is husbandry. This includes any management of the land. Leopold argues that the government should give land to its citizens to manage, as opposed to giving it to field officers to maintain. Instead of paying people to maintain it, citizens could do it for leisure.

Leopold introduces the idea that trophy hunters are “the caveman reborn.” He does not criticize trophy hunters as a category, only those who begin trophy hunting in youth and never outgrow it. Leopold alleges that trophy hunters who never develop a land ethic or conscience are happy to “possess, invade, [and] appropriate” the wilderness. Because of this, these people do not value any land that is not easily accessible to them.

Leopold concludes his book by stating that recreational development should not focus on making wilderness more accessible to people by building roads into it, but instead should try to build “receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.”