Journal Entry #13

I found the readings from A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold to be interesting for a variety of reasons. His concept of this economic sense of worth stuck out to me the most. I had never thought of nature and conservation efforts in this way before. He makes the point that we only consider something of value worth saving when we tie an economic worth to it. Items that do not propose any value to us for future sales or revenue gain, often receive little attention and conservation efforts from us. He details elements of the marshes and points out that so few elements from them would uphold a certain dollar value and therefore, we disregard them and do away with them. However, we do this not realizing that it effects the parts of these ecosystems that we do associate a value with.


In general, we need to look beyond the dollar value of the components of these ecosystems and look at them holistically. Additionally, we need to somehow overcome this business centric, economy driven view of the natural world around us. We need to take it for the natural beauty that it is, and not the future money pit that we want it to be in the future. I hope to remember this going forward in my career in business. There is life beyond the four walls of my future office (or cubical, for entry level employees) that is worth seeing and experiencing. There doesn’t need to be some sort of future gain every time you approach a new environment.