Environment

"Many insect-eating bats hunt by echolocation, emitting a pulsed, high-frequency sound—in the manner of a ship's sonar—while flying; the sensory data thus gained guides them to their prey."

"The senses of predators are adapted in a variety of ways to facilitate hunting behaviour. Visual acuity is great in raptors such as the red-tailed hawk, which soars on high searching for prey. Even on a dark night owls can hear, and focus on, the rustling sound and movement of a mouse."

"Predation, in animal behaviour, [is] the pursuit, capture, and killing of animals for food. Predatory animals may be solitary hunters, like the leopard, or they may be group hunters, like wolves."

"Each predator directly exerts a negative effect upon its prey, but predators may also provide indirect benefits to their prey. In ecosystems, such benefits are effected via indirect trophic pathways that can provide a more than compensating positive influence. The ecosystem of the Big Cypress National Preserve (southwest Florida) appears to contain an unusually high number of such predators—most notably, the American alligator, Alligator mississippiensis... the predation by alligators on snakes and turtles accounts for most of the trophic benefits bestowed. The actions of alligators in modifying their physical environment contributes to the maintenance of biotic diversity. It appears that the trophic influence of this species adds further evidence to the important role it plays in the functional ecology of the cypress wetland."

"Predation is probably as old as (cellular) life itself, and it is likely to have existed in many different forms and at many different levels during the formative phases of the Cambrian explosion (which culminated between 550 and 540 Ma)"

"When predators are capable of regulating prey populations, then they may indirectly influence both the composition and biomass of plant communities by releasing them from herbivory."

"It is that range of biodiversity that we must care for - the whole thing - rather than just one or two stars."

"The variety of life at every hierarchical level and spatial scale of biological organisations are: genes within populations, populations within species, species within communities, communities within landscapes, landscapes within biomes, and biomes within the biosphere."

"We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity. We should not knowingly allow any species or race to go extinct."

"This is the assembly of life that took a billion years to evolve. It has eaten the storms-folded them into its genes-and created the world that created us. It holds the world steady."

"The cutting of primeval forest and other disasters, fueled by the demands of growing human populations, are the overriding threat to biological diversity everywhere."

"Scientists themselves readily admit that they do not fully understand the consequences of our many-faceted assault upon the interwoven fabric of atmosphere, water, land and life in all its biological diversity. Things could turn out to be worse than the current scientific best guess. In military affairs, policy has long been based on the dictum that we should be prepared for the worst case. Why should it be so different when the security is that of the planet and our long-term future?"

"We see evidence that lakes and forests and wetlands can have different equilibria - so you have a savanna system that may be stable and thriving, but it can also tip over and become an arid steppe if pushed too far by warming, land degradation, and biodiversity loss."

"In the context of conservation science the term ‘biodiversity’, a contraction of ‘biological diversity’, is relatively young. ‘Biological diversity’ in its current sense began to be used in the early 1980s, with interest in the concept elevated by publications such as ‘Limits to Growth'."

"Simply put, design matters. And at a moment in our history in which the scientific community has issued serious warnings about the negative impacts of our flawed designs-from global warming and water pollution to the loss of biodiversity and natural resources-designers have a critical role to play in the creation of a more just, healthful and sustainable world."

"There are more effective ways of tackling environmental problems including global warming, proliferation of plastics, urban sprawl, and the loss of biodiversity than by treaties, top-down regulations, and other approaches offered by big governments and their dependents. These “more effective ways” focus on harnessing a multitude of local and small-scale initiatives to the task – the “little platoons” of civil society."

"The human domination of the planet has also meant that livestock and humans far outweigh wild animals. In terms of biomass, plants are the most abundant, comprising 82% of the total, according to a 2018 estimate. Of mammals, which make up a tiny portion of the overall figure, livestock comprise 60%, humans 36% and wild animals just 4%."

"Spatial heterogeneity in species richness, in particular, is an obvious feature of the natural world. An understanding of its determinants will impinge on applied issues of major concern to humankind, including the role of biodiversity in ecosystem processes, the spread of alien invasive species, the control of diseases and their vectors, and the likely effects of global environmental change on the maintenance of biodiversity."

"Biodiversity, the variety of life, is distributed heterogeneously across the Earth. Some areas teem with biological variation (for example, some moist tropical forests and coral reefs), others are virtually devoid of life (for example, some deserts and polar regions), and most fall somewhere in between. Determining why these differences occur has long been a core objective for ecologists and biogeographers. It constitutes a continuing, an important, and to many an enthralling, challenge."

"Whether we consciously realize it or not, the biodiversity with which we are most familiar, and the biodiversity with which we have most intimate historical, cultural and biological connections, is that associated with food plants.We all know that apples come in red, yellow and green models, and we know some of the varietal names. But how many people realize that there are thousands of distinct varieties of potatoes, tens of thousands of varieties of beans, hundreds of thousands of types of wheat, and even more of rice?"

"To many people, 'biodiversity' is almost synonymous with the word 'nature,' and 'nature' brings to mind steamy forests and the big creatures that dwell there. Fair enough. But biodiversity is much more than that, for it encompasses not only the diversity of species, but also the diversity within species... It is the diversity within species that keeps species going. This is the diversity upon which natural selection works, the diversity that fuels adaptation and evolution for everything from pandas to peas. Unless we appreciate the critical role that intra-species biodiversity plays in the survival of species, we risk seeing extinction as a numbers game, as something that happens when the last individual dies."

"Biodiversity is defined as 'the variability among living organisms from all sources, including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine, and water aquatic ecosystems, and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems."

"Biodiversity is defined as the natural variety and variability among living organisms, the ecological complexes among living organisms, the ecological complexes in which they naturally occur, and the ways in which they interact with each other and with the physical environment rooted in biological science."

"At Rio+20 we will continue to make the links between sustainable development and the biodiversity and ecosystem services which underpin it, focusing on the additional issues now being addressed, such as the health of oceans and food security."

"In Georgia, UNDP continues to support the development of democratic institutions. Georgia is part of the global biodiversity hotspot of the Caucasus Ecoregion, with a network of Protected Areas covering seven per cent of the country."

"Although biodiversity loss continues globally, many countries are significantly slowing the rate of loss by shoring up protected natural areas and the services they provide, and in expanding national park systems with tighter management and more secure funding."

"Source Reduction is to garbage what preventive medicine is to health."

"Life is waste..if not properly utilized."

"Waste not, want not. ~ English proverb"

"Haste makes waste. ~ English proverb"

"Man is a wasting animal. From the layer upon layer of ash, bone and rubbish, with here a lost flint knife and there a needle polished and rubbed into shape from a splinter of bone and left on the floor of a British cave, through the piles of refuse of the city of Ur of the Chaldees to modern man, the archaeologist tells us what we were and how we lived by what we threw away."

"To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed."

"The ocean is tired. It's throwing back at us what we're throwing in there."

"There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we could use."

"Don't waste the Earth - It is our Jewel!"

"The most unhappy thing about conservation is that it is never permanent. If we save a priceless woodland today, it is threatened from another quarter tomorrow."

"Possibly the most well-known of all our critically , the was the first Australian bird to have a recovery plan developed for it, back in 1984. Showing how conservation of extremely threatened species is a long game, by 2018 it was still considered the second most likely Australian bird to go extinct, after only two wild females successfully raised chicks in 2016 at their one remaining Tasmanian nesting site. However, things seemed to have finally turned the corner. After a couple of successful seasons, boosted by the release of dozens of birds, 62 wild orange-bellied parrots have returned to the breeding grounds."

"The conservationist's most Important task, if we are to save the earth, is to educate."

"The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem, it will avail us little to solve all others."

"The idea that our natural resources were inexhaustible still obtained, and there was as yet no real knowledge of their extent and condition. 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 reëlection or defeat of a Congressman here and there—a theory which, I regret to say, still obtains."

"Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping-grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy forests, and exterminate fishes, birds, and mammals—not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. But at last it looks as if our people were awakening. Many leading men, Americans and Canadians, are doing all they can for the Conservation movement."

"The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value."

"Conservation and rural-life policies are really two sides of the same policy; and down at bottom this policy rests upon the fundamental law that neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in dealing with the present, thought is steadily taken for the future."

"By 2050, at bio-extinction's current rate, between 25 per cent and 50 per cent of all species will have disappeared or be too few in numbers to survive. There'll be a few over-visited parks, the coral reefs will be beaten up, grasslands overgrazed. Vast areas of the tropics that have lost their forests will have the same damn weeds, bushes and scrawny eucalyptus trees so that you don't know if you're in Africa or the Americas."

"Conservation biology is an ideology masquerading as a science."

"Earth has undergone radical changes throughout its [4.5] billion year history, and as such, it would be curious if it had just now reached the state that is intrinsically valuable and ought to be preserved in perpetuity."

"Civilization began around wetlands; today's civilization has every reason to leave them wet and wild."

"Conservation is not merely a thing to be enshrined in outdoor museums, but a way of living on land."

"An ecological civilization is both a new and ancient idea. While the notion of structuring human society on an ecological basis might seem radical, Indigenous peoples around the world have organized themselves from time immemorial on life-affirming principles....Every year that we head closer to catastrophe—as greater climate-related disasters rear up, as the outrages of racial and economic injustice become even more egregious, and as life for most people becomes increasingly intolerable—the old narrative loses its hold on the collective consciousness. Waves of young people are looking for a new worldview—one that makes sense of the current unraveling, one that offers them a future they can believe in. It’s a bold idea to transform the very basis of our civilization to one that’s life-affirming. But when the alternative is unthinkable, a vision of a flourishing future shines a light of hope that can become a self-fulfilling reality. Dare to imagine it. Dare to make it possible by the actions you take, both individually and collectively—and it might just happen sooner than you expect."

"Even if the Democratic administration were resoundingly successful on all fronts, its initiatives would still be utterly insufficient to resolve the existential threat of climate breakdown and the devastation of our planet’s life-support systems. That’s because the multiple problems confronting us right now are symptoms of an even more profound problem: The underlying structure of a global economic and political system that is driving civilization toward a precipice... As long as government policies emphasize growth in gross domestic product and transnational corporations relentlessly pursue shareholder returns, we will continue accelerating toward global catastrophe... We need to forge a new era for humanity — one that is defined, at its deepest level, by a transformation in the way we make sense of the world, and a concomitant revolution in our values, goals, and collective behavior. In short, we need to change the basis of our global civilization. We must move from a civilization based on wealth accumulation to one that is life-affirming: an ecological civilization..."