When was environmental law first recognized as a field worthy of endeavor? Legal academies began teaching courses in the new laws as they were propounded a half century ago, but the field existed earlier. It could be found, if only in fragments, in some law schools and engineering schools and colleges of agriculture, mining, and forestry. And there were repositories of environmental professionals in the government's land bureaus and extension services. I would argue that the foundational text is one that synthesizes these pieces into a whole and gives a central ethic advancing environmental protection: Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac, published in 1949, a year after his death. Leopold knew the field lacked an animating principle. "As far as I can detect," he writes, "no ethical obligation toward land is taught in these institutions," he says of the academies.
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机译：环境法是什么时候第一次被认为是一个值得努力的领域？半个世纪前，法学院开始教授新法律课程，但该领域存在得更早。它可以在一些法学院、工程学院以及农业、采矿和林业学院中找到，即使只是零碎的。政府的土地局和推广服务部门也有环境专业人员的资料库。我认为，基础文本是将这些部分综合成一个整体，并给出一个促进环境保护的核心伦理：奥尔多·利奥波德（Aldo Leopold）的《沙县年鉴》（A Sand County Almanac），出版于1949年，即他去世一年后。利奥波德知道这个领域缺乏一个动画原理。“据我所知，”他写道，“这些机构没有教授对土地的道德义务，”他谈到这些学院时说。
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