Peter Benchley Quotes

Crocs are apex predators, and as with all apex predators, they are critical to the environment: if you lose the crocs, you'll lose the barramundi, you'll lose the crabs - a catfish can eat 30,000 barramundi fingerlings, and who do you think eats the catfish? Crocs.

The number of humble-bees in any district depends in a great degree on the number of field-mice, which destroy their combs and nests; and Mr. H. Newman, who has long attended to the habits of humble-bees, ... says "Near villages and small towns I have found the nests of humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute to the number of cats that destroy the mice." Hence it is quite credible that the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in a district might determine, through the intervention first of mice and then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers in that district!

I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades.

When we seed millions of acres of land with these plants, what happens to foraging birds, to insects, to microbes, to the other animals, when they come in contact and digest plants that are producing materials ranging from plastics to vaccines to pharmaceutical products?

Remove the predators, and the whole ecosystem begins to crash like a house of cards. As the sharks disappear, the predator-prey balance dramatically shifts, and the health of our oceans declines.

Heartless though it may seem to some, among the least harmful things to eat are sustainably culled wild animals. In the absence of natural predators, deer populations in parts of Britain have reached such dense numbers that the woodlands they browse fail to regenerate.

The crown jewel of our national park system has been transformed into a hunting ground for these predators. It's just a matter of time before one of these snakes gets to a visitor.

From a conservation issue alone, you'd have to say there are too many badgers. A bigger growth in the badger population is not good for the balance of conservation anyway.

People need to look at wildlife conservation in its totality. As soon as you lose the apex predator, it has harmful consequences right down the food chain.

Not only does every animal live at the expense of some other animal or plant, but the very plants are at war.... The individuals of a species are like the crew of a foundered ship, and none but good swimmers have a chance of reaching the land.

There are bugs and there are the pigeons and other predators, but you shouldn't be afraid of them, because this is how nature works.

If you cut down a forest, it doesn't matter how many sawmills you have if there are no more trees.

Nature generally struggles against this treatment for a while, until her powers seem in a great measure exhausted, when she quietly yields to the power of the art.

People habitat has to take priority over bird habitat.

If we lose bees, we may be looking at losing apples and oranges. We may be looking at losing a great deal of other crops, as well, and other animals that depend on those crops.

The ecosystem of our world is a closed system: it would run out of gas, collapse of its own weight.

If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months.

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.

The biggest predator of fish like cod is other fish - and seals keep fish like that in check.

There is much concern these days about the taking of wild animals for sport, but against that must be placed the protection given to wild habitats and many other wild species in the process of keeping game … as with everything in nature, it is all a question of balance and this balance can only be achieved by knowledge and understanding …

Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow.

… 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.

True conservation means protecting the entire habitat.

How much longer, for instance, can we continue to crowd more and more people into this world? …. How long can we permit the uncontrolled use of the earth's resources when there is no possibility of replacing them? Indeed, how long will it be before we have completely used up everything our lives depend on? These issues are the politics of the future. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have begun to spell out in substantive fashion the means by which we can control population growth, environmental problems, and the conservation of our natural resources.

Conservation’s grand challenge is to save nature in a world that will soon have 9 billion hungry, thirsty, energy-using people.