8 Nature Quotes

"The web of life is fragile. The interconnections vital. Every time a species is lost, the whole web is weakened. When wildlife is in danger, so are we humans." -- Advertisement for Canon USA, 2000

"Me an environmentalist? I am a lover of beauty and a compassionist of life - all life. Things that all humans are - things all environmentalists are." -- Scott Boven, 2001

"In the top of a tussock of grass, on its sunward side, a dark shape, a small bird, feathers wet with dew, sits quietly, observant, incorporating the sun's early warmth. Nearby, there is a faint and tentative song, and the sound is reabsorbed into the morning quiet. It has been suggested that you might not be missed. To think that a necklace would never miss one of its pearls, or a song one of its notes. Neither this spring, nor ever again, will your exuberant performances appear on nature's stage." -- Brian Sharp, USFWS biologist, after the last dusky seaside sparrow was found dead in its cage, June 16, 1987

"Humanity, to put the matter as bluntly as possible, is recklessly ruining the creation." -- Edward O. Wilson, 1999, The Diversity of Life

"Conservation is sometimes perceived as stopping everything cold, as holding whooping cranes inhigher esteem than people... the choice is not between wild places or people, it is a choice between a rich or impoverished existence for mankind." -- Thomas Lovejoy

"Beauty is not something to be taken for granted." -- Terry Tempest Williams, 1999

"Another factor which is rapidly destroying the remnants of native vegetation which still linger in southeastern Virginia is the universal custom of turning rich woodlands into pig-pastures or dumps. So long as man feels as he generally does, that the Earth and its natural products were God-given to man for his personal exploitation and destruction it is perhaps hopeless to expect any of Nature's wonderful gifts to be preserved for later generations." -- M.L. Fernald, from Midsummer Vascular Plants Of Southeastern Virginia, Rhodora, 1935

"The big question before our people today is whether we are to be more material in our thinking, judging administrative success by its economic results entirely and leaving out all other achievements. History shows that a nation interested primarily in material things invariably is on a downward path. Great wealth has ruined every nation since the day that Cheops laid the corner stone of the Great Pyramid, not because of any inherent wrong in wealth, but because it became the ideal and idol of the people. Phonicia, Carthage, Greece, Rome, Spain, all bear witness to this truth." -- Eleanor Roosevelt, 1927

Used with permission from ExtinctionMemorial.org.