70 Quotes About Conservation

In every remote corner of the world there are people like Carl Jones and Don Merton who have devoted their lives to saving threatened species. Very often, their determination is all that stands between an endangered species and extinction. But why do they bother? Does it really matter if the Yangtze river dolphin, or the kakapo, or the northern white rhino, or any other species live on only in scientists' notebooks? Well, yes, it does. Every animal and plant is an integral part of its environment: even Komodo dragons have a major role to play in maintaining the ecological stability of their delicate island homes. If they disappear, so could many other species. And conservation is very much in tune with our survival. Animals and plants provide us with life-saving drugs and food, they pollinate crops and provide important ingredients or many industrial processes. Ironically, it is often not the big and beautiful creatures, but the ugly and less dramatic ones, that we need most. Even so, the loss of a few species may seem irrelevant compared to major environmental problems such as global warming or the destruction of the ozone layer. But while nature has considerable resilience, there is a limit to how far that resilience can be stretched. No one knows how close to the limit we are getting. The darker it gets, the faster we're driving. There is one last reason for caring, and I believe that no other is necessary. It is certainly the reason why so many people have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of rhinos, parakeets, kakapos, and dolphins. And it is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them. Mark Carwardine

I do have hope. Nature is enormously resilient, humans are vastly intelligent, the energy and enthusiasm that can be kindled among young people seems without limit, and he human spirit is indomitable. But if we want life, we will have to stop depending on someone else to save the world. It is up to us-you and me, all of us. Myself, I have placed my faith in the children. Jane Goodall

Chronicling the passage of whales has led me to an understanding that we, as a species, now sand at a crossroads. We can face the possibility of our own extinction and work to avert it, or we can flow the more traditional path of earths organisms and fall blindly over the edge. If there's one trait that characterised human beings, it's the will to survive. This, I believe, will motivate us to work with the natural world rather than opposite it, which is all we need to do to give the children of earth - of all species - the opportunity to thrive. . Alexandra Morton

Pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe. Suzy Kassem

Pick a leader who will keep jobs in your country by offering companies incentives to hire only within their borders, not one who allows corporations to outsource jobs for cheaper labor when there is a national employment crisis. Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies. Suzy Kassem

Pick a leader who will not only bail out banks and airlines, but also families from losing their homes -- or jobs due to their companies moving to other countries. Pick a leader who will fund schools, not limit spending on education and allow libraries to close. Pick a leader who chooses diplomacy over war. An honest broker in foreign relations. A leader with integrity, one who says what they mean, keeps their word and does not lie to their people. Pick a leader who is strong and confident, yet humble. Intelligent, but not sly. A leader who encourages diversity, not racism. One who understands the needs of the farmer, the teacher, the doctor, and the environmentalist -- not only the banker, the oil tycoon, the weapons developer, or the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyist. Suzy Kassem

In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes. Jane Goodall

But wasn't that progress too, that the elephants were killed off like the mastodon and giant rhino before them, like all other wildlife and wild places? 'We can't stop time, ' MacAdam said. 'But you can change the way it goes, ' Nehemiah insisted. Mike Bond

I do not know, really, how we will survive without places like the Inner Gorge of the Grand Canyon to visit. Once in a lifetime, even, is enough. To feel the stripping down, an ebb of the press of conventional time, a radical change of proportion, an unspoken respect for others that elicits keen emotional pleasure, a quick intimate pounding of the heart. The living of life, any life, involves great and private pain, much of which we share with no one. In such places as the Inner Gorge the pain trails away from us. It is not so quiet there or so removed that you can hear yourself think, that you would even wish to; that comes later. You can hear your heart beat. That comes first. Unknown

Age in itself gives substance – what has lasted becomes a thing worth keeping. An older poem's increasing strangeness of language is part of its beauty, in the same way that the cracks and darkening of an old painting become part of its luminosity in the viewer’s mind. Jane Hirshfield

We trust ourselves, far more than our ancestors did… The root of our predicament lies in the simple fact that, though we remain a flawed and unstable species, plagued now as in the past by a thousand weaknesses, we have insisted on both unlimited freedom and unlimited power. It would now seem clear that, if we want to stop the devastation of the earth, the growing threats to our food, water, air, and fellow creatures, we must find some way to limit both. Donald Worster

Even if mankind can go on without them, a piece of our vibrantly diverse world dies along with each species. Dieter Braun

Take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints! Chief Seattle

When I consider that the nobler animal have been exterminated here - the cougar, the panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, dear, the beaver, the turkey and so forth and so forth, I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed and, as it were, emasculated country.. Is it not a maimed and imperfect nature I am conversing with? As if I were to study a tribe of Indians that had lost all it's warriors.. I take infinite pains to know all the phenomena of the spring, for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem, and then, to my chagrin, I hear that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places. I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars. I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth. Henry David Thoreau

The writer Richard Manning has argued that 'the most destructive force in the American West is its commanding views, because they foster the illusion that we command. Phillip Connors

On a winter’s day when a person’s spirits may be low and to behold thirty to one-hundred Evening Grosbeaks busily gorging themselves on bird seed and perched in a stand of pines with all of them creating a cacophony of sparrow like chirps, this is real therapy for me. It is an act of contagious optimism. It is at such times I realize that a bird can do more for me than a shrink. Barry Babcock

Speechless is not even a good enough word to describe what I feel when I see the pictures of how we have transformed the world from the good to bad, from natural to artificial, physical appearance to daily makeup. I think I want to go with the word ENRAGED, DISGUSTED, or better yet INSULTED . AuliqIce

The love for God is the love to protect the environment. Lailah Gifty Akita

Do you think people have evolved too far, because I do; oh their ability to heal is indeed a wonder and I do praise them for that, but in many other things I think evolution has been a bit rushed, like getting to the bus stop before the wheel was invented. Unknown

â€â€¹It is Obscene to keep Printing Newspapers in the Digital Era Vineet Raj Kapoor

Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterpreted experience, in which body, mind, and nature are the same. This retreat from wonder, the backing away like lobsters into safe crannies, the desperate instinct that our life passes unlived, is reflected in proliferation without joy, corrosive money rot, the gross befouling of the earth and air and water from which we came. Peter Matthiessen

Man was the last of Creation but was given the duty to care for the Earth and all other created living creatures. Lailah Gifty Akita

Global transformation can occur only when each individual has the courage to awaken from this amnesia to our true self and then make conscious choices true to our spirit. The human race is the only species on earth evolved enough to be capable of this privilege. Patsie Smith

My two favourite things in life are libraries and bicycles. They both move people forward without wasting anything. The perfect day: riding a bike to the library. Peter Golkin

The love for God is the love for nature. Lailah Gifty Akita

Every man ought to plant a tree. Lailah Gifty Akita

I wrapped my arms around him like I was saving an oak tree. C.J. English

I come to oil country with a book about radicals who wish for the end of pipelines. But that's not what it's about. It's the friction point of prosperity and concern, ability and disability, the loss of bodily presence and the gain of ghost messages. It's misplaced outrage and well-placed courage. It's banjo song and smoke in your eye. Stories hinge there, swinging this way and that. Kate Inglis

I'll never look at cake the same way again, " he whispered in her ear. Robin Bielman

The goal for most people should not be to feel better, but to get better at feeling. Shannon L. Alder

As it is there isn't a single thing isn't an opportunity for some 'alert' person, including practically everybody by the 'greed', that, they are 'alive', therefore. Etc. That, in fact, there are 'conditions'. Gravelly Hill or any sort of situation for improvement, when the Earth was properly regarded as a 'garden tenement messuage orchard and if this is nostalgia let you take a breath of April showers let's us reason how is the dampness in your nasal passage -- but I have had lunch in this 'pasture' (B. Ellery to George Girdler Smith 'gentleman' 1799, for £150)overlooking 'the town' sitting there like the Memphite lord of all Creationwith my back -- with Dogtownover the Crown of gravelly hill It is not bad to be pissed off . Charles Olson

Another big group of dolphins had just surfaced alongside our moving vessel–leaping and splashing and calling mysteriously back and forth in their squeally, whistly way, with many babies swift alongside their mothers. And this time, confined to just the surface of such deep and lovely lives, I was becoming unsatisfied. I wanted to know what they were experiencing, and why to us they feel so compelling, and so–close. This time I allowed myself to ask them the question that was forbidden fruit: Who are you? Science usually steers firmly from questions about the inner lives of animals. Surely they have inner lives of some sort. But like a child who is admonished that what they really want to ask is impolite, a young scientist is taught that the animal mind–if there is such–is unknowable. Permissible questions are “it” questions: where it lives; what it eats; what it does when danger threatens; how it breeds. But always forbidden–always forbidden–is the one question that might open the door: “Who?” – Carl Safina . Carl Safina

If 22 bushels (1, 300 pounds) of rice and 22 bushels of winter grain are harvested from a quarter acre field, then the field will support five to ten people each investing an average of less than one hour of labour per day. But if the field were turned over to pasturage, or if the grain were fed to cattle, only one person could be supported per quarter acre. Meat becomes a luxury food when its production requires land which could provide food directly for human consumption. This has been shown clearly and definitely. Each person should ponder seriously how much hardship he is causing by indulging in food so expensively produced. Masanobu Fukuoka

Today humanity faces a stark choice: save the planet and ditch capitalism, or save capitalism and ditch the planet. Fawzi Ibrahim

We look at the world through our own eyes, naturally. But by looking from the inside out, we see an inside-out world. This book takes the perspective of the world outside us–a world in which humans are not the measure of all things, a human race among other races..In our estrangement from nature we have severed our sense of the community of life and lost touch with the experience of other animals..understanding the human animal becomes easier in context, seeing our human thread woven into the living web among the strands of so many others. Carl Safina

When we flood our creative problem-solving mind with the endorphins of gratitude, we are open to receiving the spectacular solutions that are needed now to ensure that generations to come will enjoy this beautiful blue ball that we call home. Natalie Pace

One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery. Wallace Stegner

You wouldn't walk with your underpants stuck in your bottom, you'd adjust them. So don't treat the inconvenience in your life like ill-fitting wandering underpants, adjust it to be comfortable again. Unknown

No settled family or community has ever called its home place an “environment.” None has ever called its feeling for its home place “biocentric” or “anthropocentric.” None has ever thought of its connection to its home place as “ecological, ” deep or shallow. The concepts and insights of the ecologists are of great usefulness in our predicament, and we can hardly escape the need to speak of “ecology” and “ecosystems.” But the terms themselves are culturally sterile. They come from the juiceless, abstract intellectuality of the universities which was invented to disconnect, displace, and disembody the mind. The real names of the environment are the names of rivers and river valleys; creeks, ridges, and mountains; towns and cities; lakes, woodlands, lanes roads, creatures, and people. And the real name of our connection to this everywhere different and differently named earth is “work.” We are connected by work even to the places where we don’t work, for all places are connected; it is clear by now that we cannot exempt one place from our ruin of another. The name of our proper connection to the earth is “good work, ” for good work involves much giving of honor. It honors the source of its materials; it honors the place where it is done; it honors the art by which it is done; it honors the thing that it makes and the user of the made thing. Good work is always modestly scaled, for it cannot ignore either the nature of individual places or the differences between places, and it always involves a sort of religious humility, for not everything is known. Good work can be defined only in particularity, for it must be defined a little differently for every one of the places and every one of the workers on the earth. The name of our present society’s connection to the earth is “bad work” — work that is only generally and crudely defined, that enacts a dependence that is ill understood, that enacts no affection and gives no honor. Every one of us is to some extent guilty of this bad work. This guilt does not mean that we must indulge in a lot of breast-beating and confession; it means only that there is much good work to be done by every one of us and that we must begin to do it. Wendell Berry

These steel monstrosities screamed night and day, blotted out the starlit skies and Northern Lights with flashing red strobes, slaughtered thousands of bats and entire flocks of birds banished tourism and wildlife, made people sick and drove them from their now-valueless homes. Mike Bond

A photograph of a disposable diaper floating in the arctic miles away from human habitat fueled my daily determination to save at least one disposable diaper from being used and created. One cloth diaper after another, days accumulated into years and now our next child is using the cloth diapers we bought for our firstborn. Gloria Ng

Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us. Theodore Roosevelt

We depend on this planet to eat, drink, breathe, and live. Figuring out how to keep our life support system running needs to be our number-one priority. Nothing is more important than finding a way to live together - justly, respectfully, sustainably, joyfully - on the only planet we can call home. Annie Leonard

Nothing is more important to human beings than an ecologically functioning, life sustaining biosphere on the earth. It is the only habitable place we know of in a forbidding universe. We all depend on it to live and we are compelled to share it; it is our only home.. the earth's biosphere seems almost magically suited to human beings and indeed it is, for we evolved through eons of intimate immersion within it. We cannot live long or well without a functioning biosphere, and so it is worth everything we have. Joseph Guth

In this image-driven age, wildlife filmmakers carry a heavy responsibility. They can influence how we think and behave when we’re in nature. They can even influence how we raise our kids, how we vote and volunteer in our communities, as well as the future of our wildlands and wildlife. If the stories they create are misleading or false in some way, viewers will misunderstand the issues and react in inappropriate ways. People who consume a heavy diet of wildlife films filled with staged violence and aggression, for example, are likely to think about nature as a circus or a freak show. They certainly won’t form the same positive connections to the natural world as people who watch more thoughtful, authentic, and conservation-oriented films. Chris Palmer

One of the maxims of the new field of conservation biological control is that to control insect herbivores, you must maintain populations of insect herbivores. Douglas Tallamy

To speak of sparing anything because it is beautiful is to waste one’s breath and incur ridicule in the bargain. The aesthetic sense- the power to enjoy through the eye, and the ear, and the imagination- is just as important a factor in the scheme of human happiness as the corporeal sense of eating and drinking; but there has never been a time when the world would admit it. John Van Dyke

For every tree, we plant, we saves a life. Lailah Gifty Akita

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. Aldo Leopold

If the UN and other international multilateral institutions are sending troops and weaponry, now they must begin to fund training and leadership development at the same levels. The new war must start with the quality of beliefs and dreams that are planted into the hearts and minds of school children at a personal level and permeate the driving philosophies of entire societies and communities. Archibald Marwizi

Due to poaching and global warming, future generations will not be able to see some animal and plant species given the rate at which they are disappearing from the forests and seas. Both vices are man-made and man must be challenged and confronted on these global issues. Park rangers, armies and nature conservation trusts are still grappling to find lasting solutions — will you join them in this fight? . Archibald Marwizi

Due to climate change and growing world population, the demand for vital requirements for human survival will continue to rise. If the world is not producing as much food as demanded, the prices will continue to rise affecting the poor and lower classes more, in every society. It is sad, looking at the shocking statistics of people who die every day as well as the spread of preventable diseases in developing nations, just because people do not have access to clean drinking water. So are we proud of our leadership contribution? Are we doing enough to increase food production, harvest rain water and replenish underground water reserves?. Archibald Marwizi

There still remains a lot of space to share on earth, and overpopulation remains a perception. We put geographic and political boundaries around ourselves because of the need to rule and control. To find solutions, the current and future leader needs to go back to redefine underlying influences to relevant political, demographic and geographic systems. Will you take up the challenge and consider the possibilities?. Archibald Marwizi

I am aware that for decades there has been exploration of options and concrete plans and investments being made to look at life on another planet. We must not stop exploring. At the same time let’s preserve and enhance the life we already have on earth. Join the green revolution, plant trees, stop soil erosion, reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere and promote recycling of waste. Become aware, create awareness, act responsibly and lead by example. Archibald Marwizi

The need for security and power riding on energies that should be making life better and easier for the masses remains a great error in leadership focus. Why should the discovery of uranium’s potential become a curse instead of a blessing? I am sure any type of power (nuclear and leadership included) in the wrong hands has the unfortunate potential to become a curse. A lot more is involved, including greed that causes the wealthy to sponsor violence and chaos. All, in order to profit from conflict, yet disregarding the harm caused to the vulnerable majority. . Archibald Marwizi

Short term interventions will call for more guns and force in affected areas, in order to protect the vulnerable and suppress proliferation of terrorism and sectarian hatred, but the forward-looking leadership driving for sustainable solutions must now promote deliberate intents to influence systems of education, belief, culture, values and attitudes to promote tolerance, mutual respect, love and hope for all to succeed. If this area was given the same kind of attention and resources that HIV-AIDS has received to date, I can promise you, the same progress made in the containment of HIV-AIDS, would also have been made on the extremism front. Archibald Marwizi

Indeed, there are demons that must be cast out by exposure and education, for it is the ignorant and the uninformed who fall prey to the evil trickery and abuse of those who sponsor violence, hatred and every form of extremism. At some point, man’s Maker cries out, “My people perish because of a lack of knowledge. Archibald Marwizi

Terrorist groups will not, in most instances, openly recruit from universities or the well developed areas that politicians and business leaders are always focusing on. They will not flight newspaper or TV adverts, but will use belief systems riding on the back of disadvantages, poverty and problems that have remained unaddressed in particular communities, tribal and religious ideologies. They will recruit the most vulnerable to harm and attack the most vulnerable, in order to spite leaders and authorities. Archibald Marwizi

If challenges within this Global Economic sphere are not addressed, we risk having the same populace that celebrated the collapse of communism, or their future generations, rising up to demand that we go back to communistic approaches to the economy. Rising national debt of global powers, the growing gap between the rich and poor and the ripple effects of related threats, remain a challenge for the global economy. Will you be one of the leaders who have a unique mission with part of the illusive answers? Will you help more people rise to a better educational and economic status? . Archibald Marwizi

A small cabin stands in the Glacier Peak Wilderness, about a hundred yards off a trail that crosses the Cascade Range. In midsummer, the cabin looked strange in the forest. It was only twelve feet square, but it rose fully two stories and then had a high and steeply peaked roof. From the ridge of the roof, moreover, a ten-foot pole stuck straight up. Tied to the top of the pole was a shovel. To hikers shedding their backpacks at the door of the cabin on a cold summer evening -- as the five of us did -- it was somewhat unnerving to look up and think of people walking around in snow perhaps thirty-five feet above, hunting for that shovel, then digging their way down to the threshold. [1971]. John McPhee

This is one of the greatest challenges of our time: to convert ourselves to a type of development that knows how to respect creation. Pope Francis

Do you know how many acres of beautiful forests and moors have been destroyed by your company? How many animals have lost their homes and how many trees have been murdered? I am sick of being bothered by you people. Emily Arden

There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before. Robert Lynd

People ask: Why should I care about the ocean? Because the ocean is the cornerstone of earth's life support system, it shapes climate and weather. It holds most of life on earth. 97% of earth's water is there. It's the blue heart of the planet – we should take care of our heart. It's what makes life possible for us. We still have a really good chance to make things better than they are. They won't get better unless we take the action and inspire others to do the same thing. No one is without power. Everybody has the capacity to do something. Sylvia A. Earle

No one in the world needs a Rhino horn but a Rhino. Paul Oxton

We should not forget that it will be just as important to our descendants to be prosperous in their time as it is to us to be prosperous in our time. Theodore Roosevelt