& çâÌæÚUæð´ ·¤è ¥ôÚU Îð¹Ùæ ÁæÚUè ÚU¹ð´ ¥ÍæüÌ ¥ÂÙð ÜÿØ ÂÚU ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´Ð ãæÚU Ù ×æÙð´, €UØô´ç·¤ ·¤æ× ·¤ÚUÙð âð ¥æÂ·¤ô ©gðàØ ·¤è Âýæç# ãôÌè ãñ ¥õÚU ÁèßÙ ·¤æ ¹æÜèÂÙ ÎêÚU ãôÌæ ãñÐ ÖÜð ãè ÁèßÙ ×ð´ ç·¤ÌÙè Öè ·¤çÆÙæ§ü €UØô´ Ù ¥æ°, çÁ™ææâæ ¥õÚU ©ˆâæã ÕÙæ° ÚU¹ð´Ð ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´, ÜÿØ ã×ðàææ ¥æÂ·Ô¤ Âæâ ãôÌð ãñ´ çÁ‹ãð´ ÂæÙð ·Ô¤ çÜ° ÂýØæâ ¥æÂ ·¤Öè Öè àæéM¤ ·¤ÚU â·¤Ìð ãñ´Ð

TANGENTS

Aldo Leopold's World

BY IHTISHAM KABIR
// f I 1 here are some who can live I without wild things and A some who cannot."
So begins A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There, a classic American book by Aldo Leopold (1887-1948). The book has month-by-month observations on nature, birds, trees, ecology and land use in a 120-acre abandoned farm that Leopold and his family reclaimed and rebuilt in Wisconsin. Leopold was many things: zoologist, botanist, farmer, hunter, woodcutter, ornithologist, poet, writer and father. But he is best known as a prime force behind the wildlife conservation and wilderness movement in the United States.
Leopold's main philosophy was this: the notion that land is a commodity belonging to people is incompatible with conservation and leads to its abuse. When we begin to see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. His "land ethic" says that the land and the full spectrum of its inhabitants have the right to exist without regard to its immediate economic value.
Profound thoughts aside, for me his charming Almanac dazzles with its poetic and witty observations about nature.
For example, in the February chapter he describes cutting down an oak tree with his saw. Slicing through the trunk, his saw moves backward in time through the tree's life while he makes observations, some historical, others imagined, about the years of its life. Thus, for example, 1908 was marked by a giant forest fire in the region whereas in 1907, a wandering lynx, "looking in the wrong direction for the promised land", entered a farm where its life promptly ended.
Much of the magic of the book derives from the way Leopold attributes human qualities to birds,
animals, trees - even the wind. Thus, during a flood, birds and mammals accept rising waters with "philosophical detachment." A "mouse-engineer" that had built a maze of tunnels under the winter snow becomes impatient when the snow melts and cannot wait until nightfall to inspect the damage to his creation, allowing a hawk to snatch him when he leaves the safety of his maze. Even omnivorous rabbits in his farm turn epicurean in their taste, preferring to nibble on hand-planted saplings over wild ones.
But Leopold was also a scientist and details of his experiments enrich the book. He kept meticulous records of the species of wildflowers blooming in his farm. He placed bands on small birds called chickadees and tracked them over several years to learn their lifecycle. He discovered the social reasons behind flocking behaviour of geese.
There is a recent, ironic footnote to Leopold's land ethic. One reason that his farm was difficult as an economic enterprise (and he was able to reclaim it in the first place) was because it was in a sandy region of Wisconsin. The sand imparted little economic value to the land in Leopold's day. However, in recent years, hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" has become an important tool in the extraction of oil and gas, and it turns out that Wisconsin sand is particularly useful for fracking. Thus, oil and gas companies have bought up millions of tons of sand from the "sand counties" of Wisconsin, often turning debt-ridden farmers into overnight millionaires.
For many years, the Almanac has been one of my favourite books. It helps me become a better observer of nature, ask the right questions and, most of all, appreciate wild things.
facebook.com/tangents.ikabir