Conservation Quotes

How to pry the tourists out of their automobiles, out of their back-breaking upholstered mechanized wheelchairs and onto their feet, onto the strange warmth and solidity of Mother Earth again? This is the problem which the Park Service should confront directly, not evasively, and which it cannot resolve by simply submitting and conforming to the automobile habit. ~ Edward Abbey

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

Communities must plan for a variety of uses and income levels. Why do we care about housing as high-tech employers? If teachers, firefighters, peace officers, retail or restau- rant workers can't live here, then we're going to fail. ~ Carl Guardino

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of Communists and other subversives. We intend to clean them out, even if it means rounding up every bird watcher in the country. ~ John N. Mitchell

For me, nature is something you watch on the Discovery Channel, or on the evening news
as you learn how much more of it's been savaged to make way for the Blackberry realm that is my home ~ Tahir Shah

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

Water conservation goes hand in hand with education. Teaching people that if you literally run the water while you brush your teeth - we go through 602 million gallons a day of waste in the United States because people are used to hearing the water run while they brush their teeth. ~ Ian Somerhalder

The conservation of nature, the proper care for the human environment and a general concern for the long-term future of the whole of our planet are absolutely vital if future generations are to have a chance to enjoy their existence on this earth ~ Prince Philip

Protecting eagles from the threat of extinction is a conservation success story that we must prudently safeguard for future generations to come. ~ Frances Beinecke

Extinction, the irrevocable loss of a species, causes pain that can never find relief. It is an ache that will pass from generation to generation for the rest of human history. ~ Callum Roberts

The larger question for the Northwest, where the cities are barely a hundred years old but contain three-fourths of the population, is whether the wild land can provide work for those who need it as their source of income without being ruined for those who need it as their source of sanity. ~ Timothy Egan

To think of food as a weapon, or of a weapon as food, may give an illusory security and wealth to a few, but it strikes directly at the life of all.

The concept of food-as-weapon is not surprisingly the doctrine of a Department of Agriculture that is being used as an instrument of foreign political and economic speculation. This militarizing of food is the greatest threat so far raised against the farmland and the farm communities of this country. If present attitudes continue, we may expect government policies that will encourage the destruction, by overuse, of farmland. This, of course, has already begun. To answer the official call for more production -- evidently to be used to bait or bribe foreign countries -- farmers are plowing their waterways and permanent pastures; lands that ought to remain in grass are being planted in row crops. Contour plowing, crop rotation, and other conservation measures seem to have gone out of favor or fashion in official circles and are practices less and less on the farm. This exclusive emphasis on production will accelerate the mechanization and chemicalization of farming, increase the price of land, increase overhead and operating costs, and thereby further diminish the farm population. Thus the tendency, if not the intention, of Mr. Butz confusion of farming and war, is to complete the deliverance of American agriculture into the hands of corporations. ~ Wendell Berry

We should conserve evil just as we should conserve the forests. It is true that by thinning and clearing the forests the earth grew warmer. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

In December 2012, the U.S. 9th district court granted a temporary injunction to the Japanese whalers that ordered the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society U.S.A. to not approach within 500 yards of the whaling vessels. ~ Paul Watson

The boundary between tame and wild exists only in the imperfections of the human mind. ~ Aldo Leopold

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. ~ Rob Stewart

It takes a while to spoil a world, but it can be done. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Save the trees! Return to the gold standard! ~ Ron Brackin

The problem, then, is how to bring about a striving for harmony with land among a people many of whom have forgotten there is any such thing as land, among whom education and culture have become almost synonymous with landlessness. This is the problem of conservation education. ~ Aldo Leopold

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. ~ John Vaillant

. . .many conservation biologists assert the importance of scientists being able to communicate the spontaneous inner experience and appreciation for the creatures they investigate, claiming that no one has more expertise, or right, to express a love for nature than those who have given their lives to its study. ~ Fred Van Dyke

Conservation of national sanitation is Swaraj work and it may not be postponed for a single day on any consideration whatsoever. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her. ~ Michel De Montaigne

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. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I think that our cooperative conservation approaches get people to sit down and grapple with problem solving. ~ Gale Norton

We cannot seem to help ourselves they said. Thus, the hominid spark of intelligence flares, burns everything around it, and fades. Some humans will survive the great conflagration. Thus, begins an endless cycle of destruction spiraling downward until our species is gone. We can hope that before the sun begins to become unstable (it is about half way there now) evolution can produce a new and better intelligence that will have sufficient breadth and depth to understand the ecological consequences of its actions. ~ Garry Rogers

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

By encouraging conservation, increasing investments in clean, renewable sources of energy, and promoting increased domestic production of oil and gas, we can build a more secure future for our country. ~ Ron Lewis

A lot of designers still have nostalgia for the past. As for the furniture in the future, I hope they use less of real wood. Conservation in wood is necessary. ~ Elsa Peretti

We've got to step up our conservation efforts before it's too late. We're not protecting our lands and natural resources. Take the Grand Canyon for example; I'm sure that at one time it was a beautiful piece of land, and just look at the way we've let it go. ~ Pat Paulsen

But we must take other steps, such as increasing conservation, developing an ethanol industry, and increasing CAFE standards if we are to make our country safer by cutting our reliance on foreign oil. ~ Jim Costa

Vampires did this all the time, you remember. It was normal for them, it was their own unique take on resource conservation. They could have taught your kind a few things about restraint, if that absurd aversion to right-angles hadn't done them in at the dawn of civilization. Maybe they still can. They're back now, after all - raised from the grave with the voodoo of paleogenetics, stitched together from junk genes and fossil marrow steeped in the blood of sociopaths and high-functioning autistics. One of them commands this very mission. A handful of his genes live on in your own body so it too can rise from the dead, here at the edge of interstellar space. Nobody gets past Jupiter without becoming part vampire. ~ Peter Watts

The diversity of life forms, so numerous that we have yet to identify most of them, is the greatest wonder on this planet. ~ E.O. Wilson

The harm that Albertine had done me was a last bond between her and myself which outlived memory even, for with the conservation of energy which belongs to everything that is physical, suffering has no need of the lessons of memory. ~ Marcel Proust

Never apologize for being over sensitive and emotional when defending the welfare of wildlife.
Let this be a sign that you have a big heart and aren't afraid to show your true feelings.

These emotions give you the strength to fight for what is right and to be the voice of those who cannot be heard. ~ Paul Oxton

In addition to the clean coal provisions, the energy conference agreement contains provisions instrumental in helping increase conservation and lowering consumption. ~ Jerry Costello

The most important environmental issue is one that is rarely mentioned, and that is the lack of a conservation ethic in our culture. ~ Gaylord Nelson

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

We rich nations, for that is what we are, have an obligation not only to the poor nations, but to all the grandchildren of the world, rich and poor. We have not inherited this earth from our parents to do with it what we will. We have borrowed it from our children and we must be careful to use it in their interests as well as our own. Anyone who fails to recognise the basic validity of the proposition put in different ways by increasing numbers of writers, from Malthus to The Club of Rome, is either ignorant, a fool, or evil. ~ Moss Cass

If in fact the conservation and complexification of novelty is what the universe is striving for, then suddenly our own human enterprise, previously marginalized, takes on an immense new importance. ~ Terence McKenna

Striking a balance between wildlife conservation and wind energy development starts with understanding threats to eagle populations and how our actions, including operating wind farms, are affecting them. ~ Frances Beinecke

While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. ~ John Dewey

The outgrowth of conservation, the inevitable result, is national efficiency. ~ Gifford Pinchot

Steve Irwin did wonderful conservation work but I was uncomfortable about some of his stunts. Even if animals aren't aware that you are not treating them with respect, the viewers are. ~ David Attenborough

The good news is that real-world hands-on conservation is alive and well and catching on across the America I travel. ~ Ted Nugent

Environment isn't asking us to conserve her for her but for our future generations. ~ Mohith Agadi

My belief is that what comes across on the television is a capture of my enthusiasm and my passion for wildlife. ~ Steve Irwin

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Jack...why is there a dragon in our backyard? ~ Kyoko M.

We face the question whether a still higher "standard of living" is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. ~ Aldo Leopold

The Law of Conservation of Apostrophes. A heresy since the 13th century, this law states that a balance exists in nature: "For every apostrophe omitted from an it's, there is an extra one put into an its." Thus the number of apostrophes in circulation remains constant, even if this means we have double the reason to go and bang our heads against a wall. ~ Lynne Truss

We forest officers, who acquiesced in the extinguishment of the bear, knew a local rancher who had plowed up a dagger engraved with the name of one of Coronado´s captains. We spoke harshly of the Spaniards, who, in their zeal for gold and converts, had needlessly extinguished the native Indians. It did not occur to us that we, too, were the captains of an invasion too sure of its righteousness. ~ Aldo Leopold

Within a few months Mitch Bush, head veterinarian at the National Zoo, and David Wildt, a young reproductive physiologist working as a postdoctoral fellow in my laboratory at the National Cancer Institute, were on a plane bound for South Africa. Bush is a towering, bearded, giant of a man with a strong interest and acumen in exotic animal veterinary medicine, particularly the rapidly improving field of anesthetic pharmacology. Wildt is a slight and modest Midwestern farm boy, schooled in the reproductive physiology of barnyard animals. His boyish charm and polite shy demeanor mask a piercing curiosity and deep knowledge of all things reproductive. Bush and Wildt's expedition to the DeWildt cheetah breeding center outside Pretoria would ultimately change the way the conservation community viewed cheetahs forever. ~ Stephen J. O'Brien

By turns sad and uplifting, Life in the Valley of Death tells the amazing tale of Alan Rabinowitz's courageous and spirited efforts to protect Burma's (Myanmar's) remaining tigers and establish the Hukawng Valley Reserve. It is hard to imagine a more passionate or exciting account of today's conservation challenges, or a more thoughtful rendering of life, death, and politics in Burma's most remote corners. ~ Thant Myint-U

You are so going down for that." He grabbed the keys and headed back to the road. "When you least expect it," he added over his shoulder.
"I'm shaking in my shoes," she called out.
"You're not wearing any."
"Exactly."
Damn, he liked this girl. ~ Robin Bielman

I learned long ago that conservation has no victories, that one must retain connections and remain involved with animals and places that have captured the heart, to prevent their destruction. I am sometimes asked why, given a world that is more wounded and scarred, I do not simply give up, burdened by pessimism. But conservation is my life, I must retain hope ~ George B. Schaller

Grassroots groups challenge the "business-as-usual" environmentalism that is generally practiced by the more privileged wildlife-and conservation-oriented groups. The focus of activists of color and their constituents reflects their life experiences of social, economic, and political disenfranchisement. ~ Robert D Bullard

The practice of conservation must spring from a conviction of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right only when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the community, and the community includes the soil, waters, fauna, and flora, as well as people. ~ Aldo Leopold

I hope that, in a small way, I am interesting people in animal life and in its conservation. If I accomplish this I will consider that I have achieved something worth while. And if I can, later on, help even slightly towards preventing an animal from becoming extinct, I will be content. ~ Gerald Durrell

Corporate Responsibility; Environmental Preservation; Consumer Protection; Sex & Race Discrimination (they must mean Sex and Race Liberation). ~ John Cage

I'm doing my part, building plants at a record rate, having historic conservation levels. The only people not doing their part is the federal government that is siding with the energy companies against the interests of the people of California. ~ Gray Davis

Yes sir, yes madam, I entreat you, get out of those motorized wheelchairs, get off your foam rubber backsides, stand up straight like men! like women! like human beings! and walk-walk-WALK upon our sweet and blessed land! ~ Edward Abbey

As to the reserved and withdrawn areas, excluding and excepting only the national parks, it is manifest that justice, equality, and dignity for these States require that ultimately all should be ceded to the States wherein they lie. The theory that the Western States can not intelligently and wisely administer these areas, for example, the forest reserves, is based on the delinquencies and wastefulness of the States to the eastward which had their resources and their opportunity, and in some cases, as States, misused and abused their rights. This constitutes no reason as to why the same right which they enjoyed should be denied to the Western states. ~ Charles Edwin Winter

Dating back to Teddy Roosevelt, hunters have been the pillar of conservation in America, doing more than anyone to conserve wildlife and its habitat. ~ Gale Norton

Active conservation [of gorillas] involves simply going out into the forest, on foot, day after day after day, attempting to capture poachers, killing-regretfully-poacher dogs, which spread rabies within the park, and cutting down traps. ~ Dian Fossey

Trees are great messengers of peace. One of the worst crimes of modern humankind is indiscriminate cutting down of the trees, and forests, in the pursuit of establishing civilization. No wonder, that modern civilized society has everything but peace. ~ Banani Ray

Too often critics have taken as the sole and crucial matter of fantasy the preoccupation of Tolkien, the quest for a remedy to the world's pain that will not destroy innocence with the temptations of power. Impressive and popular as The Lord of the Rings is, it manages its landscapes, vast green-leaved or slag-heaped vistas of pathetic fallacy and implied morality, far better than its people; it leaves the impression that important issues have been turned by sleight of hand and Georgian prettiness into questions of good and bad practice in urban planning and rural conservation. After all, the Grail is only worth seeking if you can believe in a god who put it there to help those who help themselves, in an Avalon to which burned-out heroes can retire with dignity. There is another great Matter for fantasy, one of more obvious resonance for the creative artist - the reconciliation of faerie and humanity; of the passion, power and wit of a world of sensuality, magic, and danger with the requirements of kind and ordinary life. ~ Roz Kaveney

Just then a word floated out through the buzz saw of Zapata-speak: Nefertari. Dan tuned back in.
"...the most beautiful tomb in Egypt," Ms. Zapata was saying. "You probably know the queen because there's a famous bust of her."
A photo flashed on the screen.
Dan raised his hand. "That's Nefertiti," he said. "Different queen."
Ms. Zapata frowned. She looked at her notes. "You could be right, Dan. Uh...let's move on."
Another slide flashed on-screen. "Now, this is the inner chamber of the tomb, where she was laid to rest."
Dan's hand rose again. Ms. Zapata closed her eyes.
"Actually? That's the side chamber."
"Really." Ms. Zapata's lips pressed together. "And how do you know this, Dan?"
"Because..." Dan hesitated. Because I was there. Because I was locked inside the tomb with an ex-KGB spy, so I got to know it pretty well.
"Especially since the tomb is closed for conservation," Ms. Zapata said.
Yeah. But we had this connection to an Egyptologist? Except he turned out to be a thief and a liar, so we captured him. I came this close to smashing him with a lamp... ~ Jude Watson

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. ~ William Golding

Individual thinkers since the days of Ezekiel and Isaiah have asserted that the despoliation of land is not only inexpedient but wrong. Society, however, has not yet affirmed their belief. ~ Aldo Leopold

Paradox is an overrated threat. There is ... a quality similar to inertia at work. Once an event has occurred, there is an extremely strong tendency for that event to occur. The larger, more significant, or more energetic the event, the more it tends to remain as it originally happened, despite any interference."
I frowned. "There's ... a law of conservation of history? ~ Jim Butcher

The typical nature photograph shows a butterfly on a pretty flower. The conservation photograph shows the same thing, but with a bulldozer coming at it in the background. ~ Joel Sartore

Law of Conservation of Reality; this demanded that the effort needed to achieve a goal should be the same regardless of the means used. ~ Terry Pratchett

Unfortunately, there's a big, bad new bully threatening ocean animals, climate change. We might save fish only to have them starve because of climate change. It seems like the problems just won't stop. That's what got me to quit my cushy University job and take a big pay cut to work on conservation. ~ Mark Powell

I have long been active in and supportive of conservation and historical preservation causes. ~ Jack L. Chalker

Why is it that scuba divers and surfers are some of the strongest advocates of ocean conservation? Because they've spent time in and around the ocean, and they've personally seen the beauty, the fragility, and even the degradation of our planet's blue heart. ~ Sylvia Earle

Conservation is now a dead word. ~ Marjory Stoneman Douglas

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

Conservation is ethically sound. It is rooted in our love of the land, our respect for the rights of others, our devotion to the rule of law. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

When you look a wild animal in the eye, it's like catching a glimpse into the soul of nature itself ~ Paul Oxton

Somehow in the middle of the L.A. trendiness, Boston conservation, New York chic and San Francisco intellectual mellow, there's a place where everything meets. ~ Frederick Lenz

For instance, the mass of an object changes when it moves, because of the conservation of energy. Because of the relation of mass and energy the energy associated with the motion appears as an extra mass, so things get heavier when they move. Newton ~ Richard Feynman

Conservation of energy also protects our environment. ~ Lamar S. Smith

It seems everything in nature that has beauty, also has a price.
Let the value of our planets wildlife be to nature and nature alone. ~ Paul Oxton

Saving petrol is saving India's money. This is a sense of patriotism. The country can be energy-independent by energy conservation. I appeal to the other ministers also to do this. ~ Veerappa Moily

If you are not filled with overflowing love, compassion and goodwill for all creatures living wild in nature, You will never know true happiness. ~ Paul Oxton

I want to be in the water with you again, nani girl. Her knees went weak and trembles raced down her spine. Beautiful girl had been a special nickname only he used. ~ Robin Bielman

All I really want is for our world to become increasingly more beautiful. ~ Fennel Hudson

Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us to restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wildlife and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Three laws governing black hole changes were thus found, but it was soon noticed that something unusual was going on. If one merely replaced the words 'surface area' by 'entropy' and 'gravitational field' by 'temperature', then the laws of black hole changes became merely statements of the laws of thermodynamics. The rule that the horizon surface areas can never decrease in physical processes becomes the second law of thermodynamics that the entropy can never decrease; the constancy of the gravitational field around the horizon is the so-called zeroth law of thermodynamics that the temperature must be the same everywhere in a state of thermal equilibrium. The rule linking allowed changes in the defining quantities of the black hole just becomes the first law of thermodynamics, which is more commonly known as the conservation of energy. ~ John D. Barrow

Let's stop fighting over who we believe created the planet, & work together against those that choose to destroy it. ~ Jack Barker

Throughout my life, I have never stopped to strategize about my next steps. I often just keep walking along, through whichever door opens. I have been on a journey and this journey has never stopped. When the journey is acknowledged and sustained by those I work with, they are a source of inspiration, energy and encouragement. They are the reasons I kept walking, and will keep walking, as long as my knees hold out. ~ Wangari Maathai

In recent years, however, a few historians of science have been finding it more and more difficult to fulfill the functions that the concept of development-by-accumulation assigns to them. As chroniclers of an incremental process, they discover that additional research makes it harder, not easier, to answer questions like: When was oxygen discovered? Who first conceived of energy conservation? Increasingly, a few of them suspect that these are simply the wrong sorts of questions to ask. Perhaps science does not develop by the accumulation of individual discoveries and inventions. Simultaneously, these same historians confront growing difficulties in distinguishing the "scientific" component of past observation and belief from what their predecessors had readily labeled "error" and "superstition." The more carefully they study, say, Aristotelian dynamics, phlogistic chemistry, or caloric thermodynamics, the more certain they feel that those once current views of nature were, as a whole, neither less scientific nor more that product of human idiosyncrasy than those current today. ~ Thomas S. Kuhn

An attraction to large predators often seems to be associated with misanthropy, racism and the far right. ~ George Monbiot

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

In his first philosophical lecture on modern physics that Pauli gave in November 1934 to the Zurich Philosophical Society he said that only a formulation of quantum theory would be satisfactory which expresses the relation between the value of [the fine structure constant] and charge conservation in the same complementary was as that between the space-time description and energy-momentum conservation. ~ Charles P. Enz

I'd like to continue to spread my message on conservation and make sure my dad's message - his legacy - lives on. ~ Bindi Irwin

Strict conservation of energy in the elementary process had thus been confirmed also by a negative experiment. ~ Walther Bothe

Having lived in the arid deserts of Southern California since the 1970s, my interest in water conservation is a very personal concern. Water! The source of life! Some people are squandering the world's most precious resource while others have too little clean water to drink. ~ Eric Burdon