Protect Endangered Species Quotes

In every remote corner of the world there are people like Carl Jones and Don Merton who have devoted their lives to saving threatened species. Very often, their determination is all that stands between an endangered species and extinction. But why do they bother? Does it really matter if the Yangtze river dolphin, or the kakapo, or the northern white rhino, or any other species live on only in scientists' notebooks? Well, yes, it does. Every animal and plant is an integral part of its environment: even Komodo dragons have a major role to play in maintaining the ecological stability of their delicate island homes. If they disappear, so could many other species. And conservation is very much in tune with our survival. Animals and plants provide us with life-saving drugs and food, they pollinate crops and provide important ingredients or many industrial processes. Ironically, it is often not the big and beautiful creatures, but the ugly and less dramatic ones, that we need most. Even so, the loss of a few species may seem irrelevant compared to major environmental problems such as global warming or the destruction of the ozone layer. But while nature has considerable resilience, there is a limit to how far that resilience can be stretched. No one knows how close to the limit we are getting. The darker it gets, the faster we're driving. There is one last reason for caring, and I believe that no other is necessary. It is certainly the reason why so many people have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of rhinos, parakeets, kakapos, and dolphins. And it is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them.

He knew for a fact that one of the girls had managed to take over the plenary session of the national model UN and push through a motion sanctioning the use of nuclear weapons to protect an endangered species of sea turtle. This while representing Lesotho.

The insistence that somehow women are an endangered species that needs to be protected at all costs seems to me to be contrary to what's desirable for their view of themselves. And it just invests far more power in the male than is necessary.

men south of sixty who regularly read fiction are an endangered species that must be protected at all costs.

It may be underfunded and at times mismanaged, but the [Endangered Species] Act is an unprecedented attempt to delegate human-caused extinction to the chapters of history we would rather not revisit: the Slave Trade, the Indian Removal Policy, the subjection of women, child labor, segregation. The Endangered Species Act is a zero-tolerance law: no new extinctions. It keeps eyes on the ground with legal backing-the gun may be in the holster most of the time, but its available if necessary to keep species from disappearing. I discovered in my travels that a law protecting all animals and plants, all of nature, might be as revolutionary-and as American-as the Declaration of Independence.

Based on what he had overheard, one of his classmates had placed second in the Putnam Competition, as a high school junior. He knew for a fact that one of the girls had managed to take over the plenary session of the national model UN and push through a motion sanctioning the use of nuclear weapons to protect a critically endangered species of sea turtle. This while representing Lesotho.

The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animals can have. Eventually rarity is all they are made of. The condor is an icon of extinction. There's little else to it now but being the last of its kind. And in this lies the diminution of the world. How can you love something, how can you fight to protect it, if all it means is loss?

The more a species is rare the more we like and protect it... So what about humans?

Conservationists, it seems, are dedicated to protecting the weak and vulnerable, the endangered and the abused. Nature generally promotes the strong and the wily, the resilient and versatile.

By compelling private land owners to subsidize ("protect") "endangered species" residing on their land through environmental legislation, there will be more and better-off animals, and fewer and worse-off humans.

The black man is sometimes called an endangered species but receives little of the protection an endangered species is normally accorded. In regions where the owl is endangered, we wouldn’t think of depriving the male owl of its children or the owl’s children of their dad. Yet the U.S. government has a huge program that creates exactly that outcome for the male human who is poor, and especially for the male human who is black and poor. It is called Aid to Families with Dependent Children; it deprives a family of aid if the dad is present, thus depriving the father of the two most important incentives for living: love and feeling needed.

Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an achievement that much of the Republican Party has been trying to undo over the past several decades. Richard Nixon signed into law four landmark federal bills: the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Environmental Pesticide Control Act, and the Endangered Species Act. He established the Environmental Protection Agency, and made many strong environmental appointments in his administration. As we saw in Section 2.2, it was when the Reagan administration came to power in 1980 that environmental concern began to become a partisan issue.

Hey, it could be worse," Hammond said of their efforts to protect the woodpecker. "It could be a butterfly." Butterflies were easy, I said. I would soon go to see a couple of clam species that the governor of Georgia had accused of endangering the lives of his state's children. Matteson laughed, "Woodpeckers are pretty, but mussels?" And so it goes.

In 1973 the London Convention was replaced by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as CITES, which has 181 signatories. Comprised of three appendices that gauge the severity of threat to various species, CITES protects 35,000 species of plants and animals. Among them are nearly fifteen hundred birds, including Alfred Russel Wallace’s beloved King Bird of Paradise.

Taxonomy, also called systematics, is the science-based hierarchical classification of the world's species. The area had traditionally been an obscure academic discipline dominated by erudite and professional dons who would memorize and interpret thousands of Latin species names. Advances seldom made the newspapers and caustic disputes lingered in the dust scientific literature for generations. That academic innocence would be lost forever when precise taxonomic recognition of species and subspecies came to be the basis for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Once people believed her careful documentation, there was an easy answer—since babies are cute and inhibit aggression, something pathological must be happening. Maybe the Abu langur population density was too high and everyone was starving, or male aggression was overflowing, or infanticidal males were zombies. Something certifiably abnormal. Hrdy eliminated these explanations and showed a telling pattern to the infanticide. Female langurs live in groups with a single resident breeding male. Elsewhere are all-male groups that intermittently drive out the resident male; after infighting, one male then drives out the rest. Here’s his new domain, consisting of females with the babies of the previous male. And crucially, the average tenure of a breeding male (about twenty-seven months) is shorter than the average interbirth interval. No females are ovulating, because they’re nursing infants; thus this new stud will be booted out himself before any females wean their kids and resume ovulating. All for nothing, none of his genes passed on. What, logically, should he do? Kill the infants. This decreases the reproductive success of the previous male and, thanks to the females ceasing to nurse, they start ovulating. That’s the male perspective. What about the females? They’re also into maximizing copies of genes passed on. They fight the new male, protecting their infants. Females have also evolved the strategy of going into “pseudoestrus”—falsely appearing to be in heat. They mate with the male. And since males know squat about female langur biology, they fall for it—“Hey, I mated with her this morning and now she’s got an infant; I am one major stud.” They’ll often cease their infanticidal attacks. Despite initial skepticism, competitive infanticide has been documented in similar circumstances in 119 species, including lions, hippos, and chimps. A variant occurs in hamsters; because males are nomadic, any infant a male encounters is unlikely to be his, and thus he attempts to kill it (remember that rule about never putting a pet male hamster in a cage with babies?). Another version occurs among wild horses and gelada baboons; a new male harasses pregnant females into miscarrying. Or suppose you’re a pregnant mouse and a new, infanticidal male has arrived. Once you give birth, your infants will be killed, wasting all the energy of pregnancy. Logical response? Cut your losses with the “Bruce effect,” where pregnant females miscarry if they smell a new male. Thus competitive infanticide occurs in numerous species (including among female chimps, who sometimes kill infants of unrelated females). None of this makes sense outside of gene-based individual selection. Individual selection is shown with heartbreaking clarity by mountain gorillas, my favorite primate. They’re highly endangered, hanging on in pockets of high-altitude rain forest on the borders of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There are only about a thousand gorillas left, because of habitat degradation, disease caught from nearby humans, poaching, and spasms of warfare rolling across those borders. And also because mountain gorillas practice competitive infanticide. Logical for an individual intent on maximizing the copies of his genes in the next generation, but simultaneously pushing these wondrous animals toward extinction. This isn’t behaving for the good of the species.

The very opposition between “conservative” and “progressive” politics can be conceived of in the terms of Darwinism: ultimately, conservatives defend the right of those with might (their very success proves that they won in the struggle for survival), while progressives advocate the protection of endangered human species, i.e., of those losing the struggle for survival.

LIFELESS EARTH --a poem Man continue to be selfish, Aggressive, intolerant and corrupt, Peace and harmony is lost from world, Man try to eliminate his own race, An act animals are ashamed to do! Money which could wipe out poverty, Is spent to mould atomic weapons, Not to protect us from aliens, But to eliminate our own species. Love is lost, hatred is on forefront, Peace is nowhere, war cries all over, Life is in peril, explosions continue to rock, When faith and religion flourish, Humans become endangered species. Faith and devotion to God, which existed since time immemorial, Could not turn man into humane. And beautiful earth is slowly turning, To a museum of the dead. The sun will soon be very sad, To have a lifeless earth Revolving round it.

Richard Nixon, a president not generally recalled as a visionary environmentalist, created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed into law several signature pieces of environmental legislation: the Clean Air Act Extension, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. Things were changing, though, and within a few years, Ronald Reagan would begin to shift the Republican Party away from both environmental preservation and environmental regulation, a position that would separate the party from its historic environmentalism, and put it on a collision course with science.

own. Save a parrot’s tree. Save ten. Without our help, without needed legislative protection and worldwide consciousness-raising on their behalf, parrots will be lost in short years to come. It is fitting to end this book with this succinct summation from Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States:   We are at an odd moment in history. There are more people in this country sensitized to animal protection issues than ever before. The Humane Society of the United States alone has 8 million members, and in addition, there are more than 5,000 other groups devoted to animal protection. At the same time, there are more animals being harmed than ever before—in industrial agriculture, research and testing, and the trade in wild animals. It is pitiful that our society still condones keeping millions of parrots and other wild birds as pets—wild animals that should be free to fly and instead are languishing in cages, with more being bred every day. It’s an issue of supply and demand and it’s also an issue of right and wrong. Animals suffer in confinement, and we have a moral obligation to spare them from needless suffering. Every person can make a difference every day for animals by making compassionate choices in the marketplace: don’t buy wild animals as pets, whether they are caught from the wild or bred in captivity. If we spare the life of just one animal, it’s a 100% positive impact for that creature. If we can solve the larger bird trade problem, it will be 100% positive for all parrots and other wild birds in the U.S. and beyond our borders. I believe we will look back in 50 -75 years and say “How could we as a society countenance things like the decades long imprisonment of extraordinarily intelligent animals like parrots?” Acknowledgments For this work, which took more than two and a half years to research and write, I amassed thousands of documents and conducted several hundred interviews with leading scientists, environmentalists, paleontologists, ecological economists, conservationists, global warming experts, federal law enforcement officers, animal control officers, avian researchers, avian rescuers, veterinarians, breeders, pet bird owners, bird clubs, pet bird industry executives and employees, sanctuaries and welfare organizations, legislators, and officials with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and other sources in the United States and around the world.

If he was hoping we would all heave a sigh of relief at the petite size of the black bear, he was disappointed; a four-hundred-pound bear seemed plenty big enough to play jai alai with my head, and judging by the wide eyes of the boys all around me, I was not the only one who thought so. “Just remember, they may be small, but they can be very cranky if they have a cub? They run very fast, and they can climb trees. Oh! So can panthers—which are very rare, an endangered species. So we probably won’t see one, but if we do—remember this, guys: They are basically like lions, and … you know. We talk about how cool they are, and how we need to help protect panthers and their habitat—but they are still very dangerous animals. I mean, most of the animals out here. Let’s remember they are wild. So give them room; respect their habitat, because you are in their space, and it’s— Even raccoons, okay? I mean, they get into everything, and they look awful cute. They might even come right up to you. But they can have rabies, which you can get from them just from a little scratch, so stay away.” Once

Portland and Seattle and Vancouver, they were beautiful cities, with their own positive qualities . . . but what they weren’t was infinitely capable of expansion. There were protected wetlands and forests to every side, mountain microclimates and endangered species under the protection of the federal government. The Pacific Northwest was already full, sorry, and it wasn’t looking to double its population any time soon.

After Steve’s death I received letters of condolence from people all over the world. I would like to thank everyone who sent such thoughtful sympathy. Your kind words and support gave me the strength to write this book and so much more. Carolyn Male is one of those dear people who expressed her thoughts and feelings after we lost Steve. It was incredibly touching and special, and I wanted to express my appreciation and gratitude. I’m happy to share it with you. It is with a still-heavy heart that I rise this evening to speak about the life and death of one of the greatest conservationists of our time: Steve Irwin. Many people describe Steve Irwin as a larrikin, inspirational, spontaneous. For me, the best way I can describe Steve Irwin is formidable. He would stand and fight, and was not to be defeated when it came to looking after our environment. When he wanted to get things done--whether that meant his expansion plans for the zoo, providing aid for animals affected by the tsunami and the cyclones, organizing scientific research, or buying land to conserve its environmental and habitat values--he just did it, and woe betide anyone who stood in his way. I am not sure I have ever met anyone else who was so determined to get the conservation message out across the globe, and I believe he achieved his aim. What I admired most about him was that he lived the conservation message every day of his life. Steve’s parents, Bob and Lyn, passed on their love of the Australian bush and their passion for rescuing and rehabilitating wildlife. Steve took their passion and turned it into a worldwide crusade. The founding of Wildlife Warriors Worldwide in 2002 provided Steve and Terri with another vehicle to raise awareness of conservation by allowing individuals to become personally involved in protecting injured, threatened, or endangered wildlife. It also has generated a working fund that helps with the wildlife hospital on the zoo premises and supports work with endangered species in Asia and Africa. Research was always high on Steve’s agenda, and his work has enabled a far greater understanding of crocodile behavior, population, and movement patterns. Working with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service and the University of Queensland, Steve was an integral part of the world’s first Crocs in Space research program. His work will live on and inform us for many, many years to come. Our hearts go out to his family and the Australia Zoo family. It must be difficult to work at the zoo every day with his larger-than-life persona still very much evident. Everyone must still be waiting for him to walk through the gate. His presence is everywhere, and I hope it lives on in the hearts and minds of generations of wildlife warriors to come. We have lost a great man in Steve Irwin. It is a great loss to the conservation movement. My heart and the hearts of everyone here goes out to his family. Carolyn Male, Member for Glass House, Queensland, Australia October 11, 2006

Our first project, LIFE BEHIND BARS VOL. I is the most comprehensive photographic study to date of exotic and endangered animals and the necessity of their being kept in captivity for their own protection, and that of their species” declares Julian Starks.

Robots and computers are replacing human hands in factories, hotels, and fast food restaurants. Self-driving cars are eventually going to start replacing taxi drivers and chauffeurs. Take for example what has already happened to bank clerks and travel agents, once jobs that were all protected from automation, which are now endangered species. Stock traders are also being replaced by computer algorithms, which can react and make decisions so much faster than humans can.

The nuns made sure there wasn’t the slightest possibility of provocation or desire that could awaken the evils of boy temptation, which only existed outside of school, while we respectable teenagers—an endangered species—were protected by the tackiest most unfashionable pieces of clothing ever invented. As if someone’s barf had become the color palette of choice.

By the end of 1973, Congress had created the Environmental Protection Agency, reinvented the Clean Air Act, and passed the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and, equally essential, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires the federal government to consider and disclose the environmental effects of its actions before taking them, while ensuring the public has a voice in the decision making. Living today, it is breathtaking to imagine so much getting done in Congress.

Perhaps to them and their peers their ecological consciousness is a bigger sign of prestige than a fur coat. Perhaps they feel on more equal terms with the world. I admit I saw the future in them. But they were aggressive and I didn't like it, in spite of their concern for animals. On the other hand, perhaps they are too young to understand that human beings are an endangered species and that they too have a right to protection - particularly in some parts of the world. I hope they learn this soon.

The seams of my proverbial corset threaten to burst with suppressed delight. I’m not a horror reader, but men south of sixty who regularly read fiction are an endangered species that must be protected at all costs.

We only have red wolves here at Sandy Ridge now,” Ryan says. “Summer is our slow season. But by fall, this place will be packed with wolves and coyotes.” “Why do you hold coyotes here?” I ask. “If we know one is holding a territory, we trap it, sterilize it and put a radio collar on it,” Ryan explains. “They stay here at Sandy Ridge while they recover, and then we release them back to their territory.” By sterilizing coyotes that set up territories in the red wolf recovery area and then tracking them, the red wolf biologists protect the red wolf’s unique genome from hybridization with coyotes. But a sterile coyote doesn’t solve the red wolf’s propensity for running with and mating with coyotes. It only prevents conception. It is an elaborate birth-control scheme to ensure the survival of an endangered species. One of the quirks of the genus Canis is that the various species within it can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Historically, hybridization of the last wild red wolves with coyotes was the single biggest threat that prompted the FWS to begin capturing the last wolves for breeding in captivity. When the first red wolves were reintroduced to Alligator River in 1987, the nearest coyotes were 500 miles west. Experts thought it would take them eight to ten years to pad their way to the coast - plenty of time, they thought, for red wolves to build up a big population and keep the invading coyotes at bay. But coyotes soon infiltrated the red wolf’s recovery area in the early 1990s. Suddenly, the Red Wolf Recovery Program had a problem on its hands: red wolves were once again hybridizing with coyotes. “Why don’t you just trap all the coyotes out of the recovery area?” I ask. “Even if we could remove them all, then more coyotes would likely just come in and take their territories,” Ryan replies. Plus, the team simply doesn’t have the manpower to trap all of the coyotes off the peninsula, though they put significant effort into patrolling certain areas to keep coyotes out. Coyotes are too adaptive and elusive for a large-scale trapping program to work permanently. In one of their biological quirks, coyotes are known to have more offspring survive to adulthood when their population is persecuted through lethal control efforts. The rascals can live on practically nothing, and they are prolific breeders to boot.

Clover and Jotter’s names are still remembered in the botany and river running communities. A hedgehog cactus with pink flowers and dense spines that grows in New Mexico is named Clover’s cactus (Sclerocactus cloverae); it’s now under consideration for endangered species protection. River rafters in Cataract Canyon, rediscovering places once buried beneath Lake Powell and now revealed by drought, informally call two side canyons Clover Canyon and Jotter Canyon, in a stretch of river known as Botany Aisle. Scientists raft the Grand Canyon every year, carrying a plant guide shaped in part by Clover and Jotter’s findings. Their story matters. It adds to the unfolding record of how life, human and nonhuman, finds ways to flourish even in the most unlikely of circumstances. Like others before them, Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter valued their curiosity about the world more than their presumed place within it. They go ahead and, like stars reflected on the river, show the way.

I see what you’re saying about the link between nature’s resilience and human resilience,” I said. “How addressing human injustices like poverty and gender oppression makes us better able to create hope for people and the environment. Our efforts to protect endangered species preserve biodiversity on the Earth—and when we protect all life, we inherently protect our own.

You can also go to prison for up to six months for the unauthorized use of the character or the name Woodsy Owl for the purpose of making a profit.14 The same is also true if you knowingly possess any alligator grass or water chestnut or hyacinth plants that have been shipped across state lines, or just the seeds of such grass or plants, even if you were not the one who sent or received them when they crossed state lines.15 (In fact, you can also be sent to prison—even if you played no part in that supposedly dangerous shipment—if all you did was advertise your willingness to do such a dangerous thing.) It is also a federal offense, again carrying a potential penalty of up to six months in a federal prison, if you use the Swiss coat of arms in any advertising for your business.16 I would include a picture of that coat of arms here so you could see what I am talking about, but I cannot take the chance that I might be sent to prison. Two years ago, young sailors thought they were doing a good deed by freeing a five-hundred-pound sea turtle who had become entangled in a buoy line that wrapped around its head and fins, but they were later told by an agent from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that what they did was a violation of the Endangered Species Act, which makes it illegal to handle an endangered or protected species.17 Luckily for them, they were members of the Kennedy family, so they were not prosecuted. But they could have been, and their good intentions and their ignorance of this law would have been no defense at all.18 To

just received a letter from the Government declaring that my bedroom has become a Protected Nature Reserve for several species of endangered bacteria . . . . . . so if I tidy my room I’ll be breaking the law.

Ancient Rome There must be at least a hundred stray cats living in the Colosseum. Our guide told us that they are protected by the government--just like an endangered species! Many years ago the Colosseum was used for wild animal fights and for contests between gladiators. The Christian martyrs who died while fighting here are buried in catacombs beneath the city. We also visited the Pantheon. It was built in 27 B.C. by Marco Vipsanio Agrippa as a temple to all gods. Emperor Hadrian rebuilt it around A.D. 120. The entranceway has 16 pink-and-gray granite columns. Two Italian kings are buried inside.

I just received a letter from the Government declaring that my bedroom has become a Protected Nature Reserve for several species of endangered bacteria... ...so if I tidy my room I’ll be breaking the law. You've always taught me to live within the law of this great nation, so for the protection of these microscopic germs I promise to never tidy my bedroom ever again.

Will focusing on de-extinction and designer pets distract us from protecting existing endangered species or mistreated and neglected companion animals?

This is a kind of Frankenstein problem, and relates to widespread fears of artificial intelligence: we are more intimidated by the monsters we create than those we inherit. Sitting at computers in air-conditioned rooms reading dispatches in the science section of the newspaper, we feel illogically in control of natural ecosystems; we expect we should be able to protect the dwindling population of an endangered species, and preserve their habitat, should we choose to, and that we should be able to manage an abundant water supply, rather than see it wasted on the way to human mouths- again, should we choose to. We feel less that way about the internet, which seems beyond our control though we designed and built it, and quite recently; still less about global warming, which we extend each day, each minute, by our actions. And the perceptual size of market capitalism has been a kind of obstacle to its critics for at least a generation, when it came to seem even to those attuned to its failings to be perhaps too big to fail.