Quotes About Biodiversity

Earthworms will dance

To describe the overwhelming life of a tropical forest just in terms of inert biochemistry and DNA didn't seem to give a very full picture of the world.

Every creature alive on the earth today represents an unbroken line of life that stretches back to the first primitive organism to appear on this planet; and that is about three billion years.

The variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds, or is likely to exceed, that in all of the rest of life combined.

Most of life on Earth has a deep past, much deeper than ours. And we have benefited from the distillation of all preceding history, call it evolutionary history if you will.

And we really should be considering the moral implications of what we're doing. What kind of a species are we that we treat the rest of life so cheaply? There are those who think that's the destiny of Earth: We arrived, we're humanizing the Earth, and it will be the destiny of Earth for us to wipe humans out and most of the rest of biodiversity. But I think the great majority of thoughtful people consider that a morally wrong position to take, and a very dangerous one.

The truth is that we need invertebrates but they don't need us. If human beings were to disappear tomorrow, the world would go on with little change…. But if invertebrates were to disappear, I doubt that the human species could last more than a few months.

If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months.

Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.

Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.

I will argue that every scrap of biological diversity is priceless, to be learned and cherished, and never to be surrendered without a struggle.

A world without huge regions of total wilderness would be a cage; a world without lions and tigers and vultures and snakes and elk and bison would be - will be - a human zoo. A high-tech slum.

Humanity has four and a half billion passionate advocates - but how many speak....for the gray wolf?....it is a man's duty to speak for the voiceless. A woman's obligation to aid the defenseless. Human needs do not take precedence over other forms of life; we must share this lovely, delicate, vapor-clouded little planet with all

We are obliged, therefore, to spread the news, painful and bitter though it may be for some to hear, that all living things on earth are kindred

Nearly every species that has ever lived has gone extinct

Reading about declining owl populations led him to deforestation which led to soil erosion which led to ocean pollution which led to coral bleaching, everything warming, melting, and dying faster than scientists predicted, every system on the planet connected by countless invisible threads to every other:

Five months ago the hillside beyond the wire was home to red squirrels black finches pygmy shrews garter snakes downy woodpeckers swallowtail butterflies wolf lichen monkey flowers ten thousand voles five million ants. Now what is it?

Save the elephants, and then you save the forest - and then you save yourself.

The planet's forests are essential for life.

States should pass laws making it illegal to own or trade wild animals; the phony 'educational' permits that many private owners have used to skirt those laws should be eliminated.

Heartless though it may seem to some, among the least harmful things to eat are sustainably culled wild animals. In the absence of natural predators, deer populations in parts of Britain have reached such dense numbers that the woodlands they browse fail to regenerate.

Wilderness is not defined by the absence of certain activities, but rather by the presence of certain unique and invaluable characteristics.

All over the world the wildlife that I write about is in grave danger. It is being exterminated by what we call the progress of civilization.