What is Land Stewardship?
There are plenty of resources catalogued in the Resource Centre that speak eloquently of the philosophy, values, fundamentals and applied practices of land stewardship. Books by Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, H.D. Thoreau and Wes Jackson, to name only a few, will help. A basic working definition of land stewardship could be, the practice of carefully managing land usage to ensure natural systems are maintained or enhanced for future generations. However, this doesn’t at all capture what underpins the action of “carefully managing land-usage”. From too many sources to cite (ecology textbooks, websites, conference proceedings on sustainable agriculture, etc.), we have blended and compiled the following Four Guiding Principles of carefully managing land-usage: • Caring for the system as a whole – understanding the fundamental roles and values of natural systems, building up biological fertility in the soil, incorporating an understanding of the ecological cycles on the landscape (water, ene
