"It is a better world with some buffalo left in it, a richer world with some gorgeous canyons unmarred by signboards, hot-dog stands, super highways, or high-tension lines, undrowned by power or irrigation reservoirs. If we preserved as parks only those places that have no economic possibilities, we would have no parks. And in the decades to come, it will not be only the buffalo and the trumpeter swan who need sanctuaries. Our own species is going to need them too. It needs them now."
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Novelists from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesEnvironmentalists from the United StatesPeople from IowaNaturalists from the United States
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This is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country and its Magic Rivers is a collection of essays and photographs edited by Wallace Stegner and published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1955. This passage is from the collection's first essay, "The Marks of Human Passage", which is by Stegner (page 17).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wallace_Stegner
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Wallace Stegner
Wallace Earle Stegner (February 18, 1909 – April 13, 1993) was an American novelist, writer, environmentalist, and historian. He was often called "The Dean of Western Writers". He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and the U.S. National Book Award in 1977.
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