In 1920 Aldo Leopold enthusiastically described his predator eradication program. He had formed a coalition of sportsmen and stockmen to eliminate wolves, mountain lions, and other large predators from Arizona and New Mexico: “But the last one must be caught before the job can be called fully successful,” he said (Flader 1974: 3). Twenty-four years later Leopold repented his war on wolves in a graceful and humble essay, “Thinking Like a Mountain,” which was drafted in 1944 and published in A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. What happened in the meantime?

It is tempting to believe that, during this period, Leopold discovered his revolutionary land ethic, that his thinking underwent a profound religious-metaphysical-moral change, and that his about-face on predator control programs was a direct result of this profound philosophical conversion. Since Leopold was acting, in 1920, as a representative of the U.S. Forest Service, which remained under the philosophical domination of Gifford Pinchot's humanistic utilitarianism, this interpretation sees Leopold as later rejecting utilitarian management because he came to espouse “a right to exist” for all members of the land community (see, for example, Petulla 1980: 16, 20).

This essay seeks to show that Leopold's intellectual odyssey during this period was more complex than this straightforward account would suggest. In particular, Leopold had embraced the main philosophical elements of his land ethic early in his career, even while he was advocating predator eradication.