Ecological Understanding Quotes

Every ecosystem, even a small one, is sustainable because it has certain ensembles and conditions and influences that are unique to it. And the biological ensembles are almost certainly, even the most modest ones, in the thousands of species. We don't know what's involved in the models - not even the beginnings. And yet we're trying to make a sustainable world, which has to include the natural world. The human species is triumphant, but it's got to get a grip. It's got to come to understand what's happened, why we're this way and what we're doing.

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

If children have an interest in nature, they will understand. I want them to become people who appreciate the consequences the next generation will suffer if we destroy our natural surroundings. So without a doubt, they need to learn that nature is vital to us by experiencing it. I want them to like nature and to climb mountains and so on.

Nature is not mute, it is a man who is deaf.

Politicians need a better understanding of global ecology. We need to be freed from our species-specific arrogance. No evidence exists that we are 'chosen', the unique species for which all the others were made. Nor are we the most important one because we are so numerous, powerful and dangerous.

Eventually, my eyes were opened, and I really understood nature. I learned to love at the same time.

Where nature is concerned, familiarity breeds love and knowledge, not contempt.

We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity.

The fewer species there are and the fewer species we know about, the fewer questions we even know to ask.

What conservation education must build is an ethical underpinning for land economics and a universal curiosity to understand the land mechanism. Conservation may then follow.

We've all heard of the surveys revealing that teenagers think cows lay eggs, and others where children can identify more brand logos than trees, by a staggering margin. My view is that children will form a significant part of the green fightback. They instinctively understand the value of the environment.

I don't think whole populations are villainous, but Americans are just extraordinarily unaware of all kinds of things. If you live in the middle of that vast continent, with apparently everything your heart could wish for just because you were born there, then why worry? [...] If people lose knowledge, sympathy and understanding of the natural world, they're going to mistreat it and will not ask their politicians to care for it.

Each of us-adult or child-must earn nature's gift by knowing nature directly, however difficult it may be to glean that knowledge in an urban environment.

Life histories tell you just about everything you need to know about an animal.

I am interested in the way that we look at a given landscape and take possession of it in our blood and brain. None of us lives apart from the land entirely; such an isolation is unimaginable. If we are to realize and maintain our humanity, we must come to a moral comprehension of earth and air as it is perceived in the long turn of seasons and of years.

As long as we relate to the trees, the rivers, the mountains, the fields and the oceans as properties which we can manipulate according to our real or fabricated needs, nature remains opaque, and does not reveal to us its true being.

You should really know what the complete natural world of your region is and know what all its interactions are and how you are interacting with it yourself. This is just part of the work of becoming who you are, where you are.

Unless we connect directly with the earth, we will not have the faintest clue why we should save it…. Only if we understand the beauty of nature will we love it, and only if we become alerted to learn about the planet's disease processes can we decide to live our lives with a proper sense of ecological responsibility.

It is well to be informed about the winds, About the variations in the sky, The native traits and habits of the place, What each locale permits, and what denies.

I do not mean to say that we should, or could, return to traditional nomadic economies. I do mean to say that there are systems of knowledge and grand poetical schemata derived from the mobile life that it would be foolish to disregard or underrate. And mad to destroy.

The highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.

It's something I passed on to my kids. They really love the earth because they've experienced it from the youngest age. They know where food comes from - it doesn't come from the Safeway bush or the Ralph's tree. It comes from the earth. And water and sunshine and nutrients. My children understand that because they've experienced it. I feel successful as a parent, having done that.

People were so naive about plants, Ellie thought. They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction---and defense.

If a child never sees the stars, never has meaningful encounters with other species, never experiences the richness of nature, what happens to that child?

The role of geo-engineering should, in a world of responsibility, in a world of scientifically enlightened decision making and ecological understanding, it should be zero. There is no role for geo-engeneering. Because what is geoengineering but extending the engineering paradigm?