LEOPOLD'S LAND ETHIC AND SACRED GROVES IN YORUBA COMMUNITIES: INVESTIGATING HOW ALDO LEOPOLD'S ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY ALIGNS WITH TRADITIONAL YORUBA CONSERVATION PRACTICES
In this paper, the connection between the Land Ethic proposed by Aldo Leopold and the sacred groves of the Yoruba community conservative practice of southwestern Nigeria is examined. Even though these philosophies appear to be dissimilar in time and space, they have striking similarities in how they relate human and nature, community-based conservation ethics, and actual outcomes of biodiversity protection. The biotic community notion by Leopold is similar to the Yoruba cosmological notions of interrelated spiritual ecological networks and both share the thoughts that human beings are not lords over nature systems but rather members of the same. According to the statistics of biodiversity of the sacred groves of Yoruba such as the World Heritage site Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) systems achieved the success of preserving more than 400 species of plants and mammals. As revealed and explained in this paper, native African ecological ethics have significant value to contemporary conservation as well as to stipulate the failures of the Western-centric environmental philosophy, including valuable examples of community-based conservation efforts applying Leopoldian extended ethical community visions.
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