Leopold

First, I want to acknowledge Leopold's beautiful rhetoric. Some of his prose rings with a note of poetry that makes this sort of reading more memorable and easier to swallow.
What struck me about his argument, is in hindsight, a rather obvious concept, one that perhaps Taylor could have used to make his concepts easier to dissect. The community concept is one that makes perfect sense to me why nature may have inherent value. A biological community is simply an extension of our human communities, where we (probably should) care about people we don't know, even though they may have no instrumental value to us, or even in some cases, possess negative instrumental value. While this doesn't clear up any talk about equal inherent value, and the concept is still difficult to dissect, thinking about all life in the Berkshires as part of my community is a nice thought.
After writing this post, I realize once again that the demonstration of inherent value is still somewhat elusive, but it is rewarding to me use this idea, and in that sense, this community concept is bringing me an immediate instrumental value.