Peter Beard Quotes

The elephants were being slaughtered in masses. Some were even killed in the vicinity of big tourist hotels.

The threat of extinction is more real than many realise. And the damage done to elephants directly leads to destruction of the ecosystem.

States should pass laws making it illegal to own or trade wild animals; the phony 'educational' permits that many private owners have used to skirt those laws should be eliminated.

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.

Yes, I've often been threatened by hunters, by horsemeat butchers, and seal murderers... I am still alive!

When people encroach on forest land and in the periphery of habitats of wild animals, they attack humans.

It takes a true encounter to realise that real animals, wild animals, have all but passed from our lives.

I was learning to track rhinoceroses in Africa and tracked right up on an animal that really I thought was going to kill me.

In Africa, we have the bush meat trade, which means that, on a very large scale, animals are being killed in the forests and sold in the cities as a luxury food.

I don't want to see crocs end up as boots, bags and belts. We're killing and consuming our wildlife icons.

The rhino is now more or less extinct, and it's not because of global warming or shrinking habitats. It's because of Beyonce's handbags.

It's estimated that across Africa 100 elephants are killed for their tusks every day. It takes nothing more than simple math to get to what that adds up to in a year, and it's a distressing figure.

The problem is that during the 1980s, a decade of heavy poaching, the elephants retreated to safer areas. And now people have moved into the corridors once used by the elephants.

Back when I was restoring art and antiques, finding ivory was very difficult because it's illegal, and the only difference between bone and ivory is that bone is free and not illegal.

We wish to firmly demonstrate to the world our determination to eliminate all forms of illegal trade in ivory. Poachers and illegal trades in ivory must know that their days are numbered.

The Parc des Volcans in Rwanda, where I conduct most of my studies, is heavily infested with poachers and herdsmen, whose cattle graze right through my camp area. Park boundaries have no meaning to these tribesmen.

I saw firsthand the devastating consequences of poaching. I saw elephants with ivory hacked from their faces and the lengths private parks go to protect their precious wildlife.

Armies and former soldiers are working in the field to help protect elephants. Some have suggested staining the ivory; cameras and trackers have even been embedded within the tusk; others have arranged for tusks to be removed pre-emptively by conservationists.

You can't just go and collect animals from the wild. It's totally illegal.

Trophy hunters are not Everyman. These world-traveling endangered-species shooters are a far cry from the hunters who spend weekends in the American outback near their suburban or rural homes.

Poaching is a very complicated, multi-layered problem.

I wish that one of my children will be like the Australian guy from the Discovery Channel show. The crocodile hunter.

My study of the wild gorilla is not yet finished, and even when it is complete, it will contribute only a small part toward man's understanding of his closest animal relatives, the great apes. But one conclusion is already clear: The gorilla is one of the most maligned animals in the world.

Conservation of any endangered species must begin with stringent efforts to protect its natural habitat by the enforcement of rigid legislation against human encroachment into parks and other game sanctuaries.

I want to be a Tiger.