Uniting Home With Our Land Ethic
What I didn’t realize at the time, but started to appreciate as I volunteered year after year, was how time stops when you are connecting with your own environment and the nature that surrounds you.
The San Francisco Bay Area is home to one of the most naturally biodiverse regions in the country, with an abundance of unique animals that fill almost every ecological niche in the animal kingdom. In fact, the Bay Area is in the middle of the California Floristic Province, one of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots. The Mediterranean climate allows for relatively cool winters with precipitation, and relatively warm to hot summers with little to no precipitation.
I come from a small town along the Peninsula in the Bay Area, a lovely place called Los Altos. Although I have lived in the quaint little town for more than 18 years of my life, I did not get directly involved in the community’s local environment and preservation efforts until I reached middle school. In those two short years, I learned invaluable lessons about our local environment and how it impacts our broader region as a whole. For reference, the town of Los Altos is in the Lower Peninsula Watershed, a 98-square-mile area whose creeks feed into the San Francisco Bay. Four distinct creeks stretch over Los Altos, running from the foothills into the bay. These creeks are hosts to various native species, including ducks, egrets, heron, owls, fish, salamanders, and raccoons.
The middle school I attended located in the hills of Los Altos, Pinewood, required us to complete 20 hours of community service per semester. Something I look back on and cherish today for all of the marvelous experiences I shared with my classmates while we supported our local environment. Separate from the community creek cleanup days, I would also help participate in safeguarding our town’s pathways which are home to a great amount of plant and animal species. Aldo Leopold strives to point out the importance of his concept, the land ethic, in A Sand County Almanac.
Rather than interpreting the concept of the land ethic as an indication of disregard for the individual in favor of the species or the ecosystem, my view is quite different. I see the concept of the land ethic as the outgrowth and extension of his deep personal concern for the individual
Leopold’s emphasis on the land ethic and his concern for the individual illustrates that the individual’s relation to the land, (and to the plants and animals which grow upon it), can and should be symbiotically beneficial, rather than just disregarding us in favor of the natural environment. To expand on this, my personal involvement with my town’s land benefits me more than anything. Leopold acknowledged that people’s environmental values and ethics tend to be rooted in their own experiences.
Why did the protection of my creeks, hills, and pathways become so important to me? During my high school years, I began to recognize the Bay Area’s growing human population and ever-increasing development. As our human population continues to grow in the Bay Area and Peninsula, urban sprawl is rapidly wiping out the remaining wildlands and habitat for threatened species. Sprawl development (typically luxury home enterprises, apartment complexes, and golf courses) is harming and fragmenting important wildlife habitat while also increasing traffic congestion and contributing to air and water-quality issues. According to a recent Mercury News report, more than 300,000 acres of natural landscape in the Bay Area are at risk of sprawl development. I started to understand why conserving my town’s natural open space preserves, creeks, and local ecosystems was becoming increasingly significant.
The Bay Area’s volatile growth, coupled with its rich biodiversity, has resulted in a high number of native species at risk. The Bay’s nine counties are home to more than 90 animal and plant species listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act. Even with the tremendous growth and development throughout the region, however, no endangered species went extinct in the bioregion — a testament to the Act’s power. The ability to understand and connect with our land, environment, and local ecosystems, is what will eventually drive us to conservation of the land we live with.
Many people are unaware of the Bay Area’s vast amount of open space. When you drive along the I-280 highway you can observe the Santa Cruz mountain range. Los Altos Hills has seven open space preserves and parks. Every year in high school I would volunteer for the town of Los Altos Hills Pathways Run. The event was always full of joy and excitement as runners from across the local towns and from other places in the Bay Area would prepare to race. During those volunteer experiences, I learned a great deal more about how the town’s pathway systems were connected and just how many species reside among the hills of my town. A myriad of plant species such as the Shiny Leaf Barberry, which grows beautifully in the springtime, would grow along the paths.
What I didn’t realize at the time, but started to appreciate as I volunteered year after year, was how time stops when you are connecting with your environment and the nature that surrounds you. As Leopold states, “We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand love, or otherwise have faith in.” (A Sand County Almanac). Much of our understanding of the land ethic comes from having tangible experiences with nature and going out to explore the native species around us, and those are the species that also provide ecological services for us. As I experienced my town’s nature and began to comprehend what it meant to give back to my environment, I started to grasp how our environment directly impacts our lives. If one is to truly grasp what Aldo Leopold describes as Land Ethic in A Sand County Almanac, then it’s imperative to go outside and indulge in what nature has to offer. I think back to my memories of connecting with nature, and in that, I can look back on my own Land Ethic.
