Duties to Ecosystems
— Callicott, Companion to A Sand County Almanac, 1987

"Duties to Ecosystems," in Callicott, J. Baird, ed., Companion to A Sand County Almanac: Interpretive and Critical Essays, pages 246-274. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987. Online at: http://hdl.handle.net/10217/46009

Aldo Leopold finds that an ecosystem is a biotic community. Moreover, moving from what is the case to what ought to be, Leopold argues a land ethic, duties toward ecosystems. Ecologists have sometimes held that ecosystems are superorganisms, sometimes only loose aggregations of plants and animals. Philosophers sometimes hold that ecosystems are beyond moral consideration, since they have no preferences and have no felt experience. But perhaps ethics needs to become more comprehensive, with respect and love for ecosystemic integrity, stability, and beauty. Can a community per se count morally? Duties to other humans remain all they have ever been, but "the land" now counts too.