Wildlife Quotes

“The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realise about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, flowing from point to point. If something dams that flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That's why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“The best way of being kind to bears is not to be very close to them.”
― Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam

“Mother Nature is our teacher—reconnecting us with Spirit, waking us up and liberating our hearts. When we can transcend our fear of the creatures of the forest, then we become one with all that is; we enter a unity of existence with our relatives—the animals, the plants and the land that sustains us.”
― Sylvia Dolson, Joy of Bears

“People who have never canoed a wild river, or who have done so only with a guide in the stern, are apt to assume that novelty, plus healthful exercise, account for the value of the trip. I thought so too, until I met the two college boys on the Flambeau.

Supper dishes washed, we sat on the bank watching a buck dunking for water plants on the far shore. Soon the buck raised his head, cocked his ears upstream, and then bounded for cover.

Around the bend now came the cause of his alarm: two boys in a canoe. Spying us, they edged in to pass the time of day.

‘What time is it?’ was their first question. They explained that their watches had run down, and for the first time in their lives there was no clock, whistle, or radio to set watches by. For two days they had lived by ‘sun-time,’ and were getting a thrill out of it. No servant brought them meals: they got their meat out of the river, or went without. No traffic cop whistled them off the hidden rock in the next rapids. No friendly roof kept them dry when they misguessed whether or not to pitch the tent. No guide showed them which camping spots offered a nightlong breeze, and which a nightlong misery of mosquitoes; which firewood made clean coals, and which only smoke.

Before our young adventurers pushed off downstream, we learned that both were slated for the Army upon the conclusion of their trip. Now the motif was clear. This trip was their first and last taste of freedom, an interlude between two regimentations: the campus and the barracks. The elemental simplicities of wilderness travel were thrills not only because of their novelty, but because they represented complete freedom to make mistakes. The wilderness gave them their first taste of those rewards and penalties for wise and foolish acts which every woodsman faces daily, but against which civilization has built a thousand buffers. These boys were ‘on their own’ in this particular sense.

Perhaps every youth needs an occasional wilderness trip, in order to learn the meaning of this particular freedom.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac; with essays on conservation from Round River

“Speaking of happiness, those distinctive moments are found outdoors – in the fall, in the winter and always in the mountains where people are few, wildlife is abundant and there is peace in the quiet.”
― Donna Lynn Hope

“The real world, in my opinion, exists in the countryside, where Nature goes about her quiet business and brings us greatest pleasure.”
― Fennel Hudson, A Meaningful Life - Fennel's Journal - No. 1

“Those who have never seen a leopard under favourable conditions in his natural surroundings can have no conception of the grace of movement, and beauty of colouring, of this the most gracefuL and the most beautiful of all animales in our Indian jungles.”
― Jim Corbett, Man-Eaters of Kumaon

“Elk have not been seen in Switzerland for many a year. In the interests of scientific accuracy, please strike the idea of elk from your mind. If you must, think of ibexes instead, a fierce and agile type of goat with great spiraling horns. Marmots will also do in a pinch, but under no circumstances should you think of elk. No. Elk. The elkless among you may now proceed.”
― Maryrose Wood, The Unseen Guest

“One was watching the other day a red-tailed hawk, high in the heavens, circling effortlessly, without a beat of the wing, just for the fun of flying, just to be sustained by the air-currents. Then it was joined by another, and they were flying together for quite a while. They were marvellous creatures in that blue sky, and to hurt them in any way is a crime against heaven. Of course there is no heaven; man has invented heaven out of hope, for his life has become a hell, an endless conflict from birth to death, coming and going, making money, working endlessly. This life has become a turmoil, a travail of endless striving. One wonders if man, a human being, will ever live on this earth peacefully. Conflict has been the way of his life - within the skin and outside the skin, in the area of the psyche and in the society which that psyche has created.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti to Himself: His Last Journal

“The more we try to control nature, the more imbalanced our world becomes.”
― Fennel Hudson, A Meaningful Life - Fennel's Journal - No. 1

“Connecting with the wilderness allows us to live in the flow of a meaningful, joyful life. Embracing this state of connectedness or oneness with other living beings including animals, as opposed to feeling an “otherness” or “separateness” brings a sense of harmony and enables us to be at peace with oneself and the world.”
― Sylvia Dolson, Joy of Bears

“To build a road is so much simpler than to think of what the country really needs. A roadless marsh is seemingly as worthless to the alphabetical conservationist as an undrained one was to the empire-builders. Solitude, the one natural resource still undowered of alphabets, is so far recognized as valuable only by ornithologists and cranes.
Thus always does history, whether or marsh or market place, end in paradox. The ultimate value in these marshes is wildness, and the crane is wildness incarnate. But all conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac; with essays on conservation from Round River

“Joy – in the fall, winter, and always in the mountains where people are few, wildlife is abundant and there is peace in the quiet.”
― Donna Lynn Hope

“Dolphins and sharks are natural enemies. Dolphins are like, "Quit eating us," and sharks are like, "Stop smiling all the time, you morons.”
― Dan Florence, Zombies Love Pizza

“Real life is to be found in natural things that have meaning.”
― Fennel Hudson, A Meaningful Life - Fennel's Journal - No. 1

“A wealth of knowledge is openly accessible in nature. Our ancestors knew this and embraced the natural cures found in the bosoms of the earth. Their classroom was nature. They studied the lessons to be learned from animals, knowing that much of human behavior can be explained by watching the wild beasts around us. Animals are constantly teaching us things about ourselves and the way of the universe, but most people are too blind to watch and listen.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“In the narrow thread of sod between the shaved banks and the toppling fences grow the relics of what once was Illinois — the prairie.

No one in the bus sees these relics. A worried farmer, his fertilizer bill projecting from his shirt pocket, looks blankly at the lupines, lespedezas or Baptisias that originally pumped nitrogen out of the prairie air and into his black loamy acres. He does not distinguish them from the parvenu quack-grass in which they grow. Were I to ask him the name of that white spike of pea-like flowers hugging the fence, he would shake his head. A weed, likely.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac; with essays on conservation from Round River

“Since I was a little kid, I've had this profound connection and love for the deep, dark, unmolested woods. I've always had a longing to be in the deep woods or in the water. I want to be on lakes, streams, and rivers and surrounded by everything that comes with it - the ducks, birds, fish, and other wildlife. I guess it's in my DNA, and I just love being out there. Even to this day, it's where I want to be.”
― Phil Robertson, Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander

“The time I spent in the jungles held unalloyed happiness for me, and that happiness I would now gladly share. My happiness, I believe, resulted from the fact that all wildlife is happy in its natural surroundings. In nature there is no sorrow, and no repining. A bird from a flock, or an animal from a herd, is taken by hawk or carnivorous beast and those that are left rejoice that their time had not come today, and have no thought of tomorrow.”
― Jim Corbett, JUNGLE LORE

“there can be occasions when we suddenly and involuntarily find ourselves loving r=the natural world with a startling intensity, in a burst of emotion which we may not fully understand, and the only word that seems to me to be appropriate for this feeling is joy”
― Michael McCarthy

“It is hypocritical to exhort the Brazilians to conserve their rainforest after we have already destroyed the grassland ecosystem that occupied half the continent when we found it. A large-scale grassland restoration project would give us some moral authority when we seek conservation abroad.

I must admit that I also like the idea because it would mean a better home for pronghorn, currently pushed by agriculture into marginal habitats-The high sagebrush deserts of the West. I would love to return the speedsters to their evolutionary home, the Floor of the Sky. Imagine a huge national reserve where anyone could see what caused Lewis and Clark to write with such enthusiasm in their journals-the sea of grass and flowers dotted with massive herds of bison, accompanied by the dainty speedsters and by great herds of elk. Grizzly bears and wolves would patrol the margins of the herds and coyotes would at last be reduced to their proper place. The song of the meadowlarks would pervade the prairie and near water the spring air would ring with the eerie tremolos of snipe.”
― John A. Byers, Built for Speed: A Year in the Life of Pronghorn

“As for the coyote, he was nothing like his cartoon icon. He was sleek, fast, healthy and apparently without an anvil or Acme product of any kind.”
― Doug Fine

“When you nurture Nature, Nature nurtures you.”
― Donald L. Hicks, Look into the stillness

“Study the nature around you, but also within you.”
― Fennel Hudson, A Meaningful Life - Fennel's Journal - No. 1

“Everything from the humble woodlouse to specks of dust moving through a ray of sunlight. Each tells a story.”
― Fennel Hudson, A Meaningful Life - Fennel's Journal - No. 1

“Nature haters? We know them too well: lifeless creatures created without emotion or aware of anything that is peripheral to their purpose.”
― Fennel Hudson, A Waterside Year: Fennel's Journal No. 2

“If you are a kind person and love animals, you may be lucky enough to find the Magic Valley. There you will discover a land where snow leopards play and mountains smile. I should tell you, though, that it will be a very hard journey. But I should also tell you that it is well worth the effort.”
― Helen Freeman

“Stop and unplug,” say I; “look around you, at the vastness and greatness of the natural world.” Some stop. Others need binoculars to tie their shoelaces.”
― Fennel Hudson, A Waterside Year: Fennel's Journal No. 2

“To observe the wild animals in the natural settings one have to become wild to achieve specific goal.”
― Muhammad Awais

“As the natural world grows smaller, so too does its intensity and the size of the window through which it may be viewed.”
― Fennel Hudson, A Meaningful Life - Fennel's Journal - No. 1