Callicott's Strengths and Weaknesses

Callicott’s work provides useful explanations and expansions of Leopold’s land ethic. His argument against Western philosophy’s view that morality stems from rational thought as well as his use of Darwin’s information on the social and community behavior of animals is quite successful in convincing me of their moral value. However, as in other pieces we’re recently read, the scope and implications of the land ethic are fuzzy. He gives us some information but doesn’t clearly address or give adequate explanation for the different statuses of plants, animals, humans, etc. He states that despite the moral equality humans and the biotic community would have under the land ethic, humans remain superior to animals. His basis for this is unclear. It seems he is trying to avoid bringing the capacity for rational thought into the argument. Somehow the fact that we “remain members of the human community” is in itself reason for our moral superiority. There could be evolutionary explanations that underlie this statement, but he does not give them.
Callicott then touches on the issue of animal consumption, and it seems that even he is not sure what the implications of the land ethic in this situation are. It appears that he is against the current system of animal consumption (via his description/praise of American Indians who avoid wastefulness and make use of as much of the animal as they can), but he does not make any explicit statements. The land ethic seems like a useful tool as Leopold describes it and Calicott’s paper lends it a sort of structural support, but it is ultimately useless without an examination of how to bring the ethic into practice and of what that will actually mean as far as daily life is concerned.