Susan Orlean Quotes

Humans regard animals as worthy of protection only when they are on the verge of extinction.

Shelters, conservationists, those concerned about unnecessary cruelty toward the animals we eat, and people working against species extinction fight to preserve the true riches of our planet, our real inheritance. These are big, critical goals.

I know that Daddy had an important job. He was working to change the world so everyone would love wildlife like he did. He built a hospital to help animals, and he bought lots of land to give animals a safe place to live.

Zoos are becoming facsimiles - or perhaps caricatures - of how animals once were in their natural habitat. If the right policies toward nature were pursued, we would need no zoos at all.

People get very passionate about saving the whale, but when something like a Florida indigo snake is endangered there are not a lot of people out there holding up placards.

Actually I do support a charity, DefendersofWildLife.org. They help protect endangered species.

Yeah, I think it's an absolute disaster that Australia, the government, allowed kangaroo culling.

I grew a love for helpless, defenseless things. People would give me lions and jaguars. I had cheetahs, monkeys.

Gorillas are in danger of being wiped out by the Ebola virus. I feel like we have limited time to get to know them and understand them and they're going to disappear - that's terrifically sad. Wouldn't it be great if we could stop that?

I love zoo sanctuaries.

Take the crocodile, for example, my favorite animal. There are 23 species. Seventeen of those species are rare or endangered. They're on the way out, no matter what anyone does or says, you know.

It's about keeping animals in our environment. They can't be on somebody's purse or shoes or something.

Zoo animals are ambassadors for their cousins in the wild.

We're feeding all these zoos. And that's getting bigger and bigger.

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.

It's a moral question about whether we have the right to exterminate species.

We have wild animals in zoos, yet people rarely meet their 'food' face to face.

People are beginning to realize that it's important that we see animals in a natural state - but through film, through video, through documentaries, at wildlife preserves, and through other humanely protected ways, which don't involve... performing for us.

My job, my mission, what I have been put on this planet for is to save wildlife.

To preserve the buffalo as a species, the best thing we can do is eat them. Animals that people eat do not become extinct. That's why we have so many more chickens than bald eagles in this country.

People are not going to care about animal conservation unless they think that animals are worthwhile.

Yellowstone wildlife is treasured. We understand that. We'll manage them in a way that addresses that sensitivity.

Since I was a kid, I inherited my dad's love for animals and wildlife, even for the ones we had around the house in the French countryside, a 'smaller' kind of nature. Then, as I grew up, I looked more deeply into the African continent and its wildlife.

Bindi's been filming with us since she first hatched.

In the 1970s, Safari Club International asked the federal government to approve its import of 1,125 not-yet-killed trophies of 40 endangered species, including gorillas, orangutans and tigers, according to the Humane Society of the United States.