Russell Banks Quotes

Most people know that forests are the lungs of our planet, literally playing a critical role in every breath we take. And that they're also home to incredible animals like the orangutan and elephant, which will go extinct if we keep cutting down their forests.

Endangered species are our friends.

Biological diversity is messy. It walks, it crawls, it swims, it swoops, it buzzes. But extinction is silent, and it has no voice other than our own.

The snow leopard is absolutely magnificent. It represents really what endangered species are all about.

If the spotted owl can't adjust ... then screw it.

If mountain gorillas are to survive and propagate, far more active conservation measures urgently need to be undertaken. The question remains, is it already too late?

The protection of biodiversity and, therefore, of endangered species is an issue to which I attach a great deal of importance.

The elephant can survive only if forests survive.

Again and again we are confronted with the reality - some might say the problem - of sharing our space with other living things, be they dogs, trees, fish or penguins.

Species conversation is beyond a doubt an issue that truly matters to the American public.

Elephant populations in India and also in the whole of Asia are under severe stress. The captive ones are rendered jobless due to changes in the mode of transport and lifestyle of people. The ones in the wild are also no better off, as the forests are shrinking.

The survival of extraordinary creatures such as the giant Tasmanian freshwater crayfish - the largest in the world - is in doubt because of logging.

The Endangered Species Act is the strongest and most effective tool we have to repair the environmental harm that is causing a species to decline.

The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?

People will be able to survive, of course, without honeycreepers and monk seals. But if the wolf spider is in trouble, we are in trouble, too.

You can cut a tree down, and it grows back. Once a species goes, it's gone forever.

In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.

Living wild species are like a library of books still unread. Our heedless destruction of them is akin to burning the library without ever having read its books.

We don't need to clear the 4 to 6 percent of the Earth's surface remaining in tropical rain forests, with most of the animal and plant species living there.

The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.

I do think we're an endangered species. But that we do have a plan to save the rainforest.

My job, my mission, what I have been put on this planet for is to save wildlife.

Extinction is forever!

Biodiversity underpins life on earth. And if we don't look after this biodiversity, if we don't protect it, if we don't actually harness it in the right way, we are threatening our own livelihoods on this planet.

The mountain gorilla faces grave danger of extinction - primarily because of the encroachments of native man upon its habitat - and neglect by civilized man, who does not conscientiously protect even the limited areas now allotted for the gorilla's survival.