Quotes About Ecology

At the time of the Cognitive Revolution, the planet was home to about 200 genera of large terrestrial mammals weighing over 100 pounds. At the time of the Agricultural Revolution, only about a hundred remained. Homo sapiens drove to extinction about half of the planet's big beasts long before humans invented the wheel, writing, or iron tools.

Within a few thousand years, virtually all of these giants vanished. Of the twenty-four Australian animal species weighing fifty kilograms or more, twenty-three became extinct.2

I don't really believe that humans are evil; it is just that we are not very intelligent animals. No animal is so stupid as to foul its only nest, except humans.

Tenerife giant rats, Madagascar's hissing cockroach, Galápagos turtles, and King Kong are all examples of island gigantism.

Already the once sweet-watered streams, most of which bore Indian names, were clouded with silt and the wastes of man; the very earth was being ravaged and squandered. To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature-the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy glades, the water, the soil, and the air itself.

GOING NUDE FOR NATURE.

Look what the mortals are doing to themselves. Look at what they've done to the world. They're bleeding the planet dry. They're poisoning the air, the land and the sea, and they know exactly what they're doing,

The true foundation of all culture is the knowledge and understanding of water.

The new markets that arise from ecological constraints will dominate the 21st century economy, and so will markets for knowledge.

If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.

Nothing exists for itself alone, but only in relation to other forms of life

Jeff VanderMeer

The intimacy that salamanders have with their environment forces them to be sentinels of environmental change.

Nature practices deceptions in every angle. Evolution will create a being for any niche that can be found, no matter how unlikely. When

Jeff VanderMeer

Did the crows' bill shape and specialized vision predispose them to tool crafting and use? Or did their tool-use behavior in response to unusual ecological opportunity—those delicious hidden grubs—gradually shape their visual system and bills? This is the sort of mysterious causal relationship biologists both love and hate.

both nutritionally and ecologically. The resolution of this crisis is so fundamental to our personal health and the health of our planet that we must look more closely at water than we look at any other nutrient. What is happening to our water is simple: it is Drying Up, Getting Diverted, and Becoming Toxic.

I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.

But a male tree produces only small, well-behaved flowers—that is, if your definition of well behaved includes spewing plant sperm into the air for weeks on end.

The alarm signals have echoed without being heard, as in a forgotten cave. Already in 1994, the eminent dialectical biologist Richard Levins and his colleagues warned that 'creating new habitats - for example, by bulldozing forests - permit rare or remote microorganisms to become abundant and gain access to people.

I enjoy a good meal as much as anyone, but I get so confused by nutritional, budgetary, ecological, ethical, aesthetic, and time-management concerns that I often subsist for weeks on instant oatmeal and multivitamins.

The ecological impact of book manufacture and traditional book marketing - I think that should really be considered. We have this industry in which we cut down trees to make the paper that we then use enormous amounts of electricity to turn into books that weigh a great deal and are then shipped enormous distances to point-of-sale retail.

Sooner or later we've got to tie the saving of the natural world to our own public welfare.

If we pollute the air, water and soil that keep us alive and well, and destroy the biodiversity that allows natural systems to function, no amount of money will save us.