John Burroughs Quotes

Short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things.

I am optimistic globally. So many scientists are working frantically on the reparation of our planet. Unfortunately there are countries who are still destroying it, but we really hope the conservation message rubs off in our film. Every cent we earn from Crocodile Hunter goes straight back into conservation. Every single cent.

Eating wildlife is probably not the smartest thing that we can do in terms of maintaining the integrity of natural systems.

Our grandfathers were less well-housed, well-fed, well-clothed than we are. The strivings by which they bettered their lot are also those which deprived us of [Passenger] pigeons. Perhaps we now grieve because we are not sure, in our hearts, that we have gained by the exchange. The gadgets of industry bring us more comforts than the pigeons did, but do they add as much to the glory of the spring?

We will instead have to measure our economy by the health of the ecosystems and human communities where we do our work.

Environmental science is telling us a lot about our future and what it could look like, whether we're talking about global warming (the current poster child for the environment) or a loss of genetic diversity in our food supplies, or the effects of low-dose chemicals on human development.

Watching the animals come and go, and feeling the land swell up to meet them and then feeling it grow still at their departure, I came to think of the migrations as breath, as the land breathing. In spring a great inhalation of light and animals. The long-bated breath of summer. And an exhalation that propelled them all south in the fall.

Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them

To the bird watcher, the suburbanite who derives joy from birds in his garden, the hunter, the fisherman or the explorer of wild regions, anything that destroys the wildlife of an area for even a single year has deprived him of pleasure to which he has a legitimate right. This is a valid point of view.

Every native species, however humble in appearance...has its place in the nation's heritage. It is a masterpiece of evolution, an ancient, multifaceted entity that shares the land with us.

What we lose in our great human exodus from the land is a rooted sense, as deep and intangible as religious faith, of why we need to hold on to the wild and beautiful places that once surrounded us.

Where do we record the passing of wildlife? Who mourns the silent deaths of the small?

When not protected by law, by popular favor or superstition, or by other special circumstances, [birds] yield very readily to the influences of civilization, and, though the first operations of the settler are favorable to the increase of many species, the great extension of rural and of mechanical industry is, in a variety of ways, destructive even to tribes not directly warred upon by man.

Some recent occurrences such as the BSE disaster and even perhaps - dare I mention it - the present severe weather conditions in our country are, I have no doubt, the consequences of mankind's arrogant disregard of the delicate balance of nature. We have to find a way of ensuring that our remarkable and seemingly beneficial advances in technology do not just become the agents of our own destruction.

How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down?

In farm country, the plover has only two real enemies: the gully and the drainage ditch. Perhaps we shall one day find that these are our enemies, too.

That whole thing has been overstated by environmentalists. First of all, what is it, rocks and snow? C'mon, what is that, you want that? Go to Canada my friend. Believe me, rocks and snow are overrated. I've seen otters - they look better covered in oil.

It took Britain half the resources of the planet to achieve its prosperity; how many planets will a country like India require?

I am passionate about exploring the confluence of environmental and human health. I believe that the goals of conservation must constantly revisit a stated purpose.

No town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one- I mean a downright bumpkin dandy- a fellow that, in the dog-days of summer, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands.

Yet the summer which was to change everything was coming nearer every day. When boys and girls are growing up, life can't stand still, not even in the quietest of country towns; and they have to grow up, whether they will or no. That is what their elders are always forgetting.

When I consider that the noble animals have been exterminated here - the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc, etc - I cannot but feel as I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country.

I know Teddy Kennedy had fun at the Democratic convention when he said that I said that trees and vegetation caused 80 percent of the air pollution in this country. ... Well, now he was a little wrong about what I said. I didn't say 80 percent. I said 92 percent-93 percent, pardon me. And I didn't say air pollution, I said oxides of nitrogen. Growing and decaying vegetation in this land are responsible for 93 percent of the oxides of nitrogen. ... If we are totally successful and can eliminate all the manmade oxides of nitrogen, we'll still have 93 percent as much as we have in the air today.

Relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating happiness heaven; one may never get there.