What is land health?

Aldo Leopold, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Aldo Leopold answers

Land is an organism. Not metaphorically, not approximately — but in the precise sense that its soil, water, plants, and animals function collectively for the maintenance of the whole, and that this collective functioning is what health means.¹ The key word is self-renewal. Health in the land is not a sufficiency of resources — that is what I called the "famine concept," and it is inadequate.²

A landscape can be stocked with timber and still be sick; a soil can be chemically fertile and still be losing the underground architecture that makes fertility self-sustaining. What matters is whether the organism can renew itself. When that capacity fails — when soil washes away faster than it forms, when water systems exhibit abnormal floods and shortages, when plant and animal species disappear without visible cause or irrupt as pests despite every effort at control — the land is sick.³

The symptoms, moreover, rarely sit where the cause lies. A rodent irruption looks like an animal problem; the latest evidence points to derangements of the plant community as the real seat of it.⁴ A forest plantation producing one-log trees on soil that once grew four-log trees looks like a forestry problem; the cause probably lies in the micro-flora of the soil, and it may take more years to restore that flora than it took to destroy it.⁵

What we now call conservation is, to a large extent, local alleviations of biotic pain — necessary, but not cures.⁶ We are practicing the art of land doctoring before the science of land health has been born. That science requires a base datum of normality — some picture of how healthy land maintains itself. Wilderness is the most perfect such norm.

Paleontology shows that wilderness maintained itself for immensely long periods; its component species were rarely lost, neither did they get out of hand; weather and water built soil as fast or faster than it was carried away.⁷ This is why wilderness matters as a land laboratory, quite apart from its recreational value: it is the only place where we can study the physiology of an underanged biotic community and compare it against the managed landscapes we have altered.⁸

The political and institutional dimension follows directly. Mass man remains unconscious of land-health because European civilization developed on a landscape extraordinarily resistant to disorganization, and because science could not, until recently, distinguish fact from fancy in land's reaction to human use.⁹ The power to injure land-health grew faster than the consciousness that it can be injured.¹⁰

Land is still regarded as something to be tamed rather than understood, loved, and lived with; its resources are still treated as commodities rather than as cohabitants in the land-community.¹¹ The practical implication is that conservation cannot be organized around separate resources — timber here, water there, game somewhere else — each group with its own goal, each nullifying the others.¹² The goal must bracket all of them: the perpetuation of the biotic self-renewal that is land-health itself.¹³

Sources

The land consists of soil, water, plants, and animals, but health is more than a sufficiency of these components. It is a state of vigorous self-renewal in each of them, and in all collectively. Such collective functioning of interdependent parts for the maintenance of the whole is characteristic of an organism.
Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation, pp. 648–651
Conservation is usually thought of as dealing with the supply of resources. This 'famine concept' is inadequate, for a deficit in the supply in any given resource does not necessarily denote lack of health, while a failure of function always does, no matter how ample the supply.
Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation, pp. 648–651
It is now generally understood that when soil loses fertility, or washes away faster than it forms, and when water systems exhibit abnormal floods and shortages, the land is sick.
Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation, pp. 596–597
The latest scientific evidence points to derangements of the plant community as the real seat of rodent irruptions, but few or no explorations of this clue are being made.
Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation, pp. 596–597
Many forest plantations are producing one-log or two-log trees on soil which originally grew three-log and four-log trees. Why? Advanced foresters know that the cause probably lies not in the tree, but in the micro-flora of the soil, and that it may take more years to restore the soil flora than it took to destroy it.
Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation, pp. 596–597
The practices we now call conservation are, to a large extent, local alleviations of biotic pain. They are necessary, but they must not be confused with cures. The art of land doctoring is being practiced with vigor, but the science of land health is yet to be born.
A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There, pp. 229–231
Paleontology offers abundant evidence that wilderness maintained itself for immensely long periods; that its component species were rarely lost, neither did they get out of hand; that weather and water built soil as fast or faster than it was carried away.
A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There, pp. 229–231
The recreational value of wilderness has been often and ably presented, but its scientific value is as yet but dimly understood. This is an attempt to set forth the need of wilderness as a base-datum for problems of land-health.
Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation, pp. 596–597
European civilization developed on a landscape extraordinarily resistant to disorganization, i.e. one which endures very rough usage and severe modification without derangement of function... science could not, until recently, distinguish fact from fancy in the reaction of land to human use.
Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation, pp. 648–651
In short, the power to injure land-health grew faster than the consciousness that it can be injured.
Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation, pp. 648–651
Land, to the average citizen, is still something to be tamed, rather than something to be understood, loved, and lived with. Resources are still regarded as separate entities, indeed, as commodities, rather than as our cohabitants in the land-community.
Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation, pp. 648–651
Each group has its own goal, and it is common knowledge that these conflict and nullify each other to a large degree.
For the Health of the Land, pp. 244–245
What I mean by 'prediction' is a shrewd guess on just one basic question: What are the probable conditions requisite for the perpetuation of the biotic self-renewal land-health? This would define a goal for conservationists to strive toward.
For the Health of the Land, pp. 244–245