Quotes About Biodiversity

The Geographical Distribution of Animals

A tree is alive, and thus it is always more than you see. Roots to leaves, yes—those you can, in part, see. But it is more—it is the lichens and moss and ferns that grow on its bark, the life too small to see that lives among its roots, a community we know of, but do not think on. It is every fly and bee and beetle that uses it for shelter or food, every bird that nests in its branches. Every one an individual, and yet every one part of the tree, and the tree part of every one.

Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a preexisting closely allied species.

Farmers have been extremely conservative. Throughout the world there are 148 species of large animals and yet only fourteen of these have been domesticated as farm animals, grown for meat, milk or wool, or all three, or used to supply muscle-power to pull carts, ploughs or carry people.

And with plant species the proportion which has been cultivated is even smaller. From 200,000 higher plant species, only 100 or so are grown for food. And almost all of these were first tended or cultivated in the fourth millennium BC in Europe.

Clean air and water, a diversity of animal and plant species, soil and mineral resources, and predictable weather are annuities that will pay dividends for as long as the human race survives - and may even extend our stay on Earth.

If the world's oceans have had nearly half a billion years with sharks as the apex predators, then the delicate balance of its food webs must rely on their presence in complex ways we cannot possibly predict.

We must recognize that we're all part of a web of life around the world. Anytime you extinguish a species, the consequences are serious.

Lose the sharks, the mighty, mysterious lords of the deep, and our planet's oceans would be infinitely poorer places.

It is common knowledge now that we depend on insects for our continued existence; that, without key pollinators, the human population would collapse in less than a decade.

I'm very aware of modern countryside issues, such as rewilding: how, as science progresses, we begin to understand that a healthy ecosystem is multiform.

Although biodiversity loss continues globally, many countries are significantly slowing the rate of loss by shoring up protected natural areas and the services they provide, and in expanding national park systems with tighter management and more secure funding.

The Bio-diversity Convention has not yielded any tangible benefits to the world's poor.

isolated patches of wild land are valuable to know, as are isolated people.

People aren't the apex species they think they are. Other creatures-bigger, smaller, slower, faster, older, younger, more powerful-call the shots, make the air, and eat sunlight. Without them, nothing.

Given that 80 percent plus of the U.S. population lives in cities and suburbs, the connection with nature is fading to the detriment of all living creatures.

of different wild flowers and ferns grow.

Amid all this there's plenty of talk about saving the earth. I'll tell you, the earth has taken some hard hits in the past. It'll survive. What needs saving, I believe, is the human race and our ability to restrain ourselves, if we have such a thing. What needs saving is the rich tapestry of life around us that we take for granted. What needs saving—perhaps even found to begin with—is the intrinsic value of nature beyond any human utility.

If we knew how many species we've already eradicated, we might be more motivated to protect those that still survive.

Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology.

Talvez se mais pessoas estivessem cientes da Primeira e da Segunda Onda de Extinção, seriam menos indiferentes à Terceira Onda, da qual fazem parte. Se soubéssemos quantas espécies já erradicamos, poderíamos ser mais motivados a proteger as que ainda sobrevivem.

off, directly or indirectly, hundreds of species of birds, insects, snails and other local inhabitants. From there, the wave of extinction moved gradually to the east, the south and the north, into the heart of the Pacific Ocean, obliterating on its way the unique fauna of Samoa and Tonga (1200 BC); the Marquis Islands (AD 1); Easter Island, the Cook Islands and Hawaii (AD 500); and finally New Zealand (AD 1200).

When the first Americans marched south from Alaska into the plains of Canada and the western United States, they encountered mammoths and mastodons, rodents the size of bears, herds of horses and camels, oversized lions and dozens of large species the likes of which are completely unknown today, among them fearsome sabre-tooth cats and giant ground sloths that weighed up to eight tons and reached a height of twenty feet.

Mucho antes de la revolución industrial, Homo sapiens ostentaba el récord entre todos los organismos por provocar la extinción del mayor número de especies de plantas y animales.