Cathy McMorris Rodgers Quotes

The Columbia River Basin, which spans seven states in the Pacific Northwest, is one of the largest freshwater networks in North America. For centuries, the Basin has been a catalyst for economic development through the abundance of natural resources it provides.

We depend on our rivers and dams for energy, transportation, irrigation and recreation and I will continue this year to fight for what's best for the Pacific Northwest.

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.

Whoever wants me to talk, I'll come over and tell them about the necessity of preserving the Everglades.

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

Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we'll soon be in trouble.

The Pacific Northwest depends on inexpensive renewable energy from our dams.

I've always liked trees. And then, growing up, I took an interest in ecology, hedges being destroyed, the landscape being turned into prairies.

I had in mind a message, although I hope it doesn't intrude too badly, persuading Americans, and especially Southerners, of the critical importance of land and our vanishing natural environment and wildlife.

A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure.

True conservation means protecting the entire habitat.

It is imperative for us to protect the flora and fauna around us.

Every user of the river down here understands that a healthy river is absolutely vital for a healthy economy and a healthy tourism industry.

Every fish in the ocean is in danger.

I take a biocentric point of view. I look at things from the point of view of the Earth and the laws of ecology. As opposed to the anthropocentric point of view, where everything revolves around humanity.

Any living thing that hopes to live on the earth must fit into the ecosphere or perish.

From global warming to fish and wildlife, we've seen that the Bush administration has little regard for scientific findings that don't support its predetermined policies.

The relation of the conservation of natural resources to the problems of National welfare and National efficiency had not yet dawned on the public mind. The reclamation of arid public lands in the West was still a matter for private enterprise alone; and our magnificent river system, with its superb possibilities for public usefulness, was dealt with by the National Government not as a unit, but as a disconnected series of pork-barrel problems, whose only real interest was in their effect on the re-election or defeat of a Congressman here and there—a theory which, I regret to say, still obtains.

For him nature is basically a golf course or a ranch--or a national park turned into a country club where folks can burn off stress by speeding over the snow while polluting the air of Yellowstone with gas-guzzling skidoos.

We all love the environment, but … a rat is a rat.

The Father of Waters [the Mississippi River] again goes unvexed to the sea.

Great improvements must also take place which far surpass the momentum of power that a single nation can produce, but will with facility proceed from their united strength. The hand of art will change the face of the universe. Mountains, deserts, and oceans will feel its mighty force. It will not then be debated whether hills shall be prostrated, but whether the Alps and the Andes shall be leveled; nor whether sterile fields shall be fertilized, but whether the deserts of Africa shall feel the power of cultivation; nor whether rivers shall be joined, but whether the Caspian shall see the Mediterranean, and the waves of the Pacific lave the Atlantic.

… 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.

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.

There probably were floods when our land was newly settled but before we cut our trees so recklessly they were not so serious. If we go to the headwaters of our rivers and we will find the cause and the results which follow in the wake of man's destructive ignorance.