environmentalists-from-the-united-states

"We shall never understand the natural environment until we see it not as just so much air, water, and real estate, but as a living organism. Land can be healthy or sick, fertile or barren, rich or poor, lovingly nurtured or bled white. Our present attitudes and laws governing the ownership and use of land represent an abuse of the concept of private property. Land is treated like a commodity when it is in fact a trust. Not so long ago our society permitted one human being to own another — to exploit him and even work him to death and not go to jail for it. This is no longer considered acceptable behavior, either by society or by the law. Yet in America today you can murder land for private profit, as is being done, for example, on a vast scale in the southern Appalachians. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops. This situation is what is known in history as a "cultural lag." It has occurred because our understanding has not caught up with our technology: a familiar complaint that has become almost a cliché in reference to dramatic modern inventions like the atomic bomb. It is equally true in respect to less spectacular forms of destruction. You can kill land by skinning it alive or by by slowly poisoning it, and it is murder all the same. In the modern world, no one should have life and death control over his land any more than he does over another human being."

"It is almost a marvel that trees should live to become the oldest of living things. Fastened in one place, their struggle is incessant and severe. From the moment a baby tree is born — from the instant it casts its tiny shadow upon the ground — until death, it is in danger from insects and animals. It cannot move to avoid danger. It cannot run away to escape enemies. Fixed in one spot, almost helpless, it must endure flood and , fire and storm, insects and earthquakes, or die."

"Perhaps half the falsehood in the world is due to lack of power to detect the truth and to express it. aids both in discernment and in expression of things as they are."

"... the only way to become a connoisseur of honey is to keep s, for thus only may one learn to discriminate between honey made from and that gathered from ; or to distinguish, at first taste, the product of in bloom from that drawn from vagrant blossoms, which, changing day by day, mark the season's processional."

"A real is never contented with maps of places and pictures of things, but always desires to see the places and things themselves."

"As soon as the 's is completed, it begins to accumulate trash and mud. In a little while, usually, it is covered with a mass of soil, shrubs of begin to grow upon it, and after a few years it is a strong, earthy, willow-covered dam. The dams vary in length from a few feet to several hundred feet. I measured one on the that was eleven hundred feet long. The influence of a beaver-dam is astounding. As soon as completed, it becomes a highway for the folk of the wild. It is used day and night. Mice and porcupines, bears and rabbits, lions and wolves, make a bridge of it. From it, in the evening, the graceful deer cast their reflections in the quiet pond. Over it dash pursuer and pursued; and on it take place battles and courtships. It is often torn by hoof and claw of animals locked in death-struggles, and often, very often, it is stained with blood. Many a drama, picturesque, fierce, and wild, is staged upon a beaver-dam."

"Mills gave occasional talks which led to a career as a speaker. His reputation and influence as a writer provided him with the audiences he needed for lecturing on things he believed in. His career as a lecturer assumed a life and momentum of its own. He would talk about his unique life in the , his devotion to the , and and forest preservation. President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to the position of Government Lecturer on Forestry, a position he held from 1907 to 1909. During that time he gave 2,118 addresses. His talks awakened interest in trees, , and ."

"When Anna Botsford Comstock 1885 died in summer 1930 at the age of seventy-five, the pioneering naturalist left behind not only an ailing husband—famed entomologist , who was severely debilitated by a series of strokes and would pass away just half a year later—but a 760-page manuscript chronicling their decades of marriage, travel, teaching, and scientific study. It would be nearly a quarter-century until that memoir reached a wide readership, in the form of a book compiled by , Anna’s second cousin and the couple’s closest living relative. Published in 1953 by a division of , The Comstocks of Cornell was in fact just part of Anna’s original manuscript. It had been heavily edited by Herrick, also a professor of entomology on the Hill—not only to de-emphasize events and characters he considered irrelevant, but to streamline the language, remove any hint of controversy, and shift the focus toward John Henry’s august accomplishments, including his role as founder of Cornell’s entomology department."

"Most insects have enemies to bite them. The spreads death among injurious grubs. Efforts to control forest-enemies will embrace the giving of aid and comfort to those insects that prey upon them. Bugs will be hunted with bugs. Already the in the is being fought in this way. Many species of birds feed freely upon s, borers, and beetles. Of these birds, the s are the most important. They must be protected and encouraged."

"To better understand how far various grains were transported by wind, she and Allen Solomon (then at the ) set a network of pollen traps near and s in the to match the pollen rain with different . These data were used to develop a pollen-vegetation calibration that still informs studies in the region and beyond."

"... relatively few people are aware of how nineteenth- and twentieth-century patterns impacted the mountain rivers of the . When I moved to Colorado in 1989, I was impressed by the sparkling water of the mountain rivers, and I too assumed that these were natural, fully functional rivers. It was only after I began to read historical accounts of the Colorado and to examine the streams more closely that I realized how dramatically they had been altered. I began to think of them as virtual rivers, which had the appearance of natural rivers but had lost much of a natural river's ecosystem functions."

"The and its large tributaries historically hosted an extraordinary assemblage of large-river fish species. The , , , , and ) all have morphological adaptation for life in turbid, fast-flowing waters. Most of these species are now or as a result of flow regulation from s, s, and ."

"Saving the Dammed is Ellen Wohl's homage to s, describing their unique engineering prowess, the wider environmental impacts they exert, and why we should care. Throughout the book, Wohl binds a lifetime of professional riverine experience, observations of her local beaver population, gray literature, and primary literature to convey the benefits of beavers and convince the reader why we need more beaver-modified ecosystems."

"Rivers are the great shapers of . Rivers transport supplied for hillslope and , in some cases controlling the gradient of the hillslopes (Burbank et al., 1996). As they incise or aggrade to maintain a consistent relationship with their base level, rivers create s that in turn influence local climate; provide travel corridors for animals and humans; and support aquatic and riparian ecosystems that contain some of the Earth's highest levels of biodiversity. ... Although the study of rivers is well-established, the great majority of investigators have worked on the lowland rivers where most people live. Mountain rivers began to receive increasing attention as a subset of rivers only during the last two decades of the twentieth century."

"About the time I was trying to decide what kind of I wanted to be, I took a hike along the canyon of the in central Arizona. I remember looking at the s along the canyon and feeling a quiet pride—and wonder—that I now understood how those sandbars got there and why they were located exactly there. I've always had trouble turning back rather than following just one more bend of the river to see what's ahead. Contemplating those sandbars, I realized I could spend my life following the next bend and the one after that—and the choice was made. I like natural environments. Cities and rural areas, not so much. I also like to read history and biography and tend to make note of relevant river tidbits I come across, such as descriptions of big logjams or abundant beaver dams that travelers described a century ago on rivers that no longer have those features. And I enjoy traveling and seeing new natural places."

"The evidence from and fossils indicates that , , and probably the other , are cylinders of slowly building on a sinking or ; has occurred in and younger time, and there were three major periods of emergence during which the coral rocks were weathered subaerially."

"Behind our house lay a and . Though only a few s, it constituted wilderness to me. Deer, fox, raccoon, s, s, and s inhabited the woods. From the saplings, I culled poles that I used to build s and s. I built a shelter each summer and experimented with , substituting ground beef for . Then, when I was sixteen, our town decided to join the metropolis. The woodland and marsh were obliterated, replaced with a shopping mall, a church, an apartment complex, and a sunken freeway. I could not have been more hurt if a family member had been attacked."

"My had developed a craving to have his own land to experiment with a new idea: '. We needed, he said, to find out what the original had been like in our area and what we could do to bring it back. That, and his desire to have a special place to hunt, led to his purchase in the mid-1930s of an abandoned farm along the , in the —"." He specifically chose the Shack land because of its isolation and because this farm was a land of impoverished soil that had become an agricultural failure. In his view this was sick land that needed restoration; it needed to see again the native species that once must have grown here. It was one instance of his larger vision of the countrywide importance of land health and fostering the community of life."

"Throughout human history, people have settled disproportionately along rivers, relying on the rivers for , , fertile agricultural soils, , and food from aquatic and riparian organisms. People have also devoted a tremendous amount of time and energy to altering river processes and form. We are not unique in this respect: ecologists refer to various organisms, from to some species of , as s in recognition of the ability of these organisms to alter the surrounding environment. People are unique in the extent to and intensity with which we alter rivers. In many cases, river engineerings has unintended consequences, and effectively mitigating these consequences requires that we understand rivers in the broadest sense, as shapers and integrators of . once described rivers as the gutters down which flow the ruins of continents (Leopold et al., 1964). His father, Aldo Leopold, described the functioning of an ecosystem as a round river to emphasize the cycling of s and energy."

"I often think about maps, because so much of what I do involves measurement. To explain features or processes, you must first describe them. In science the description must be precise and to be accepted, and this requires measurement."

"... ', one of the largest of the , was produced in enormous quantity by natural means. The blue-green alga, , contributed directly to its support and proved to be the most desirable food of a heavy, natural culture of Daphnia pulex. The author's first observation of this association in the pond occurred on June 21, 1918. At this time a "bloom" of the Aphanizomenon was approaching it maximum. It was so abundant that the water appeared blue-green and oily. A few hand strokes of the net would bring up a of it in concentrated form."

"Most of our long-held beliefs about money, wealth, productivity and efficiency, and our notions of progress are rooted in immature, often infantile states of mind—easily manipulated by politicians and advertisers...Luckily, individuals learn faster than institutions and many people may already be ahead of their leaders.""

"s have contested for possession of the waters much as the have contended for supremacy on land, until it may be said that the dominant forage crop of our lakes, ponds, and s is to be found among the pondweeds, the s. Variety in form, adaptability to , and diversity in range have all contributed their share in giving prominence in this group and in furthering a natural resource whose propagation and control are vital factors in the economic relations of the life of inland waters."

"Collections of fish were made at weekly intervals and, if not examined at once in their fresh condition, were kept in an - preserving fluid until needed. In examining the food the method of (1918) was employed, that is, the food content of the digestive tract was pressed out upon a , moistened, and examined under the dissecting and compound microscopes."

"I had to be all things to all fishes."

"If we can recognize that change and uncertainty are basic principles, we can greet the future and the transformation we are undergoing with the understanding that we do not know enough to be pessimistic."

"Economics is really politics in disguise. We need to unpack the whole thing and say, 'Look, an economy is really nothing but a set of rules. Let's be up front about it. There's no actual science here.'"

"The - manner of looking at nature according to the principles of painterly composition is symbolized by a device known as a . Reputedly invented as an aid by the painter , it was a convex, dark-toned glass that reflected landscapes in miniature, with "" tints and merging detail. It was popular with s and gentlemen travelers in the seventeenth and eighteenth century and was still used in the first half of the nineteenth century."

"My personal emotional response to , like that of so many others, is sensory—stretching out on a large sun-warmed rock outcrop, watching players and picnickers on the , seeing a great production of The Tempest in the in the gloaming of a summer evening, a flash of red from the plumage of a on a spring day in , walking barefoot on the grass of the , the memory of on the frozen on New Year's Day 1981, listening to the moody sound from a saxophone being played beneath the one of the park's reverberating stone arches ... I could go on."

"faced the challenge of converting what was still a ragged 843-acre wasteland into a pleasure ground that is a masterpiece of landscape design and paragon of social beneficence, while my task was not to build such an extraordinary civic amenity but to develop a plan and find the means to rescue this underappreciated, wholly original tour de force from further destruction—a less remarkable but nevertheless important feat."

"During the summer of 1966 and in subsequent years, operated as the venue for rock 'n' roll, jazz, , pop, and concerts sponsored by . Overlooking the objections of his recently appointed Central Park curator, , played on the public's justifiable fear that the park had become unsafe at night: "It's my responsibility to make it so exciting that people will come there in droves, and that also is protection." He did not foresee the event to which his "attractions to draw teenagers" would stimulate the consumption of alcohol and the sale of drugs in the park, nor the effect this would have on the park's landscape and future safety."

"In this magnum opus, Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, the founding president of the and a longtime administrator of that celebrated oasis, stakes out and cultivates a breathtakingly vast terrain: the history of man-made landscape from to the present. Though Rogers focuses on a number of well-known gardens and parks — from of A.D. 118-38 outside Rome to Antonio Gaudí's of 1900-14 in Barcelona — her subject is less than the social interaction of various cultures with their natural settings. Encompassing as much as , this panoramic study is impressive not only for its encyclopedic scope but also for the author's authoritative command of so much diverse material and for her lucid writing."

"There's little question, in my mind, that development in the West is digging its own grave. Societies, even technologically sophisticated ones, cannot grow and build against basic conditions of and forever. Sooner or later the character of the land will catch up with them. , forced usually by climate change as well as factional disputes and design miscalculations, make that clear."

"Like other emerging towns and cities in the and in the developing world, 's vulnerability to mainstream cultural backwash and population flooding puts it on the list of endangered places. And because it is geographically set in the middle of a true natural wilderness—riverine, high desert plateau of central New Mexico—Albuquerque is particularly defenseless against the fast-paced flow of the mainstream world. The attraction of its emptiness seems as irresistible as gravity. Its image is not only that of an impoverished, charm-ridden hick town eager for tourist jobs and glitz, but its "wilderness" status makes it seem ripe for the picking, like certain portions of the or what used to be the deserted beaches of the ."

"Tony Davis, an environmental writer for nearly thirty years, first broke the story that put an end to the myth of 's inexhaustible aquifer. data showed that it was not the size of Lake Superior, but far smaller and more complex than suspected. His handling of the USGS report in the ' gave credibility to the need to create a water conservation program in the city. Davis now writes for the ' in Tucson."

"and I grew up, thirty years apart, in the small town of , situated on the in eastern North Carolina. A life-size portrait of Gurganus hung in our local library’s entryway, and I used to leaf through a copy of his best-known novel, “,” while waiting for my piano lessons to start. (Gurganus knew my music teacher, Gene Featherstone, socially. “A sweetheart,” he assured me.) For me, Gurganus was proof that you could come from the place where I lived—a place steeped in propriety, religion, and tradition—and become a writer."

"Vermont sort of demands humility and equanimity. No one really cares if you’re fancy or high achieving, and if you lead with that energy you will learn quickly that it’s unwelcome. There’s a coldness here that shocked me for years—but I’ve learned to appreciate the authenticity. No one’s faking much of anything; there’s no lipstick on the pigs here."

"... crying at your own work is like laughing at your own joke — it's just not done."

"My good habits: I don’t really watch television. I read a lot. I teach, which makes me think about what makes good work. I run, which helps me work out s and combat nerves about a first book. I parent, which is radically humbling and physical and informs my characterizations. I always have a in progress. I try not to read rejection letters twice."

"As a , I want to deepen my relationship to the natural world. I have no need to dominate nature, just a desire to live a little closer to it. When I read the work of female naturalists like LaBastille and Robin Kimmerer, whose work blends the scientific, tribal and spiritual, I sense a shared love and humility in the relationship between self and nature, not the loud note of personal triumph and chest-thumping we hear so loudly in early environmental work."

"It was so much fun. Everyone was freaked out because I’m nude, but in real life, when I have sex, I’m naked. I don’t have a bra on, and I don’t usually have panties on. So let’s make a real movie! Let’s bring truth to the scene! I didn’t want to be exploited, but this girl—like most girls when they first have sex—doesn’t know what she’s doing. I wanted their first kiss to be sloppy, teenagerish making out. When you’re younger, you think you know what to do, but you really don’t."

"She's a very gentle and grounded person, so I suppose I could say that I'm not worried about her. She knows the industry extremely well. She has a really wonderful family, too. Yeah, of course we talked about it. Of course we do. It's a great privilege to be able to share the experiences I have had with her. Am I going to be specific about what we shared? No [laughs]. But she's going to be just fine. She's a really great human being. She's going to be tremendous actually."

"No, I was really excited about doing the stunts. I had never done an action film before and so, that was really exciting and appealing to me. And not to say that it was very easy, right? We definitely got banged up but it’s this sort of gratifying feeling of going home at the end of night and being like ‘I worked hard and look at that big bruise!’"

"For me, nudity in any film is a matter of what is realistic and authentic, not exploitative or unnecessary. These are the questions that I always ask myself when there is a love scene or a meditation scene on a ship [like in the film Adrift]. What I love about this film is that we explore sensuality in so many moments without needing any sexuality at all. The more we're able to capture sensual moments on screen the more we can start changing our view when it comes to our personal sexualities and sensualities. In a personal way, I find less to be more in most cases and I think leaving things up to the imagination leaves a little mystery when it comes to nudity or sex. It only intrigues the audience more."

"One thing I really prioritize is sleep, and it has changed my life genuinely. Another is focusing on how I can nurture and help my self-talk. When I notice negative self-talk hap­pening, how I can sit with it and be friends with it instead of constantly feeling I'm in this rat race of not good enough, not this enough. Becoming a witness to it instead of a victim to it has also dramatically improved my health. Plus, I use astrology: It's simply a tool to give ourselves permission, to accept ourselves and understand ourselves more. The minute I understand that I was built to think this way, instead of judging myself for it, I have acceptance for myself. It's an allowance to have more self-compassion."

"Cheetahs hunt in the early morning and early evening. They capture their prey by stalking to within 10 to 30 meters of their prey or as far as 80 meters before beginning the chase. A chase lasts about 20 seconds and rarely longer than one minute. Only 10 percent of their chases are successful. Antelope and gazelles, hare and the young of larger antelope like s, , or and small often fall prey to the lightning fast cheetahs. Coalition males will often take larger prey like zebra or ostrich. They can accelerate from 0 to 70 kilometres per hour in two seconds. A cheetah will abort a hunt if the prey dodges and darts from it more than three or four times."

"Predators are exceptionally aware of tourists and their vehicles and sometimes use them to their advantage. If a cheetah has made a kill, it will almost certainly lose it if vehicles are present, since other predators, particularly the hyena, lion or jackal are alerted by the tourists. If the cheetah has cubs, that is a very dangerous situation for them, as they are made more vulnerable by the interference of the vehicles. Research conducted in the recorded that nearly 30% of cheetah sightings had more thant 20 vehicles surrounding it, and of these, more than 50% were less than 30 yards from the animal ..."

"Wild cheetahs in Africa need help. Suitable prey is becoming scarce and is disappearing. They are suffering from the consequences of human encroachment, from competition with other large predators in game reserves, and not least, from the complication of a limited genetic make-up. The wild population continues to sustain the captive population … The similar experiences of the world's zoos have reaffirmed the traditional difficulties of breeding cheetahs in captivity. Despite the capturing, rearing and public display of cheetahs for thousands of years, one litter was reported in the 16th century by the son of , an Indian mogul. The next documented captive reproduction did not occur until 1956 … … From 1955 to 1994, the number of world zoos holding cheetahs increased from 29 to 211, and the number of animals during this 40-year period increased from 33 to 1218. Since 1955, 1440 cheetahs have been imported from the wild and there have been 2517 births and 3436 deaths …"

"CCF's base of operations is 44 km outside , , as Namibia is home to the largest number of free-ranging cheetah with ±20% (±3,000) of the world’s estimated wild population of ~10,000. The cheetah's survival depends on a total integrated approach: an ecological system of farmland management, prey species management and habitat stability using practices such as alternative , non-lethal predator control, and relocation of problem cheetahs. CCF’s Namibian focus is to work with livestock farming communities in order to develop ways to reduce conflict. This is achieved by devising a conservation plan that secures habitat for the species, while still accommodating farmers’ land use needs."

"Large s are currently facing severe threats and are experiencing substantial declines in their populations and geographical ranges around the world (Ripple et al., 2014). Human-wildlife conflict is a risk to 31% of the global carnivore species (, 2016). The vast majority of Namibia's cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) (over 90%) and other large carnivores reside outside of s. Namibia is made up of a mosaic of land uses which includes both privately owned mixed livestock and wildlife unfenced farms, fenced game farms, and open communal and commercial conservancies. Fences are meant to protect however; fences have an ecological impact by blocking migration movements especially in arid ecosystems. The fences confine individuals in turn carnivore abundance may exceed their available resources leading to a potential rapid decline of the population or local extinction. Commercial farmers have utilised game fences to keep and protected their game which equates to their livelihood. However, game fenced farmers catch more cheetahs than that of livestock farmers (Marker et al. 2010). As more game fences are erected, the rate of human-wildlife conflict has increased, which is an issue not only for the cheetah but all large carnivores across Namibia."