Best 227 quotes in «conservation quotes» category

My date the next night brought a sock puppet with him. A. Sock. Puppet. And he talked to me with it"... "It completely freaked me out," Kalani continued. "I made it through drinks and that was more than enough. I told the guy it was a good thing he had one good hand left because if this was his usual MO for dates, he was going to need it.

No anti-slavery crusader aimed for a partial solution or settled on a regimen of interim targets. The fight to end slavery was a fight to end 100 percent of slavery for all time. In just that way, we can't settle for partial measures if we are going to win the war for our world. We need to fight for 100 percent sustainability, now.

Oh, crap. The last person she wanted to run into this morning when she had to be super-professional was Hot Pool Guy. Before she had a chance to hide behind a plant or something, his gaze connected with hers and held her hostage. He flashed a smile and headed her way. Shit. She got to her feet thinking she'd say a quick hello before telling him she was meeting someone and excuse herself. Look away from those amazing dark eyes before you get yourself in trouble. She forced her attention down. And found a logo on the breast pocket of his white polo shirt. Word. Heritage. Fund. Kill her now.

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.

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.

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

Now, over half of us live in an urban environment. My home, too, is here in the city of London. Looking down on this great metropolis, the ingenuity with which we continue to reshape the surface of our planet is very striking. It’s also very sobering, and reminds me of just how easy it is for us to lose our connection with the natural world. Yet it’s on this connection that the future of both humanity and the natural world will depend. And surely, it is our responsibility to do everything within our power to create a planet that provides a home not just for us, but for all life on Earth.

Now we, if not in the spirit, have been caught up to see our earth, our mother, Gaia Mater, set like a jewel in space. We have no excuse now for supposing her riches inexhaustible nor the area we have to live on limitless because unbounded. We are the children of that great blue white jewel. Through our mother we are part of the solar system and part through that of the whole universe. In the blazing poetry of the fact we are children of the stars.

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.

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.

Onward and upward he pushed until rock, ground, and forest came to an end, until there was nothing but a sharp edge of blunt earth protruding in the late light of the range, where he could see well beyond the park boundaries to national forest land that he had once scouted on foot and horseback. He remembered it then as roadless, the only trails being those hacked by Indians and prospectors. He had taken notes on the flora and fauna, commented on the age of the bristlecone pine trees at the highest elevations, the scrub oak in the valleys, the condors overhead, the trout in alpine tarns. He had lassoed that wild land in ink, returned to Washington, and sent the sketch to the president, who preserved it for posterity. What did Michelangelo feel at the end of his life, staring at a ceiling in the Vatican or a marble figure in Florence? Pinchot knew. And those who followed him, his great-great-grandchildren, Teddy's great-great-grandchildren, people living in a nation one day of five hundred million people, could find their niche as well. Pinchot felt God in his soul, and thanked him, and weariness in his bones. He sensed he had come full circle.

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.

Powell was first of all a scientist with a deep curiosity about nature, and this curiosity motivated his explorations. Because Powell viewed the landscape and waterscape as a scientist, he realized that the arid West couldn't fit into America's Manifest Destiny dreams, and thus he became a pioneering conservationist.

Put on a sweater.

Re-wilding is a story of nature's amazing capacity to rebound. It tells of the resilience of birch and pine, the dogged persistence of badger and fox, of dandelion and vine, the dark and voiceless worlds of algae and fungi.

Save the trees! Return to the gold standard!

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.

She put her hands on her hips. "You're not human." "Neither are you." "I beg your pardon?" "Ethereal comes to mind.

So because you are converting it, you are actually conserving it.

Societies that lack respect for animals eventually lose respect for human beings.

Still following the rules, huh?" He grabbed his shift off the back of the kitchen chair and pulled it on. "Still breaking them?" she fired back.

Tell me you're bare underneath the dress." She gulped. "I'm bare underneath this dress." Gently dropping her arms back to her sides, he slid his finger down the center of her chest. Tingles shot out from the tips of her breasts and gathered at the base of her spine, between her legs. "Tell me you want me as much as I want you," he said, his voice husky. Never had she imagined doing something as reckless as sleeping with a guy for one night. But this wasn't any guy. And it wasn't just about her getting off--God, how she needed to do that. It was about closure. Saying goodbye on her terms. It might be a bad idea, but it was the best bad idea she'd ever had. She dropped the panties and put her hands on his chest. "I want you.

Surely our people do not understand even yet the rich heritage that is theirs. There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children’s children forever, with their majesty all unmarred.

The earth had granted me a lifeline, by letting me siphon off some of the water that was on its way somewhere else. Because of me, there would be less water flowing into the Chattahoochee River: less for the speckled trout, less for the wood ducks, less for the mountain laurel that drop their white petals into the river every fall. There would be more water flowing into my septic tank, laced with laundry detergent, dish soap, and human waste. At that moment of high awareness, I promised the land that I would go easy on the water. I would remember where it came from. I would remain grateful for the sacrifice.

That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics. That lands yields a cultural harvest is a fact long known, but latterly often forgotten.

That which we allow to exist, to flourish freely according to its own rhythms, is superior to anything our little hands create.

The albatross hit the top and canted her soft belly to the storm, and made a screaming banked peel-out downwind and over the other side. I don't know if anyone else on the ship saw her. To me, she was a visitation. Not harbinger or annunciation, but a simple reminder of a wold that worked, that was at home with itself and friends with storm.

The challenge is clear: we have to conserve and improve the soil we have, and we need to turn dirt into soil wherever people need to grow food. That's true in America's breadbasket, it's true in the tropics, and it's true in the dry, hardscrabble, weathered soils that cover much of sub- Saharan Africa.

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.

The activities of La Condamine, Humboldt, Wallace, Bates, and other such explorers touched on only the tiniest fraction of the vastness of a world so expansive as to be impervious to harm. But today, the Amazon River Basin, occupying more than 2.7 million square miles is at our fingertips and is considered one of the most ecologically threatened regions of the world.

The old man and the boy crouched as still as lizards

The intent behind Earth Hour is not just about turning off lights for an hour; It is to remind us of our responsibility towards environmental conservation.

The love for God is the love to protect the environment.

The oceans are the planet's last great living wilderness, man's only remaining frontier on Earth, and perhaps his last chance to prove himself a rational species.

The love for God is the love for nature.

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.

The only time I get to be alone is while traveling." "Except this week," Charlie said. He turned his head and she saw herself reflected in his shades. "True. And you're not at all what I expected." Not that Connor had had any idea what to expect. But he would've preferred if she hadn't been the beautiful blonde who wore skimpy red bikini tops and starred in his dreams last night.

There are some things that, once lost, no amount of money can regain. Thus to justify the destruction of an ancient forest on the grounds that it will earn us substantial export income is problematic, even if we could invest that income and increase its value from year to year; for no matter how much we increase its value, its could never buy back the link with the past represented by the forest.

The practices we now call conservation are, to a large extent, local alleviations of biotic pain. They are necessary, but they must not be confused with cures. The art of land doctoring is being practiced with vigor, but the science of land health is yet to be born.

There appears no assurance that in the times of our own grandchildren the world will contain viable populations of wild African Lions, Tigers, Polar Bears, Emperor Penguins, gorillas, or coral reefs. These are the animals expectant parents pain on nursery room walls. Their implied wish: to welcome precious new life in to a world endowed with the magnificence and delight and fright of companions we have traveled with since the beginning. Some people debate the “rights of the unborn” as though a human life begins at conception but we don’t need to concern ourselves with its prospects after birth. Raging over the divine sanctity of anyone else’s pregnancy is a little overwrought and a little too easy when nature itself terminates one out of four by the sixth week. There are much bigger, more compassionate pro-life fish to fry. Passing along a world that can allow real children to flourish and the cavalcade of generations to unfold, and the least to live in modest dignity would be the biggest pro-life enterprise we could undertake.

There are many beautiful toys on this earth. We must use them with care so that the next generation will find them intact and use them also.

..the planet is just too small for these developing countries to repeat the economic growth in the same way that the rich countries have done it in the past. We don't have enough natural resources, we don't have enough atmosphere. Clearly, something has to change.

There is an allegory for historians in the diverse functions of saw, wedge, and axe. The saw works only across the years, which it must deal with one by one, in sequence. From each year the raker teeth pull little chips of fact, which accumulate in little piles, called sawdust by woodsmen and archives by historians; both judge the character of what lies within by the character of the samples thus made visible without. It is not until the transect is complete that the tree falls, and the stump yields a collective view of the century. By its fall the tree attests the unity of the hodge-podge called history. The wedge on the other hand, works only in radial splits; such a split yields a collective view of all the years at once, or no view at all, depending on the skill with which the plane of the split is chosen[...] The axe functions only at an angle diagonal to the years, and this is only for the peripheral rings of the recent past. Its special function is to lop limbs, for which both the saw and wedge are useless. The three tools are requisite to good oak, and to good history.

There seems to be no way to save wildness from human intrusion without establishing and enforcing rules and regulations that are themselves intrusions on what, by definition, are meant to be areas outside humanity's control.

there is such an unfortunate irony in photography these days. for as people pursue desires to visit and capture images of unspoiled landscapes. they inadvertently in the process turn these beautiful locations into anything but unspoiled, regardless of ideals of conservation. and more-so, so many ruin natural beauty by exploiting these magical places with their greed and dreams of success, and regrettable egos with overdeveloped look-at-me-syndromes...sadly sometimes, for so many of us, now the only way today to truly protect an unspoiled place is to not share its beautiful photo or location with anyone, anymore

There is, as yet, no sense of pride in the husbandry of wild plants and animals, no sense of shame in the proprietorship of a sick landscape.

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?

...there were only fifteen thousand polar bears in the world, and five billion of me. To let one of them devour my all-too-common flesh would, if only slightly, help adjust the grievous imbalance.

The vision of the ideal life that we've been taught in the West, which is gaining ever more purchase in China and India and elsewhere, feeds the system we need to undo. Go to school in order to get a degree in order to get a job in order to earn money so you can try to buy happiness because your life sucks, then retire and die: this is not meaningful living.

...the tiger is a bellwether--one of thousands of similarly vulnerable species, which are, at once, casualties of our success and symbols of our failure. The current moment is proof of our struggle to evolve (perhaps "mature" is a better word) beyond outmoded fears and attitudes, to face the fact that nature is neither our enemy nor our slave.