PARENT SESSION
Symposium #8: Linking the Leopold Legacy and Ecological Restoration in the Southwestern U.S. and Northwestern Mexico.

Organized by: W Forbes, C Meine, and C Curtin
Monday, August 5. 1:00 PM to 3:45 PM. Maricopa Meeting Room, TCC.

Aldo Leopold: an invitation to land restoration.

Klaver, Irene^*,1, ¹ University of North Texas, Denton, TX

ABSTRACT- Ecological restoration in-vites many worlds into life, in vita (the same vita as in vitality). In-vita-tion is both conceptually and practically at the center of restoration. The openess, which characterizes invitation, is crucial for all levels of restoration activity: it creates/affords a place for things to come alive, it enlivens relations between volunteers and experts, it endorses an inclusive flux paradigm in science, it asks for a lively politics of negotiation and contestation, that is, a deeply democratic approach to political decision making. In short, on all levels, restoration as invitation implies transition, versatility, adjustments; changing boundaries between beings, institutions, countries. Precisely because of its social and natural invocation, invitation is well-suited as a description of the activity of ecological restoration, itself a hybrid between culture and nature. Where the initial focus of restoration has been on relations within and between ecosystems, the pertinence of social, political, ethical, and aesthetic relations soon surfaced. When Aldo Leopold in his 1934 speech at the dedication of the University of Wisconsin Arboretum as one of the first articulated the notion of ecological restoration, he did this by emphasizing the mutually beneficial relation between people and the land. In my paper I explore some of the conceptual tools through which this relation of in-vita-tion develops and focus especially on the relation between language and nature as Leopold invokes in his "Song of the Gavilan."

KEY WORDS: In-vita-tion, Leopold, Gavilan, Translation