Wildlife in American Culture

Page 372.  The general point made by Aldo Leopold in his work Wildlife in American Culture is that modern society with all its new technology and inventions, is having a very negative impact on the environment.  More specifically, Leopold suggests that society is continually destroying parts of the environment when we really don’t need to.  He writes, “the conquest of nature by machine has led to much unnecessary destruction of resources” (p. 372).  In this passage, Leopold is suggesting that society as a whole can do a much better job with being aware of what we truly need to take from the environment and what we need to preserve.  In conclusion, it is Leopold’s belief that “we shall achieve conservation when…the destructive use of land becomes unethical” (p. 372).

            In my view, Leopold is right because we really could be better about preserving our natural resources to help save the environment a little bit more.  For example, we use a lot of paper and water as a society.  If everyone were to recycle every possible thing they could and to try to take shorter showers, turn off the water while brushing their teeth, and other things like that, it would help the environment so much.  Riding your bike would also help a lot to reduce pollution of the air we breathe every day.  Although Leopold might object that people don’t care about the environment because of the current world we live in, I maintain that everyone wants to help protect the earth we live on but they just aren’t sure how to do that.  Therefore, I conclude that if there was more awareness put out there about the environment and how our actions effect it, people would be better about doing things to help the environment rather than cause more damage that what has already been done.