"Some time ago I was in a museum in Los Angeles and there, in several large drawers, I saw numerous skins of the California condor. It was dreadful to realize that here, in front of me, carefully preserved, lay more California condors than actually existed in the wild. The great ecosystems are like complex tapestries - a million complicated threads, interwoven, make up the whole picture. Nature can cope with small rents in the fabric; it can even, after a time, cope with major disasters like floods, fires, and earthquakes. What nature cannot cope with is the steady undermining of its fabric by the activities of man."

- Gerald Durrell, British author and naturalist Gerald Durrell is the founder and Honorary Director of the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust

"My unhappiness is not over this Dorset I inhabit, nor indeed over anywhere else in particular, but, above all, over how blindly and selfishly our species goes on living everywhere, seemingly stuck between suicide and senility. Crystal-clear what is wrong, and equally clear that as a species we cannot face doing anything about it. We are now far too many, beyond restraint, and multiplying like an uncontrolled virus. My thoughts are of all the animals, plants, birds, insects we poison out of this world, and how they have been a chief consolation and delight of my six decades of life. Such a loss may hardly seem to matter; I grow old, I shall soon be gone. What does matter is that for the majority, the younger, loss now becomes the rule. It is like some insane fiat: 'Nature will shortly cease to exist. It is henceforth strictly forbidden to mean anything to anyone.' It won't quite happen so, of course. Such a situation will creep slowly upon us and our confused intelligences, stuffed with conflicting values and notions. But then one day the death of nature will be unopposably real, irreversible. There will be no more green. So I felt this burning summer. In form I might belong to humankind; in reality I seemed one of a ravenous self-destroying horde of rats. I am glad there is no god. If there were I, cannot imagine that we rampant, myopic, and insatiably self-centered creatures should be allowed to survive a single day more."

- John Fowles, British novelist John Fowles is the author of a number of modern classics, including The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman

"When I came back to the world, after ten years of war, ten years of death and killing, I found that I could not face society. I felt a strange instinct to go back to the wilderness of Africa. I went to live in the bush, alone. I remember the first evening in the wild, seeing the first kudu bull as I made camp on the Pafuri River. He came out of the river where he had been drinking, sniffing the air between him and me. He threw that lovely head of his back, and I looked at him with a tremendous feeling of relief. I thought, 'My God, I'm back home! I'm back at the moment when humanity came in, where everything was magical and alive, quivering with a magnetism from the fullness of whoever created it all.' And I lived there for four whole weeks and gradually, through the animals, I was led back to my own human self."

- Laurens van der Post, Laurens van der Post is a South-African born explorer and wrier, now living in England. This is an extract from his essay Wilderness: A Way of Truth

"Since virtually nothing remains of our pristine wildernesses, perhaps we in Great Britain might be one of the first to develop a truly integrated land policy in which there will be a place for all: for the farmer growing food for our stomachs as well as the naturalist finding solace for the spirit; for the car owner using the motorway as well as the walker strolling along a bridle-path; and last, but surely by no means least, for the multitude of species of animals and plants, which were here long before we were."

- David Attenborough, British broadcaster and author Sir David Attenborough has been making wildlife films since the 1950s

"If we go on using the Earth uncaringly and without replenishing it, then we are just greedy consumers. We should take from the Earth only what are our absolute and basic necessities: things without which we cannot survive. The Earth has an abundance of everything, but our share in it is only what we really need. There is a story to illustrate this. Mahatma Gandhi was staying with the first Indian Prime Minister, Mr. Nehru, in the city of Allahabad. In the morning Gandhi was washing his face and hands. Mr. Nehru was pouring water from the jug as they talked about the problems of India. As they were deeply engaged in serious discussion, Gandhi forgot that he was washing; before he had finished washing his face, the jug became empty. So Mr. Nehru said, 'Wait a minute and I will fetch another jug of water for you.' Gandhi said, 'What! You mean I have used all that jugful of water without finishing washing my face? How wasteful of me! I use only one jug of water every morning.' He stopped talking; tears flowed from his eyes. Mr. Nehru was shocked. 'Why are you crying, what has happened, why are you worried about the water? In my city of Allahabad there are three great rivers, the Ganges, the Jumnar, and the Saraswati, you don't need to worry about water here!' Gandhi said, 'Nehru, you are right, you have three great rivers in your town, but my share in those rivers is only one jug of water a morning and no more.'"

- Satish Kumar, a former Jain monk, is the editor of Resurgence magazine and the Director of Schumacher College in Dartington, Devon, England

"Evolution has shown us that nothing ever stays the same: continents drift across the oceans, jungles turn into deserts, and dinosaurs make way for silky anteaters. And where the wind and the sun once dictated the course of evolution, the near future of this planet resides in the mind and action of man. The balancing of and the struggle between greed, compassion, fear, and intelligence will now determine the destiny of all life on Earth."

- Charles Lynn Bragg

"We are all one. Birds, plants, animals, minerals - we are all different manifestations of the same essential energy. Our way ahead, our searches and dreams are the molecular expression of the life experience of everything that makes up our planet. By caring for it, we will help each other to grow."

- Alejandro Lerner, Alejandro Lerner is an Argentinean writer and composer

"We all moan and groan about the loss of the quality of life through the destruction of our ecology, and yet each one of us, in our own little comfortable ways, contributes daily to that destruction. It's time now to awaken in each one of us the respect and attention our beloved mother deserves."

- Ed Asner American actor Ed Asner is a supporter of many environmental causes, including the American Oceans Campaign

"I would like to confront the issue of the 300 minke whales that Japan is now killing for 'scientific purposes.' We often hear that because there are as many as 700,000 minke whales, killing just 300 of them every year will have no effect on the overall population. However, when we look beyond the numbers, and recognize, from a social science perspective, that these creatures have a deep relationship with human beings, this becomes an extremely dangerous way of thinking. Whale research is necessary, but it is not necessary to kill whales to carry it out. Scientific whaling should be stopped outright at once."

- Eiji Fujiwara, President of the Institute for Environmental Science and Culture in Japan

"The worst thing that can happen - will happen [in the 1980s] - is not energy depletion, economic collapse, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian government. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing in the 1980s 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."

- E.O. Wilson, Harvard Magazine, January-February 1980

"Living species today, let us remember, are the end products of twenty million centuries of evolution; absolutely nothing can be done when the species has finally gone, when the last pair has died out."

- Sir Peter Scott, speaking before 1972 Conference on Breeding Endangered Species

"Living organisms are not only means but ends. In addition to their instrumental value to humans and other living organisms, they have an intrinsic worth."

- Charles Birch, Challis Professor of Zoology, University of Sydney, March 1979

The Elephant

The Elephant is a beast both mystical and bold,
Pray there be no end to the mornings that he wakes
Standing tall, Ivory gleaming with the spirit of the old.
The Elephant has given us much more than he takes.
Please let us not awake to find he is only a dream
For the Elephant knows much more than it would seem.

"The Elephant" by Sheree Walters
Copyright © 9/12/90

"In the water, whales have become the dominant species,
Without killing their own kind.

In the water, whales have become the dominant species,
Though they allow the resources they use to renew themselves.

In the water, whales have become the dominant species,
Though they use language to communicate, rather than to eliminate rivals.

In the water, whales have become the dominant species,
Though they do not broodily guard their patch with bristling security.

In the water, whales have become the dominant species,
Without trading innocence for the pretension of possessions.

In the water, whales have become the dominant species,
Without allowing their population to reach plague proportions.

In the water, whales have become the dominant species,
And extra-terrestrial, who has already landed . . .
A marine intelligentsia, with a knowledge of the deep.

From space, the planet is blue.
From space, the planet is the territory
Not of humans, but of the whale."

- Heathcote Williams, a British poet. These are the closing lines of his Whale Nation