Land Ethics and Animals

    Upon reading the assigned readings, I came across something that didn't necessarily fit for me. in "Egocentric Ethics: The Land Ethic," Aldo Leopold said, "The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land" (223). Upon saying this Leopold was talking about a third, unrecognized ethic, which would be that of land ethics. In that statement, he was defining all that land ethics would include, which is basically an "enlargement of the community ethic. My issue with that statement is that although there isn't necessarily a type of ethical viewpoint which lists was is ethically right or wrong in relation to the land, animals should not have been included in that statement. Animals are intrinsically a part of nature, but there is already a set of ethics which dictate what people can or cannot do in relations to animals. I think that Leopold should take the animal aspect out of what should be defined in land nature. If he doesn't want to do that, I think that he should specify animals, like are humans a part of that definition. What would be a good definition for what land ethics should entail? What should it include?