Ellsworth Huntington Quotes

You should issue demerits for tree cutting or the destruction of humus.

As a nation we have not yet come to have a proper respect for the forest and to regard it as an indispensable part of our resources—one which is easily destroyed but difficult to replace; one which confers great benefits while it endures, but whose disappearance is accompanied by a train of evil consequences not readily foreseen and positively irreparable.

Sumatra has these lush forests and huge, amazing creatures like elephants, orangutans, and tigers. They're disappearing because of industry coming in and cutting down the forests.

Right now there should be a moratorium on the cutting down of old growth in this country. That is a small thing to ask at this point. There is only four percent of old growth left. Ninety-six percent of it has been cut down.

Fossil fuels and mining is a short-term gambit. If we develop those resources at the expense of the environmental gold mine that is the Great Barrier Reef, we will all lose in the long run.

As a nation, we owe a great deal to the National Audubon Society, one of our most distinguished and important environmental organizations, and all those who work to protect America's open land and waterways.

We're busily wrecking the chances for future generations at a rapid rate of knots by not recognizing the damage we're doing to the natural environment, bearing in mind that this is the only planet that we know has any life on it.

Promoting the use of sustainable and renewable rainforest products can help to stop rainforest devastation. The rainforests are much more valuable alive than cut or burned, providing a steady supply of medicinal plants, fruits, nuts and oils.

We habitually engage in meddling with nature. Until this century most of this meddling was good. Witness the preservation of the European countryside. But since then we've smoked it up and littered it and dumped too much in too many waters. I don't think it's our privilege to behave this way.

We need to protect our wilderness areas and national parks. Everywhere you travel, you see blight, denuded mountains, logging. If people know what's going on, they'll become activists to safeguard those places.

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

In many developing countries environmental problems are relegated to the periphery because they do not appear to be as urgent as other issues … We cannot survive without clean drinking water, food and pure air. Environmental concerns are not a luxury in Africa.

Our government has done nothing effective with its forests, though the best in the world, but is like a rich and foolish spendthrift who has inherited a magnificent estate in perfect order, and then has left his rich fields and meadows, forests and parks, to be sold and plundered and wasted at will …

Every acre of forest should belong to the people.

Most of our political support for forest preservation comes from the Northeast where there are few forests. The Americans back East realize that they have made a historical mistake and failed to preserve and protect their original forests, and they don’t want the rest of the country to make the same mistake.

A tree is beautiful, but what’s more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples’ character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe. ... What a terrible future!

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.

The purpose of the Conservation movement is to make our country a permanent and prosperous home for ourselves, and for our children, and for our children’s children.

The practical importance of the preservation of our forests is augmented by their relations to climate, soil and streams.

Just as we demand that our governments address risks associated with terrorism or epidemics, we should put concerted pressure on them to act now to preserve our natural environment and curb climate change.

Forests are precious resources of the country and a wealth to be handed down to posterity.

Every other civilized nation in the world has been compelled to care for its forests, and so must we if waste and destruction are not to go on to the bitter end, leaving America as barren as Palestine or Spain.

It is imperative for us to protect the flora and fauna around us.

The world breaks a little bit every time we cut down a tree. It's so much easier to cut one down than to grow one. And so it's worth interrogating every time we do it.

We are putting value in the things that really are not valuable, things like commodities or disposable stuff that can bought, but the rainforest has been undervalued, because the value shouldn't be in the trees that you take out; it's should be with leaving the trees to preserve the life system that sustains life on the planet.