Quotes About Conservation

The evolution of a land ethic is an intellectual as well as emotional process.

A system of conservation based solely on economic self-interest is hopelessly lopsided. It tend to ignore, and thus eventually to eliminate many elements in the land community that lack commercial value, but that are essential to its healthy functioning. It assumes, falsely, I think, that the economic parts of the biotic clock will function without the uneconomic parts.

Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.

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.

What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked.

it is disquieting to feel that the conversion into a National Forest or Park always means the esthetic death of a piece of wild country.

I have read many definitions of what is a conservationist, and written not a few myself, but I suspect that the best one is written not with a pen, but with an axe. It is a matter of what a man thinks about while chopping, or while deciding what to chop. A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke he is writing his signature on the face of his land.

It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for land, and a high regard for its value. By value, I of course mean something far broader than economic value; I mean value in the philosophical sense.

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends to do otherwise.

If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

there are two kinds of people: those who can live without wild things & those who cannot.

They know no urge of seasons; they feel no kiss of sun, no lash of wind and weather. They live forever by not living at all.

A man may not care for golf and still be human, but the man who does not like to see, hunt, photograph, or otherwise outwit birds or animals is hardly normal. He is supercivilized, and I for one do not know how to deal with him.

One of the penalties of an ecological education, is that one lives alone in a world of wounds." Aldo Leopold (although I would personally strike out 'alone', thankfully)

Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

I am convinced that most Americans of the new generation have no idea what a decent forest looks like. The only way to tell them is to show them.

Thus always does history, whether of marsh or market place, end in paradox. The ultimate value in these marshes is wildness, and the crane is wildness incarnate. But all conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wildness left to cherish.

That wildlife is merely something to shoot at or to look at is the grossest of fallacies.

To love what was is a new thing under the sun, unknown to most people and to all pigeons.

There is a feeble minority called conservationists, who are indignant about something. They are beginning to realize that their task involves the reorganization of society, rather than the passage of some fish and game laws.

Thus always does history, whether or marsh or market place, end in paradox. The ultimate value in these marshes is wildness, and the crane is wildness incarnate. But all conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.

There is a peculiar virtue in the music of elusive birds.

In general, the trend of the evidence indicates that in land, just as in the human body, the symptoms may lie in one organ and the cause in another. 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.

Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.