David Quammen Quotes

Chimpanzees are endangered. Severely.

In Africa, you know, if you're poor, at least you can go to the forest and share some mangoes with the gorillas and monkey.

The survival of extraordinary creatures such as the giant Tasmanian freshwater crayfish - the largest in the world - is in doubt because of logging.

True conservation means protecting the entire habitat.

… monkeys …

The illegal wildlife trade has an unacceptable human cost for those who have lived for centuries in harmony with wildlife.

Elephants are magnificient creatures.

I don't hunt big African game anymore.

Every time you lose an animal, it's like losing a brick from the house. Pretty soon the house just falls down, you know?

Hunted for sport by the rich, then driven from large tracts of its natural habitat by agricultural and housing development, the giant panda deserves better than to be scrubbed from conservation's ledger books through false accounting.

Elephants are contagious.

It's fair to say when you go out and walk in the woods or on a beach, the most conspicuous forms of life you will see are plants and animals, and certainly there's a huge diversity of those types of organisms, perhaps 10 million animal species and several hundred thousand plant species.

We all have a responsibility to protect endangered species, both for their sake and for the sake of our own future generations.

My belief is that what comes across on the television is a capture of my enthusiasm and my passion for wildlife.

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.

Every species has its pub.

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

The San Gabriel Mountains rise like a rampart at the edge of the city, safeguarding more than 500,000 acres of mature forests, mountain streams, dramatic waterfalls, and towering peaks that reach over 9,000 feet. These untamed places attract bighorn sheep, mountain lions, and other threatened or endangered species.

You can cut a tree down, and it grows back. Once a species goes, it's gone forever.

The more you learn about the dignity of the gorilla, the more you want to avoid people.

Brazil has one of the greatest natural patrimonies in terms of biodiversity.

I like animals. I like natural history. The travel bit is not the important bit. The travel bit is what you have to do in order to go and look at animals.

Endangered species are our friends.

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

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.