Annotation 3 (draft)- A sand county almanac

Ruby and Iris: this is the first draft that you can edit. :)

Leopold, A. (1949). A sand county almanac: with essays on conservation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press

A sand county almanac is the masterpiece by Aldo Leopold, a must-read for people who cares about the environment in which we live. From the Foreword of this book we can see the philosophy which gives the reason why land cannot be treated as a commodity, rather, we should think of it as a community to which we belong. Because we use, exploit and eventually abuse land if it is treated as resources that can be claimed private. This book is written in the 1940s and was published very unfortunately after one year Leopold passed away. In this book, Leopold gave accounts of the monthly changes of the scenery of the neighborhood where he lived in Sauk county, Wisconsin.

In total there are 14 chapters in the book. Apart from the twelve chapters on each month in a year, there are two additional chapters, the marshland elegy and a closing chapter on the land ethic.

Here I quote one paragraph of the chapter on October:

By us I mean the birds, the stream, the dog, and myself. The stream is a lazy one. He winds through the alder as if he would rather stay here than reach the river. So would I.

It is here that he brings out a key point, that "Nature and we humans are one." Because he says "By us we mean....and my self! "

For the other two chapters, Marshland elegy explains why saving cranes was an ecological and moral imperative. The closing chapter elaborates the concept of value judgement in the context of land ethic which reiterates the fallacy resulting from making value judgement base on pure economic motives.

Here I quote another sentence of this chapter:

Of the 22,000 higher plants and animals native to Wisconsin, it is doubtful whether more than 5 percent can be sold, fed, eaten, or otherwise put to economic use.


And now you should have a rough image of the content of this book, so I am going to tell you why I choose this book. In my issue paper I have choose to approach my issue through two perspectives, but I now want to add one more, the biophilia perspective where it is suggested that there is an instinctive bond between human beings and other living systems. By reestablishing the bond, I will be able to make my argument more complete.