Land Conservation Quotes

• Without love of the land, conservation lacks meaning or purpose, for only in a deep and inherent feeling for the land can there be dedication in preserving it.

  Sigurd F. Olson

  Dedication, Land, Feelings

  Sigurd F Olson (2012). “Reflections from the North Country”, p.153, Knopf

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• Conservation viewed in its entirety, is the slow and laborious unfolding of a new relationship between people and land.

  Aldo Leopold

  New Relationship, Land, People

  Aldo Leopold (1940). “Wisconsin Wildlife Chronology”

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  We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

  Aldo Leopold

  Inspiring, Respect, Nature

  A Sand County Almanac foreword (1949)

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• The Nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Nature, Science, Land

  Letter to all State Governors on a Uniform Soil Conservation Law, February 26, 1937.

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• Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Nature, Mean, Land

  Theodore Roosevelt, Paul H. Jeffers (1998). “The Bully Pulpit: A Teddy Roosevelt Book of Quotations”, p.32, Taylor Trade Publications

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• Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.

  Aldo Leopold

  Nature, Taken, Sunset

  Aldo Leopold (1989). “A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There”, p.7, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Increasingly the evidence suggests that people benefit so much from contact with nature that land conservation can now be viewed as a public health strategy.

  Richard Louv

  Nature, Land, People

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• ...conservation of land and conservation of people frequently go hand in hand.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Hands, Land, People

  Eleanor Roosevelt, David Emblidge (1989). “Eleanor Roosevelt's My Day: Her Acclaimed Columns, 1936-1945”

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• Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.

  Aldo Leopold

  Nature, Men, Land

  Aldo Leopold (1972). “Round River”, p.145, Oxford University Press

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• Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them

  Aldo Leopold

  Taken, Sunset, Wind

  Aldo Leopold (2001). “A Sand County Almanac”, p.21, Oxford University Press

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• 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.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Inspirational, Nature, Children

  Theodore Roosevelt, Paul H. Jeffers (1998). “The Bully Pulpit: A Teddy Roosevelt Book of Quotations”, p.30, Taylor Trade Publications

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• We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.

  Aldo Leopold

  Mean, Eye, Hunting

  "A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There". Book by Aldo Leopold. Chapter "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain", p. 130-132, 1949.

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• Conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who conserves the public interest.

  Aldo Leopold

  Conservation, Interest, Public Interest

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.473, Library of America

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• In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops.

  Paul Brooks

  Land, America, Environmental

  Paul Brooks (1971). “The pursuit of wilderness”

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• Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.

  Anton Chekhov

  Men, Land, Wild Life

  'Uncle Vanya' (1897) act 1

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• Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges; you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism.

  Aldo Leopold

  Nature, Hate, Hands

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.556, Library of America

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• Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty.

  Aldo Leopold

  Art, Quality, Conservation

  Aldo Leopold (1989). “A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There”, p.96, Oxford University Press, USA

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• The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

  Aldo Leopold

  Ignorance, Men, Animal

  Aldo Leopold (1972). “Round River”, p.108, Oxford University Press

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• The problem, then, is how to bring about a striving for harmony with land among a people many of whom have forgotten there is any such thing as land, among whom education and culture have become almost synonymous with landlessness. This is the problem of conservation education.

  Aldo Leopold

  Land, People, Culture

  Aldo Leopold (1972). “Round River”, p.113, Oxford University Press

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• Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.

  Aldo Leopold

  Beautiful, Art, Nature

  Aldo Leopold (1989). “A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There”, p.96, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  War, Land, Presidential

  Theodore Roosevelt (1941). “Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia”

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• Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.

  Aldo Leopold

  Long, Mountain, Conservation

  Aldo Leopold (1968). “A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There”, p.118, Oxford University Press

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• Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man, nor for us to reap from it the aesthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of contributing to culture

  Aldo Leopold

  Men, Land, Impact

  Aldo Leopold (1989). “A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There”, p.8, Oxford University Press, USA

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• The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism.

  Aldo Leopold

  Discovery, Land, Radio

  Aldo Leopold (1972). “Round River”, p.108, Oxford University Press

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• We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.

  Aldo Leopold

  Respect, Nature, Community Living

  Aldo Leopold (1989). “A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There”, p.8, Oxford University Press, USA

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