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19 Land Use and Democracy (I942- I945) [ OPOLD acknowledged that, in wartime, conservation seemed like "a milk-and-water affair." Viewed from another angle, though, war defined the issue. "If America is here to stay," Leopold said at a seminar in 1942, "she must have healthy land to live on, for, and by. Hitler 's taunt that no democracy uses its land decently, while true of our past, must be proven untrue in the years to come."! Shortly after the United States entered the war, he wrote an article for Audubon magazine entitled "Land Use and Democracy," in which he again took up the theme of the individual's role in conservation. Leopold still doubted the effectiveness of government programs as a cure-all for landuse ills. He did note the "real and indispensable" functions of government in conservation: "Government is the tester of fact vs. fiction, the umpire of bogus vs. genuine, the sponsor of research, the guardian of technical standards, and, I hasten to add, the proper custodian of land which, for one reason or another, is not suited to private husbandry. These functions will become real and important as soon as conservation begins to grow from the bottom up, instead of from the top down, as is now the case."2 Leopold had a Jeffersonian faith in democracy: the only sure cure for democracy's ills was still more democracy. Simply put, if citizens wished to avoid the undue imposition of government, then they had to assume responsibility for conservation on an individual basis. Leopold's position was still determined, as it had always been, by a combination of practical necessity and his own stubborn brand of conservatism. Government actions , necessary though they were, no matter how good they were, could not stem the tide of land abuse. "One of the curious evidences that 'conservation programs' are losing their grip," Leopold wrote, "is that they have seldom resorted to self-government as a cure for land abuse. 'We who are about to die,' unless democracy can mend its land-use, have not tried de430 Land Use and Democracy mocracy as a possible answer to our problem."3 To Leopold, "trying democracy" meant adopting "a simple formula by which we, and posterity , may act to make America a permanent institution instead of a trial balloon. The formula is: learn how to tell good land-use from bad. Use your own land accordingly, and refuse aid and comfort to those who do not. Isn't this more to the point than merely voting, petitioning, and writing checks for bigger and better bureaus, in order that our responsibilities may be laid in bigger and better laps?"4 Education and individual responsibility in land-use decisions remained the keys to good husbandry, and good husbandry was "the heart of conservation ." Leopold also proposed a new tactic: consumer boycott. Discriminating consumers, he suggested, could actively seek out goods-milk, lumber, paper, wheat-that were produced by conscientious landowners. He had no illusions that "hitching conservation directly to the producer-consumer relation " would be easy, but it was important if for no other reason than that it allowed the city dweller and non-landowner to take direct action. Anxious to avoid political overtones, he explained that boycott as a conservation measure "may be radical in the sense of being new, but not in any other sense. Its political complexion is of a much paler hue than the now universal policy of laying all conservation problems in the lap of government."s Leopold was self-critical enough to know that those who did not share his interests or experience were unlikely to adopt his own high standards of conservation. He made a positive point of this. His "formula" for effective conservation presented "an intellectual gradient suitable for all ages and all degrees of land-use education. No one person, young or old, need feel any obligation to act beyond his own personal range of vision."6 Leopold's personal range of vision was abnormally broad, and his sense of obligation proportionately strong. As a teacher, writer, landowner, and public official, Leopold would continue to work during the war years toward a wider public appreciation of land health and the issues it entailed. One particularly volatile issue-deer management-would embroil Leopold in a bitter debate that would make plain the difficulties involved in "trying democracy" as a solution to complex conservation problems. "Culture is a state of awareness of the land's collective functioning...

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