Very roughly, it means that for an ecologist, the knowledge that we acquire flays us (whips us, tearing our skins, producing wounds). Most people (laymen) don’t know how bad things are. The ecologist has only two options:
(1) they must either assume the role of pure scientist, writing up and reporting their findings, and deny any responsibility for acting upon the consequences of their findings (“just doing my job”, in other words), or
(2) they must assume the role of a physician: a scientist who sees what is coming in terms of environmental disaster, as if it were an approaching plague, AND is compelled to warn the community, despite the community absolutely not wanting to hear the bad news.
(This might make poor Google Translate even more confused, lol.)
Aldo Leopold was perhaps the most important 20th century US figure in the environmental field. His book,
A Sand County Almanac, is a collection of his experiences and reflections on changes in the natural world resulting from human actions, centered on the US Upper Midwest in the 1930’s.
Apparently it has been translated into Dutch, but is more widely available in the Netherlands in English. <- this is per Google AI, so I wouldn’t give a nickel for its accuracy.
But it’s a lovely book, and you might want to hunt it down and read it. It’s a collection of very short essays, perfect for reading in the early evenings of winter.
