Why Conservation Is Failing and How It Can Regain Ground by Eric T. Freyfogle. Yale, $35, 320 pages.


The News & Observer

August 11,2006

Legislating environmentalism

By PHILLIP MANNING


'Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land," Aldo Leopold wrote in his 1949 classic "A Sand County Almanac." In evocative and inspiring prose, Leopold created the seminal blueprint for the modern conservation movement around his concept of the "land ethic," which emphasized our moral responsibility to keep land healthy for wildlife and wildflowers, as well as for future generations of farmers and ranchers. The only way to accomplish this, Leopold urged, was to encourage "An ethical obligation on the part of the private owner."

It is hard to argue with Leopold's vision -- but it is easy to ignore it, as Eric T. Freyfogle observes in "Why Conservation Is Failing and How It Can Regain Ground." A law professor at the University of Illinois, Freyfogle asserts that not only ordinary Americans but also leaders in conservation have strayed dangerously far from Leopold's guiding principle.
The reason, Freyfogle believes, is that foes of conservation have defined America's core concepts -- liberty, democracy, private property, and equality -- in ways "that make conservation duties appear costly, even un-American." Individual liberty -- the bedrock of American culture -- has come to mean freedom from all restraint. Democracy, he argues, is now synonymous with the market, "the arena in which people can form their choices individually and act upon them with little restraint." Private property rights are seen as being in conflict with environmental rules, which are depicted as governmental erosions of civil liberties. Finally, the concept of equality is now used to suggest that a person who wants to develop a critical wetland should be treated the same as a person who wants to develop worn-out industrial property.

All of these cultural standards, worshipped by many Americans, fly in the face of Aldo Leopold's land ethic, which is based on deep, interdependent connections between people and their property and the moral obligations that come with owning land. These new cultural standards have affected conservationists, too. Most of them doubt that preaching ethics will save the natural world. The best way to conserve land, they believe, is to either buy it or pay the landowner not to develop or log it.
Freyfogle wants to return the conservation movement to its Leopoldian roots and persuade landowners to live up to their responsibilities. But he is aware that while many Americans pay lip service to Leopold's high-minded ideals, economic incentives or laws are usually required to actually change the way we live.

This leads him to a startling conclusion: He believes that new laws should be passed to mandate responsible land use. According to Freyfogle, "There is no constitutional barrier to a massive redefinition of landowner rights ... Private property is not an individual right first and foremost but rather a tool used by society to foster the common good." Property rights should be subject to legal restraint when they conflict with the public's rights. Private property could then be regulated as water rights are. The public owns the water, and landowners with rivers passing through their property, for instance, have only limited rights to use the water.

Freyfogle summarizes his vision of a new American land ethic by restating Leopold's views: "What I've been talking about is a new kind of progress, a new broader vision of community, one that includes all life and future generations." Unfortunately, Freyfogle never spells out how we might realize his vision. What kind of land restrictions would he like to see? Prohibitions against development or logging or poor farming practices that degrade the soil? All of these? Moreover, on which lands should we prohibit farming, logging and development? He never says.

These are nitty-gritty legal issues, which Leopold himself never addressed. To him, land conservation, the maintenance of the long-term health of private property by its owner, was simply a matter of ethics. Sadly, time has not been kind to Leopold's beautifully expounded land ethic. It has slipped from the public's radar screen. Freyfogle hopes his book will revitalize Leopold's vision. But if it doesn't, his new, unspecified laws would compel recalcitrant landowners to follow sound conservation practices.

Freyfogle's ideas are infuriatingly vague, but I believe he is on the right track. What finally got Americans clean water, clean air and protection for endangered species were laws. But those laws were passed only after an enlightened public demanded change. Freyfogle seems to be suggesting that returning to Leopold's principles could alter social norms and produce similar laws on land use. But even if Americans supported such laws, would they really restore the health of privately owned lands? That would depend on the details of Freyfogle's yet-to-be-spelled-out legislation, which is, as usual, where the devil lies.
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