r Conservation 

» and Protection

GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 

CIRCULAR 414-A
Part A

Conservation and Protection

By Luna B. Leopold

CONSERVATION AND WATER MANAGEMENT

GEOLOGICAL SURVEY CIRCULAR 414-A

This volume complete in four ports

WasJungtoa I960
United States Department of the Interior

STEWART L. UDALL, Secretary

Geological Survey

William T. Pecora, Director

First printing 1960 

Second printing 1964

Third printing 1965 

Fourth printing 1967

Free on application to the U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, D.C. 20242
GEOLOGICAL SURVEY CIRCULAR 414 

CONSERVATION AND WATER MANAGEMENT

PART A

Conservation and Protection

By Luna B. Leopold

Presented before a meeting held by the Northeastern States 

Resources Council, Concord, N. H., Jan. 30,

When I was a child we had a burro I called 

Gacho. He was a typical burro, omnivorous in 

his eating habits and prone to streaks of extreme 

recalcitrance.

Our yard wasn't very large, but it did produce 

enough grass and weeds to keep old Gacho in 

good fettle. His first preference wa$ for the 

native grasses, and he chose to graze the lush 

patches rather than the shriveled plants on the 

areas of thin soil. Nevertheless, he was not 

particular and seemed to graze to some extent 

all over the yard. He often nibbled in the 

flower beds and I sometimes wondered whether 

he did this just for spite.

After a time I arranged some crude fences and a 

tethering rope to keep him out of the most 

important flower beds.

The yard was so small that we had a waste 

problem. To ignore the problem would hardly 

have been civilized, but, on the other hand, one 

couldn't follow him around all day with a shovel. 

So a workable compromise was adopted by 

keeping him penned up at night in a small 

enclosure, which, of course, could not be kept 

immaculate but was at least reasonably clean.

We had the burro and we weren't getting rid 

of him. He was useful; we enjoyed riding him 

and hitching him up to our wagons. But he 

was a bother sometimes.

Here was a simple case of resource use and 

resource development. The case is incomplete, 

but it demonstrates a principle.

The resource, represented by the vegetation, 

was being utilized, or developed if you will, by 

a small juggernaut which was only partly controllable by my youthful skills. There was no 

need to urge utilization. That followed as a 

matter of course. The problem was that the 

one who utilized the resource, in this case the 

burro, was not very discerning of relative values. 

To Gacho the choice of which plant to eat and 

where to get rid of the waste was governed only 

by his own interests and convenience.

Now, when a planning body convenes, one 

may bet that either the burro has Jain down in 

a flower bed or he has messed up the yard. By 

this time everybody is already in a lather.

An appreciation of the existence of problems 

usually leads to a period of organizing the facts, 

assessing the current situation, and surveying 

the future possibilities. In the New England 

area such an assessment has recently been completed. Since that stage has been reached, it is 

logical to discuss the function of a planning 

unit as a prelude' to the next phase. I should 

like to outline my own thoughts on this matter, 

but I do so without expecting to convince all 

others.

I believe that we will not protect the flower 

bed or clean up the yard by urging the burrc
please to confine his eating to the patch over 

near the gate and his waste disposal to the far 

corner. Rather, we must concentrate our attention on what needs to be saved and set up some 

ropes and fences to keep the burro off. We 

must choose an area where disposal can be tolerated and controlled, accepting the fact that if 

we have a burro we also have a waste disposal 

problem.

Now some planning bodies seem to concentrate on urging utilization of resources. Our 

national community has many organized bodies 

who urge development, and there is little need 

for a planning body to do so. A planning unit 

must see the whole picture, forsee what assets 

would be lost by uncontrolled development, 

determine which vulnerable assets should be 

protected, and take steps to protect them.

Interestingly enough, most planning bodies 

express concern for the conservation of our 

natural resources, but they actually concentrate 

on promoting development. I would like to 

direct attention to the need for planning as it 

relates to conservation. The water resource will 

be used as an example.

The United States is well endowed with water. 

Out of the 30 inches of rainfall per year which 

on the average falls over the country, 22 inches, 

or three-fourths, return to the atmosphere by 

evaporation and transpiration. This portion 

grows the forests, the grass, and the crops.

The remaining one quarter runs off in streams 

or becomes ground water and is available for 

man's use. This usable part is enough to furnish 

each man, woman, and child with enough water 

every day to fill a tank the size of an ordinary 

dining room. Of this available supply we use 

about one gallon out of five. We are not short 

of water as a whole.

Still, because of local climate and topography 

and year-to-year "variations in precipitation, 

water is very unevenly distributed, and there are 

obvious areas of shortage. In the Eastern

United States three-quarters or more of water use 

is for industry. From such geographic and 

historical facts emerge the water problems of 

the present day. As matters stand now, most 

water that is immediately available and inexpensive to use at each individual point is in use 

already. Further expansion of any individual 

use must be balanced by a decrease in some 

other use or by some attendant cost. For 

example, the growth of the large metropolitan 

centers in the West depends on increasing 

supplies of water. To get increased quantities, 

either some present use must be curtailed or 

water must be imported from areas which have 

an excess, to the place where supplies are needed, 

and at costs far exceeding those for water, 

supplies developed in the past.

If expanding industry in the East is to have 

the additional water supplies needed, it will 

generally be necessary to treat that water to 

improve its quality, and thus the expense will 

be much greater than in the past when the 

readily available water was of requisite quality.

So it can be seen that water problems are of 

three basic types. First, water may be immediately available but it may be of unsuitable 

quality, and therefore treatment is necessary 

treatment that may or may not make the cost 

prohibitive. The second type is that of a 

physical shortage of water for the desired uses. 

This also reduces to a matter of cost, because 

to increase the supply in an area which is 

deficient in total amount requires either that 

the money be spent to import water or that use 

itself must be .noved to the place where water 

it available. The third type of problem is the 

legal one of water rights. If a particular use 

can actually bear the cost of developing a new 

source or transporting water from a great distance, it may be prevented from doing so because 

of the fact that others have the legal right to 

that water. In such an instance the legal owners 

must be paid to relinquish their right. This
also, then, reduces to a question of economics, 

presuming that if one can pay a high enough 

price he can purchase even something dear to 

the present owner.

I have dealt with these general water problems in a most cursory way, and it should be 

recognized that in actual practice there are many 

ramifications. It is nevertheless true, I believe,' 

that poor quality of water, physical shortage of 

water for all uses, and legal rights to water all 

have a common economic base. To the man 

who can pay enough these problems are 

solvable. Whether the price can be justified by 

the benefit received is the issue. The economic 

justification, however, is partly influenced by 

what we have been accustomed to consider to 

be the value of water. Only now are people 

beginning to realize that we have always 

obtained water for bargain prices. We must 

steel ourselves to a new conception of what 

water really is worth. The economy will gradually reflect this realization.

Referring back to the analogy, the way, the 

place, and the time the burro munched the 

grass in other words, utilized the resourcewere governed by his own interests and conscience. Similarly, in the complex field of water, 

the ordinary pressures of utilization have developed the water resource up to the economic 

limits which have prevailed at each particular 

time and place.

The problem of conservation and the function 

of planning are to identify those aspects of the 

resource which would be depleted or degraded 

if the economic forces were allowed to operate 

unhampered. Stream pollution offers a convenient example.

We accept our machine civilization and do 

not intend to go back to living like the Indian. 

In accepting this burro, however, we must also 

accept a problem of waste disposal. In our 

modern society an essential use of rivers and 

streams is for the transportation and dilution of

wastes. This does not mean, however, that all 

streams need to be polluted, but it probably 

does mean that not all streams can be of virgin 

cleanliness. We must accept a degree of stream 

pollution and try to keep that within acceptable 

limits.

We can, if we will, maintain some streams, 

or all the water courses in some areas, unpolluted. But we must choose what to protect 

and actually start protecting before pollution 

has ruined the values, which once gone are difficult to reestablish. For example, once the 

biological equilibrium in a stream is seriously 

upset, it is often quite difficult to get fish, 

vegetation, and other parts of the biota to 

function normally again except after a long time.

There is much current discussion of comprehensive plans for river basin development; stress 

is placed on multiple use, particularly multipleuse dams. Does the existence of a comprehensive 

plan for resource development necessarily 

identify those values which are in greatest need 

of protection?

Comprehensive river basin development 

implies drawing up plans for guiding resource 

utilization toward the ultimate goal of obtaining 

the maximum benefits from the resources. The 

goal of maximum benefits is sound, but our 

measure of benefits and our yardsticks of value 

are still so rudimentary that one wonders 

whether the results have any real meaning. For 

example, how do we decide to keep one burro 

rather than two, and on what basis do we 

decide what waste is tolerable?

Two aspects of comprehensive development 

plans need examination for purposes of the 

present discussion. First, development plans 

usually pay considerably more attention to 

encouraging resource development than to 

workable and realistic measures to protect values 

which will decline in process of development. 

I believe that our experience in water-resource 

development has been that it is relatively sim-
pier to draw engineering plans for construction 

of reservoirs than to protect recreational, scenic, 

or other esthetic values from degradation by the 

proposed development. The approach has 

usually been to try to demonstrate that construction of some particular reservoir will not 

only help the fishing but will also offer new 

and greater opportunities for recreation. These 

arguments are generally supported by monetary 

estimates of the value of a mallard, a trout, and 

other similar assets. The widespread release of 

liver-fed trout the day before the season opens 

is, to me, proof enough that trying to express 

the value of trout fishing in monetary terms 

based on the volume of business in clothes, 

gasoline, and tackle, has hardly improved the 

fishing.

Solution of today's conservation problems 

must begin with the recognition that esthetic 

values cannot be assessed in monetary terms. 

To save such assets is the real conservation 

problem and this is where planning is vitally 

needed.

To summarize my first point on comprehensive development plans: Most such plans are 

concerned primarily with encouraging the burro 

to eat more grass on an efficient schedule. 

Given time, he needs no such encouragement, 

for he will eat whenever and wherever it is 

mqst profitable and convenient.

The second point concerns the present procedures for determining what plan of development will maximize the benefits of resource 

development over a period of time. We speak 

blithely of a plan for optimum ultimate use of 

all the resources of a basin. But it is difficult 

enough to evaluate even a single-purpose project. 

Even to do this we are already attempting to 

weigh in monetary terms flood control benefits, 

land-enhancement benefits, power benefits, 

public health benefits, recreation benefits, sedimentation benefits, municipal water benefits, 

pollution-control benefits, navigation benefits,

fishery benefits, wildlife benefits, and drainage 

benefits, to name but a few. And most of these 

are purported to have conservation aims.

Each of these benefits is computed on the 

basis of present monetary value. The procedures are usually complex. Then the future 

worth is computed by expanding these present 

values to a level they are supposed to attain 50 

years hence.

Apparently we are not only going to urge 

the burro to make maximum utilization of the 

resources, but we are also trying to compute 

what is maximum utilization, and exactly how 

he should achieve it, not only now but in the 

future. Our problems arise principally because 

resource use involves people. Attempts to 

forecast 50 years in advance what is best for the 

people is even more difficult than talking logic 

to the burro.

And now we come to the flower bed. The 

burro need do but a little nibbling for the 

flower bed to become a wreck. If an area is 

lucky enough to'have some remnants of original 

forest, it would be wise to see that there is no 

nibbling at all.

If you have a canoe country, the distinguishing characteristic of which is primitive portages 

and no putt-putts to scare away the circling 

eagle, keep the burro of modern mass recreation 

away and be glad you still have something 

which most lake States have already lost.

Protection of values implies identification of 

values. Let me make it crystal clear that planning units cannot be effective if they define 

value merely in terms of dollars. There are 

other values which are of no account to the 

developer. If left to those whose only god is 

progress, and whose sole measure of worth is 

 dollars, the esthetic values will be lost in the 

shuffle.

The value of a piece of wild country is not 

measured by the hydropower plus the merchantable timber. If the value of a park is expressed as
the sum of income of the hotdog stands, the 

juke box joints, the filling stations, and the 

local sporting goods stores, the figure may be 

high, but it misses the whole point. Park 

development which measures progress by 

increasing the monetary value just cited is 

obviously leading to a poorer and poorer park. 

A planning unit then might best assume the 

job of identifying values which, to be maintained, must be protected from the effects of 

ordinary expansion of use and development. 

We need not fear that the insatiable hunger of 

the machine age will fail to develop resources

when the economic setting makes such development profitable. The burro will continue to 

eat what and where he finds it convenient and 

to his individual taste. Rather, the need is for 

planning units to choose which flower beds 

ought to be protected. We must fence the 

flowers with enforceable ordinances and fashion 

a halter which will not unduly restrict where 

the burro is allowed to graze, but will jerk him 

up short when he reaches' the limit of the 

tether. If we fail to do so we may just as well 

give up growing flowers.

* U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1967 O 276-028