The health of all living organisms relies on the quality of the earth; therefore, environmental concerns are crucial for everyone because everything in the world is connected. There are numerous ecologists, but Aldo Leopold occupies a unique position in the history of wildlife conservation in the USA. He is a renowned writer, President of the United States Environmental Society, and one of the founders of the Wildlife Society (Browning, 2018). Moreover, Leopold obtained global fame as one of the creators of environmental ethics. His book The Sand County Calendar is considered the Bible of the ecological movement in the USA (Van Auken, 2020). His genius lies in broadening the conception of ethics on animals, vegetation, and wildlife. The basics of environmental ethics, which he has developed, have significantly enriched the ideology and practice of the American environmental movement.
It is equally vital to mention Rachel Carson, who is correspondingly regarded a pioneer in ecology. A marine biologist and conservationist, she was the first to demonstrate the devastating effects of pesticides on human health and even managed to get DDT banned in the United States (Carson et al., 2022). Her thoughts became a vector for the environmental movement in the western world. In 1962, she published a book — Silent Spring, in which she disproved the idea that pollution is a necessary consequence of progress (Mangrum, 2021). It influenced the global balance of power, and Carson’s personality occupies a unique place in the fight for environmental conservation.
Edward Wilson is another famous theorist and naturalist, the father of sociobiology, and the author of numerous books on evolution. Wilson’s view is valuable because his primary scientific interest is the ants that created highly organized communities before Homo Sapiens (Fritch et al., 2018). Furthermore, Wilson’s most significant interest was investigating how individuals interact to form social systems and how they work and evolve. His vast knowledge, integrated with his interest in the fundamentals of life, authorized him to explain the mechanisms of evolution. He stressed that ecology influences human well-being, productivity, and daily working development (Pimm, 2022). With these facts in mind, one must remember that everyone has a moral obligation to preserve nature for the benefit of future generations.
References
Browning, W. J. (2018). On the relationship between humans and nature in Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac. Agora, 27(2018), 2.
Carson, R., & Freeman, D. E. (2022). Always, Rachel: The letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, 1952–1964. Open Road Media.
Fritch, B., Kosolapov, A., Hudson, P., Nissley, D. A., Woodcock, H. L., Deutsch, C., & O’Brien, E. P. (2018). Origins of the mechanochemical coupling of peptide bond formation to protein synthesis. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 140(15), 5077-5087.
Mangrum, B. (2021). Rachel Carson, Environmental Rights, and the Publicity of Aesthetic Judgments. ELH, 88(3), 765-793.
Pimm, S. (2022). Edward O. Wilson (1929–2021). Science, 375(6579), 385-385.
Van Auken, P. (2020). Toward a fusion of two lines of thought: creating convergence between Aldo Leopold and sociology through the community concept. Socio-Ecological Practice Research, 2(1), 39-61.