A Call for a Land Health Movement

This essay was originally published by Wendell Berry in his collection of essays entitled "The Way of Ignorance" (2005).

Excerpt:
"While taking a group break in the shade of a large pinon tree during a tour recently of the well-managed U Bar Ranch, near Silver City, N.M., the leader of our band of participants asked me to say a few words about a map given to me recently by a friend.

"I rose a bit reluctantly (the day being hot and the shade being deep) to explain that the map was commissioned by an alliance of ranchers concerned about the creep of urban sprawl into the 500,000-acre Altar Valley, located south of Tucson, Ariz. The map was important, I told them, for what it measured: indicators of rangeland health.

"Drawn up in multiple colors, the map expressed the intersection of three variables: soil stability, biotic integrity, and hydrological function - soil, grass, and water, in other words. The map displayed three conditions for each variable: 'Stable,' 'At Risk,' and 'Unstable.' A color represented a particular intersection. For example, Deep Red designated an 'Unstable,' or unhealthy, condition for soil, grass (vegetation), and water, while Deep Green represented 'Stable' for all three. Other colors represented conditions between these extremes...."