William Clark Quotes

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.

Endangered species are our friends.

… human population growth within the ecosystem was closely analogous to the growth of malignant tumor cells within an organism: that man was acting like a cancer on the biosphere. The multiplication of human numbers certainly seems wild and uncontrolled... Four million a month - the equivalent of the population of Chicago... We seem to be doing all right at the moment; but if you could ask cancer cells, I suspect they would think they were doing fine. But when the organism dies, so do they; and for our own, selfish, practical, utilitarian reasons, I think we should be careful about how we influence the rest of the ecosystem.

The whale is endangered, while the ant continues to do just fine.

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.

You know, tigers are very unpredictable.

I look at trees, hunt mushrooms, and watch animals. Fishing is what gets me out into the woods so I can notice these things.

Chimpanzees are endangered. Severely.

Ultimately we need to recognize that while humans continue to build urban landscapes, we share these spaces with others species.

If you want to save a species, simply decide to eat it. Then it will be managed - like chickens, like turkeys, like deer, like Canadian geese.

I like animals. I like natural history. The travel bit is not the important bit. The travel bit is what you have to do in order to go and look at animals.

As a young boy, I was obsessed with endangered species and the extinct species that men killed off. Biology was the subject in school that I was incredibly passionate about.

All I want to do is to present the abundance of life on Earth.

My father was a great outdoorsman. From when I was about six we would spend countless hours together in the woods or on a lake. He taught me how to skin a rabbit and pluck a wild turkey. He showed me there is much more to nature than we can ever understand.

Loss of natural areas threatens our water supply, national security, farms, and health.

What I really wanted was to travel and see all the different animals that were on the verge of extinction.

Our conservation laws are based on static ideas about nature—not landscapes that are rapidly changing because of something humans did.

Our forest policy is not to preserve forests because they are beautiful—though that is a good in itself—not to preserve them because they are refuges for wild creatures of the wilderness—though that is a good in itself—but rather to conserve them in order to guarantee a steady and continuous supply of timber, grass, and above all, water.

In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.

Go ask Virginia— go ask even noble Maryland ... to show you her people, canals, railroads, universities, schools, charities, commerce cities, and cultivated areas.

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.

If America wishes to preserve her native birds, we must help supply what civilization has taken from them. The building of cities and towns, the cutting down of forests, and the draining of pools and swamps have deprived American birds of their original homes and food supply.

If you think about it, every single species is endangered. Homo sapiens at the front of the line, mosquitoes and lawyers at the back.

I just can't remember a time when I wasn't involved with animals and wildlife.

I've visited Lincoln Park Zoo more times than I can count because I believe the more the public learns about our animals, plants and environment, the better equipped we are to play a leading role in protecting our planet.