Michael Crichton Quotes

Every acre of forest should belong to the people.

As a nation we have not yet come to have a proper respect for the forest and to regard it as an indispensable part of our resources—one which is easily destroyed but difficult to replace; one which confers great benefits while it endures, but whose disappearance is accompanied by a train of evil consequences not readily foreseen and positively irreparable.

Maintaining healthy forests is essential to those who make a living from the land and for those of us who use them for recreational purposes.

Most of our political support for forest preservation comes from the Northeast where there are few forests. The Americans back East realize that they have made a historical mistake and failed to preserve and protect their original forests, and they don’t want the rest of the country to make the same mistake.

Our forest policy is not to preserve forests because they are beautiful—though that is a good in itself—not to preserve them because they are refuges for wild creatures of the wilderness—though that is a good in itself—but rather to conserve them in order to guarantee a steady and continuous supply of timber, grass, and above all, water.

If I have my way, I'm going to dissolve the Forest Service. They're in the business of harvesting trees and they're not harvesting trees, so why have them anymore?

The forests shall not be burned needlessly.

Our performance should be based on the long-term health of the land, rather than the number of board feet produced.

Formerly, Ireland was a vast forest…. It is now almost destitute of trees.

We can halt the destruction of the world's rainforests - and even restore parts of them - in order to ensure that the forests do what they are so good at - in other words, storing carbon naturally.

No other country in the world has as many forests as we do.

Sadly, it's much easier to create a desert than a forest.

I'm not an extreme tree-hugger. I do believe trees grow and are a useful agricultural product that can be harvested without damaging the ecology and wildlife.

Reversing deforestation is complicated; planting a tree is simple.

As a lifelong Oregonian, I prefer our forests green, not black.

There's a basic kind of tension here. It's between those who say, I'd like to clear cut this forest and reduce it to saw timber because that's an economically productive thing for me to do.

Creating mechanisms for ending deforestation and promoting regeneration of the environment is one of the most effective ways of achieving net-zero emissions.

You have to focus on what you're passionate about. For me it's the forests and of course, because I'm concerned about the forests, I'm concerned about the way paper is made.

China has led the world in new tree planting. Over the last several years China has planted 40 percent as many trees as the rest of the world put together. Since 198, all citizens of China over age 11 (and younger than 60) have been formally required at least three trees per year.

Our government has done nothing effective with its forests, though the best in the world, but is like a rich and foolish spendthrift who has inherited a magnificent estate in perfect order, and then has left his rich fields and meadows, forests and parks, to be sold and plundered and wasted at will …

Let us face it, there is no law in any country - to my knowledge - that makes it illegal to clear-cut forests, nor to erode our topsoil, nor to generate greenhouse gases over and above that which can be absorbed by dwindling natural sinks. What is more, even if such laws were enacted, I can see no effective mechanism anywhere in the world for applying them.

The great task for environmental historians is to record and analyze the effects of man's recently achieved control over the natural world. What is needed is a longer-term global, comparative, historical perspective that treats the environment as a meaningful variable.

You cannot, for instance, sustainably protect the environment if the majority of the people are still in primitive agriculture leading to the encroachment of forest reserves.

Every other civilized nation in the world has been compelled to care for its forests, and so must we if waste and destruction are not to go on to the bitter end, leaving America as barren as Palestine or Spain.

Forest restoration is a challenging and complex undertaking of raising young trees, transplanting them, and then cultivating them year in, year out in the face of harsh challenges of nature; it is a gigantic nature transformation project to turn all the mountains of the country into 'treasure mountains,' into 'gold mountains.'