Henry Rollins Quotes

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

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.

When I was in the seventh grade I did a report about the environment and the loss of species. It was supposed to be only a few pages, but ended up being nearly 50.

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.

The losses of the natural world are our loss, their silence silences something within the human mind.

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

The continued existence of wildlife and wilderness is important to the quality of life of humans.

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.

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.

Life is insanely robust, though we can make species go extinct, and this is the bad thing. So I always make the point that you can't say, 'Is it too late?' That is the terrible question, because either answer promotes inaction. If it's too late, you don't need to act; if it's not too late, you don't need to act.

All over the world the wildlife that I write about is in grave danger. It is being exterminated by what we call the progress of civilization.

No more wolves, wilderness or welfare.

True conservation means protecting the entire habitat.

For the most part we don’t have an immediate impact on the species that surrounds us. But we do have an immediate impact on their habitat which determines whether they survive on in some cases shift their ground.

We are in grave danger of losing forever not just millions of years of evolution on earth, but the eons of change that have produced man and his natural environment.

Predators, they're the best coal miners' canary. When they're gone, you've got a sick ecosystem.

In my life, I have dreamt of seeing the great herds of wild animals, jungles and rainforests full of birds and butterflies, but now I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see.

So it is that one side effect of the HD revolution has been the gratifying and edifying return of the nature documentary - films about the hugely varied forms of life that eat, sleep, stalk, mate, fight, thrive, suffer and struggle on our dear and embattled old Earth.

In a fragile environment, we need to be aware of ourselves as members of a uniquely powerful species living among other species who are quite as interesting as we are but vulnerable to us because we are cleverer in more destructive ways.

Save the elephants, and then you save the forest - and then you save yourself.

I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral.

Turtles are very stable and have been around forever. But they have problems adapting. When humans came along, turtles came under serious threat. Biodiversity is good, and I think it is good in technology as well.

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

What happens if you are the last (the very, very last) of your species, and you die - and humans notice? We live, increasingly, at a time when extinctions are recorded, remembered, and the last animal (or plant) in its line, by virtue of its being last, becomes a kind of celebrity. Its finality becomes a thing to honor.