Edward Homer brings to life Fr Charles Brandt’s passion for the wisdom of Aldo Leopold.
Quotes:
“…a thing is right if it tends to preserve the beauty, integrity and stability of the biotic community otherwise it’s wrong. So you could look at anything on the river…
Is that really preserving the beauty and integrity and stability?
If you clear-cut a mountainside, is that preserving the integrity?
If you kill off all the wolves, is that in preserving the beauty, integrity of the biotic community?
So it’s a kind of a simple way of pointing out which is the right way to go.
So the Sacred Commons is a sense that it belongs to everyone and belongs to no one.
Everybody has rights. The mice, insects have rights and fish have rights and we have to respect those rights.
We just can’t dominate everything. As Aldo Leopold said, we can’t just be resource managers, we’re just plain members of the biotic community…”
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Sacred Commons-Father Charles Brandt reflects on the teachings of Aldo Leopold – transcript
The bishops of Oregon, Washington and actually part of BC did a study on the Columbia River about ten years ago. And they spoke up for all the people and all the creatures that use that river and live along the river. That all these creatures have rights, like fish have rights, birds have rights and we have to respect, respect those rights. And it all goes back I think really to the father of North American ecology is Aldo Leopold and Aldo Leopold was a forester in New Mexico and he was also an avid hunter.
He had this experience once he was hunting with a couple of companions and they shot a wolf. And their idea was if they could get rid of the wolves, there would be more deer and then would have better hunting. And he watched this wolf die and he watched the green of the eye gradually disappear. And he went through sort of a conversion experience and by my that I mean that he he gave up the idea of being a resource manager and he realized that he was just a plain member of the biotic community and he began to think like a mountain. Because when that green light disappears of the eye of this wolf, he realized that the wolf and the mountain knew something that he didn’t know. It was kind of a deeper knowledge, which we were losing. So that led to his conversion.
He says that kind of a maxim, how do you know what is right when you’re working in a forest on a river in the ocean anywhere in the environment. And he says a thing is right when it tends to preserve the beauty, the integrity and the stability of the biotic community, otherwise it’s wrong. So you could look at anything on the river (and ask), is that is that really preserving the beauty and integrity and stability. If you clear-cut a mountainside, is that preserving the integrity. If you kill off all the Wolves is that in preserving the beauty integrity of the biotic community. So it’s a kind of a simple way of pointing out which is the right way to go.
So anyway the sacred Commons is a sense that it belongs to everyone belongs to no one. Everybody has rights, the mice insects have rights and fish have rights and we have to respect those rights. We just can’t dominate everything. We can’t as Aldo Leopold said, we can’t just be resource managers when we’re just plain members of the biotic community