Companion to A Sand County Almanac: Interpretive and Critical Essays

10. A Pilgrim’s Progress from Group A to Group B

10 * A Pilgrim's Progress from Group A to Group B E D WIN P. PIS T E R "Conservationists are notorious for their dissensions.... In each field one group (A) regards the land as soil, and its function as commodityproduction ; another group (B) regards the land as a biota, and its function as something broader" (221). "Conservation is a state ofharmony between men and land" (207). "Rest! cries the chiefsawyer, and we pause for breath." My eyes fell upon the brass plaque, recently fastened to a large boulder near where the "good oak" had once stood (not far from "the shack"), and waves of nostalgia and emotion washed over me as my mind quickly retraced the events that led me here, and the role played by A Sand County Almanac in my evolution as a professional steward ofnatural resources. I remembered vividly that spring day in Berkeley, thirty-six years earlier, when A. Starker Leopold suggested that his undergraduate students in Wildlife Management read "this group of essays that Dad wrote." In 1949, I was unable to absorb much of AIdo Leopold's philosophy of conservation. It first had to be tempered by more than a decade of experience and exposure in the field. Following the usual variety of moves, jobs, and agencies which accompany the earlier portion ofmost careers in fish and wildlife research and management, I settled, in the late 1950S, into a position as a fishery biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game in the eastern Sierra and desert regions of the state. My graduate studies in limnology had already given me considerable knowledge ofthe geography ofthe area and an insight into the biological characteristics of many of the waters falling under my jurisdiction. With but one assistant, I was rele221 EDWIN P. PISTER gated the responsibility for the management of nearly a thousand waters extending from the crest of the Sierra Nevada eastward to the Nevada state line, and ranging from the top of Mt. Whitney at 4,418 meters, to the floor of Death Valley at nearly 100 meters below sea level. "Management," ideally, meant responsibility for the perpetuation of all species of aquatic organisms -including fishes, amphibians, invertebrates, and even reptiles -and their habitats. The management programs which I had inherited from my predecessors reflected the philosophies of the times. They were, technologically, "state of the art," and they were designed to meet the desires and demands of a public hungry for outdoor recreation following World War II. They were, in short, model "utilitarian" management procedures. Fleets of tanker trucks from huge and highly efficient trout hatcheries did a superb job of meeting angler demand, despite the obvious fact that each planted trout was an "artificialized" trophy. However, the program sold licenses (the department's primary income source), which increased the funding ofthe program , which grew ever larger. And the larger it grew, the greater became the bureaucratic intransigence. It was popular, it kept us fully employed, it fueled the tourist economy, and it was heresy to think otherwise. Most California fishery biologists scurried about, robotlike, in a heroic effort to increase catch per angler effort. With one exception, the golden trout (Salmo aguabonita), the game fishes in my district were introduced or exotic species.1 Nothing was being done to assure the preservation of the native life forms included within my stewardship. No one even knew what they were! No one had really given the matter much thought. Virtually no attention was devoted to the study of the basic components of the biota. We were living in a make-believe world. The California Department ofFish and Game, as with most state fish and wildlife agencies of that era, was spending its resources painting the building while the foundation crumbled. Although my department as a whole seemed pleased with what was going on, I felt a strange foreboding and knew that, somehow, things had to change. During the summer of1964 I returned to A Sand 222 A Pilgrim's Progress from Group A to Group B County Almanac and reread "The Land Ethic" at leisure and in depth. More than a decade of field experience gave AIdo Leopold's words new meaning. Within the principles which he so eloquently set forth I found a rational basis for approaching and solving the problems that perplexed and seemed so completely to overwhelm me. I felt I had within my grasp the...