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10 PRIVATE LAND I AIdo Leopold on Private Land Eric T. Freyfogle In the world AIdo Leopold grew up in-Burlington, Iowa, at the turn of the twentieth century-private land ownership held an honored place, right alongside free enterprise, individualism, personal honor, and the family. Leopold shaped his being around these values and institutions and he held fast to them throughout his life, however far he evolved in his thoughts about the land. Planting pines at the Shack, Leopold wore the mantle of private property owner. And as he submitted his land ethic to the public, he spoke to no audience more directly than the dispersed and powerful owners of private land. Private property, though, quickly became a problem for Leopold the conservationist, and it was a problem that would not abate. Too many owners abused land, he realized, and it was property law that enabled them to do so. Governments might practice conservation on public lands, but wildlife couldn't thrive, nor could soil remain intact and fertile , on public lands alone. For the entire land community to become healthy, private owners everywhere had to practice conservation as a way of life. Encouraging them to do so, Leopold believed, was the central challenge of his day. But how could this be done in a way consistent with the broad rights that landowners possessed? How could it happen while respecting the independence and economic needs of individual owners? Leopold's initial answer was to offer economic incentives for owners to act more wisely. So long as people viewed land as an economic asset, conservation merely needed to make financial sense. Public money could reward owners who set land aside for wildlife, Leopold proposed. Tax abatements could reduce the need to drain wetlands. Hunting fees could be turned over to owners who took down their "No Hunting" signs. By the early 1930s, however, incentive programs had been tried long enough for Leopold to realize that a better answer was needed. Incentives worked so long as money flowed, but old habits returned as soon as it stopped. Furthermore, government programs were too blunt an instrument to bring about ecologically sensitive practices. Wise land use 155 156 Part II. Conservation Policy required measures attentively tailored to the circumstances ofparticular parcels. It required the "positive exercise of skill and insight" by individual owners.! Incentive programs could never be specific enough to promote that type of behavior, nor could they impart skill to an uncaring owner. As the limitations of incentive programs became clear, Leopold's thoughts and writings took a turn. Economic incentives were helpful, he observed in 1935, but real conservation required "rather fundamental changes in rural culture and in land economics."2 Conservation was not something a nation could buy; it was something it had to learn, slowly and painfully. By the end of his life economic incentives played only a minor role in Leopold's thought. "A system ofconservation based solely on economic self-interest," he would write in A Sand County Almanac, "is hopelessly lopsided."3 The answer was not greater incentives, nor increased public land ownership, nor new government programs, although all of this could help. The basic need was a new "ethical obligation on the part of the private owner."4 Leopold's growing focus on the ecological community-on the whole of nature rather than its parts-gradually pushed him to redefine his ingrained individualism. For a landowner simply to pursue narrow selfinterest , he wrote in 1937, was a kind of "bogus individualism."5 True individualism, the durable and responsible kind, built upon a moral foundation and took community needs into account. An ethical individual thought first of the community, and pursued self-interest only within constraints understood and defined at the community level. What Leopold did not realize was that the ideas he derived as an ecologist contained strong'challenges to the individualism of twentiethcentury America. They also challenged the institution of private property as then understood-the ownership-as-domination view that Leopold would portray at the opening of 'The Land Ethic" through his recollection of Odysseus' disobedient slaves. Leopold could see well enough how sportsmen's ethics evolved. What he could not quite perceive was how the institution of private property might similarly evolve. He could not see how ownership norms, like ethical norms, could gradually become more sensitive to the land. Lacking this insight, he instinctively viewed private property as an immovable object on the path to land health. Unable to displace...

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