Acadia Partners Blog

We often make the case for conservation by arguing that conservation brings benefits to mankind. This may be true, but it also takes us away from what may be the real work that needs to be done, which is to develop a “land ethic.” Focusing on the utility of Acadia National Park and of other conserved places reinforces the idea that the Park and the animals and plants that live there are just property and that our relationship to the Park, as Aldo Leopold put it, “is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations.” This essay argues for a deeper, more reciprocal relationship with nature, and for a different rationale for conservation.