Wildlife Protection Quotes

Most of what she knew, she'd learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would.

Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife, are in fact plans to protect man.

...the gym is a kind of wildlife preserve for bodily exertion. A preserve protects species whose habitat is vanishing elsewhere, and the gym (and home gym) accommodates the survival of bodies after the abandonment of the original sites of bodily exertion.

Until the day comes when the senseless killing ends, we will all have to fight like wildlife warriors to protect our precious planet.

Like us, animals feel love, joy, fear and pain, but they cannot grasp the spoken word. It is our obligation to speak on their behalf ensuring their well-being and lives are respected and protected.

If you can’t excite people about wildlife, how can you convince them to love, cherish, and protect our wildlife and the environment they live in?

Humans seem to have an innate drive to master other creatures.

Rise early and seize each day, learn much and use this knowledge well, spend time with those you love, never abuse your pets, use logic to fight the irrational (for it is everywhere), defend the environment and its wildlife as a knight would protect King Arthur, meld mind and heart for greatest creativity, follow your dreams, and become all that you can be.

Isn`t man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife - birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes, and dingoes - by the millions in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billions and eats them. This in turn kills man by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year sends out a card praying for 'Peace on Earth.

children who spent time in green spaces between the ages of seven and twelve tend to think of nature as magical. As adults they are the people most likely to be indignant about lack of nature protection, while those who have had no such experience tend to regard nature as hostile or irrelevant and are indifferent to its loss. By expurgating nature from children's lives we are depriving the environment of its champions for the future.

Every creature on earth returns to home. It is ironic that we have made wildlife refuges for ibis, pelican, egret, wolf, crane, deer, mouse, moose, and bear, but not for ourselves in the places we live day after day. We understand that the loss of habitat is the most disastrous event that can occur to a free creauture. We fervently point out how other creatures' natural territories have become surrounded by cities, ranches, highways, noise, and other dissonance, as though we are not affected also. We know that for creatures to live on, they must at least from time to time have a home place, a place where they feel both protected and free

They say that animals are incapable of feelings and reasoning. This is false. No living thing on earth is void of either. They also say that man is the most intelligent — and the most superior — species on earth. This is also false. It is very arrogant to assume that we are the most intelligent species when we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. It has been shown that both rats and monkeys learn from making errors, yet we have not. Our history proves this. All creatures on earth have the capacity to love and grieve the same way we do. No life on the planet is more deserving than another. Those who think so, are the true savages.

I believe that if children fall in love with wildlife they will grow up wanting to protect it.

Wildlife in the world can only be protected by the love of compassionate hearts in the world!

Citizens of Luna, I ask that you stop what you’re doing to listen to this message. My name is Selene Blackburn. I am the daughter of the late Queen Channary, niece to Princess Levana, and the rightful heir to Luna’s throne. You were told that I died thirteen years ago in a nursery fire, but the truth is that my aunt, Levana, did try to kill me, but I was rescued and taken to Earth. There, I have been raised and protected in preparation for the time when I would return to Luna and reclaim my birthright. In my absence, Levana has enslaved you. She takes your sons and turns them into monsters. She takes your shell infants and slaughters them. She lets you go hungry, while the people in Artemisia gorge themselves on rich foods and delicacies. But Levana’s rule is coming to an end. I have returned and I am here to take back what’s mine. Soon, Levana is going to marry Emperor Kaito of Earth and be crowned the empress of the Eastern Commonwealth, an honor that could not be given to anyone less deserving. I refuse to allow Levana to extend her tyranny. I will not stand aside while my aunt enslaves and abuses my people here on Luna, and wages a war across Earth. Which is why, before an Earthen crown can be placed on Levana’s head, I will bring an army to the gates of Artemisia. I ask that you, citizens of Luna, be that army. You have the power to fight against Levana and the people that oppress you. Beginning now, tonight, I urge you to join me in rebelling against this regime. No longer will we obey her curfews or forgo our rights to meet and talk and be heard. No longer will we give up our children to become her disposable guards and soldiers. No longer will we slave away growing food and raising wildlife, only to see it shipped off to Artemisia while our children starve around us. No longer will we build weapons for Levana’s war. Instead, we will take them for ourselves, for our war. Become my army. Stand up and reclaim your homes from the guards who abuse and terrorize you. Send a message to Levana that you will no longer be controlled by fear and manipulation. And upon the commencement of the royal coronation, I ask that all able-bodied citizens join me in a march against Artemisia and the queen’s palace. Together we will guarantee a better future for Luna. A future without oppression. A future in which any Lunar, no matter the sector they live in or the family they were born to, can achieve their ambitions and live without fear of unjust persecution or a lifetime of slavery. I understand that I am asking you to risk your lives. Levana’s thaumaturges are powerful, her guards are skilled, her soldiers are brutal. But if we join together, we can be invincible. They can’t control us all. With the people united into one army, we will surround the capital city and overthrow the imposter who sits on my throne. Help me. Fight for me. And I will be the first ruler in the history of Luna who will also fight for you.

The long fight to save wild beauty represents democracy at its best. It requires citizens to practice the hardest of virtues--self-restraint. Why cannot I take as many trout as I want from a stream? Why cannot I bring home from the woods a rare wildflower? Because if I do, everybody in this democracy should be able to do the same. My act will be multiplied endlessly. To provide protection for wildlife and wild beauty, everyone has to deny himself proportionately. Special privilege and conservation are ever at odds.

If we don't have a place for nature in our heart, how can we expect nature to have a place for us.

We will conserve what we love, love what we understand and understand what we are taught.

Nature haters? We know them too well: lifeless creatures created without emotion or aware of anything that is peripheral to their purpose.

Bindi, Robert, and I would do our best to make sure that Steve’s light wasn’t hidden under a bushel. It would continue to sine as we worked together to protect all wildlife and all wild places.

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.

Another thing to watch. The Brotherhood name organisations in a way that leads people to believe their aim is the opposite of what they are really there to do. For instance, if you want to run drugs without being suspected, do it through an anti-drug agency. If you want to destroy land and kill wildlife, do it through a wildlife protection agency. If you want to run a Satanic ring, do it through the Christian Church.

Remember that even just watching animals has an impact. Intrusion into their living space can expose them to predation, keep them from feeding or other essential activities, or cause them to leave their young exposed to predation or the elements. No photo or viewing opportunity is worth harassing or stressing wildlife. In appreciating and watching them, we have a responsibility to protect and preserve the animals that share our state.

Aren’t humans amazing? They kill wildlife – birds, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice and foxes by the million in order to protect their domestic animals and their feed. Then they kill domestic animals by the billion and eat them. This in turn kills people by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative – and fatal – health conditions like heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and cancer. So then humans spend billions of dollars torturing and killing millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, few people recognize the absurdity of humans, who kill so easily and violently, and once a year send out cards praying for “Peace on Earth.” ~Revised Preface to Old MacDonald’s Factory Farm

I believe in the right to bear arms and the right to arm bears. Styrofoam is against my religion. If you have an issue that I talk a lot about the Catholic church, please contact the Vatican. They have a help desk. I do not.

Right or Wrong Don't know But those things don't give me Money, But gives Satisfaction It consumes my time, But gives me happiness Those things can't give me Future, But I can't live without them These things Can't give me fame, But adds value to my life So Conservation is life

place. Less than 1 percent of the area is managed for wildlife habitat protection. Where early travelers saw sharp-tailed grouse, bison, bighorn sheep, grizzly bears, numerous beaver and even wolverines, today they see dust, feral horses, and noxious weeds including cheatgrass, halogeton and Russian thistle.

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.

I realized a long time ago that in order to create real change for animals–from domestic pets to wildlife to farm animals–you need to have a lot of money, or a lot of power. Laws that could–and should–protect animals more aren’t being championed the way they should be. All it takes is one person, determined to rise, to get enough power to give a voice to the voiceless.

Sonnet of Nature What do the rivers do? Give water for our thirst. What do the trees do? Give air for our lungs. What do the animals do? Give food for our tummy. What do the flowers do? Give fragrance for our body. After taking everything, From every member of nature, What do we pompous idiots do? Destroy all natural order. It's high time to get our act together. Nature doesn't need us, but we need her.

One night, as I cooked dinner in our home on the zoo grounds, I brooded over my troubles. I didn’t want to spend the evening feeling sorry for myself, so I thought about Steve out in the back, fire-gazing. He was a very lucky man, because for Steve, fire-gazing literally meant getting to build a roaring fire and sitting beside it, to contemplate life. Suddenly I heard him come thundering up the front stairs. He burst wild-eyed into the kitchen. He’s been nailed by a snake, I thought immediately. I didn’t know what was going on. “I know what we have to do!” he said, extremely excited. He pulled me into the living room, sat me down, and took my hands in his. Looking intensely into my eyes, he said, “Babe, we’ve got to have children.” Wow, I thought, that must have been some fire. “Ok-aaay,” I said. “You don’t understand, you don’t understand!” he said, trying to catch me up to his thoughts. “Everything we’ve been working for, the zoo that we’ve been building up, all of our efforts to protect wildlife, it will all stop with us!” As with every good idea that came into his head, Steve wanted to act on it immediately. Just take it in stride, I said to myself. But he was so sincere. We’d talked about having children before, but for some reason it hit him that the time was now. “We have got to have children,” he said. “I know that if we have kids, they will carry on when we’re gone.” “Great,” I said. “Let’s get right on that.” Steve kept pacing around the living room, talking about all the advantages of having kids--how I’d been so passionate about carrying on with the family business back in Oregon, and how he felt the same way about the zoo. He just knew our kids would feel the same too. I said, “You know, there’s no guarantee that we won’t have a son who grows up to be a shoe salesman in Malaysia.” “Come off the grass,” Steve said. “Any kid of ours is going to be a wildlife warrior.” I thought of the whale calves following their mamas below the cliffs of the Great Australian Bight and prepared myself for a new adventure with Steve, maybe the greatest adventure of all.

FOR YEARS I have carried in my head a thought tossed out by Aldo Leopold. In the early 20th century, he worked for the U.S. Forest Service in Eastern Arizona, and he killed a wolf to protect the cattle and increase the deer. He went on to become a pioneer in wildlife management and a leading conservationist. He wrote an essay about that killing. He’d decided that when he’d pulled the trigger and helped remove the wolf from the Southwest, he’d made the mountain a lesser place. He said we had to learn to think like a mountain. I stare into the gate of rock framing the entrance to Pima Canyon. The mesquite leaves hang listless in the heat. Underfoot, a broken field of granite spreads out. Past that stone gate, the freedom of the Pusch Ridge Wilderness begins. The place feels wanting without bighorns watching me. I can’t prove this. But I’ve known it since I was a boy. That’s why we look at the mountains and crave to be near them. Maybe we can’t think like a mountain. But we can do better than we have. We can bring the bighorns back where they belong. Counting sheep, An Essay by

Suppose I invest $10,000 in shares of a big petrochemical corporation, which provides me with an annual 5 percent return on my investment. The corporation is highly profitable because it does not pay for externalities. It dumps toxic waste into a nearby river without caring about the damage it causes to the regional water supply, to the public’s health, or to the local wildlife. It uses its wealth to enlist a legion of lawyers who protect it against any demand for compensation. It also retains lobbyists who block any attempt to legislate stronger environmental regulations.

I suddenly felt, well, terribly old as I watched a mudskipper hopping along with what now seemed to me like a wonderful sense of hopeless, boundless naïve optimism. I hoped that if its descendant was sitting here on this beach in 350 million years' time with a camera around its neck, it would feel that the journey had been worth it. I hoped that it might have a clearer understanding of itself in relation to the world it lived in. I hoped that it wouldn't be reduced to turning other creatures into horror circus shows in order to try and ensure them their survival. I hoped that if someone tried to feed the remote descendant of a goat to the remote descendant of a dragon for the sake of a little more than a shudder of entertainment, that it would feel it was wrong. I hoped it wouldn't be too chicken to say so.

I know what we have to do!” he said, extremely excited. He pulled me into the living room, sat me down, and took my hands in his. Looking intensely into my eyes, he said, “Babe, we’ve got to have children.” Wow, I thought, that must have been some fire. “Ok-aaay,” I said. “You don’t understand, you don’t understand!” he said, trying to catch me up to his thoughts. “Everything we’ve been working for, the zoo that we’ve been building up, all of our efforts to protect wildlife, it will all stop with us!” As with every good idea that came into his head, Steve wanted to act on it immediately. Just take it in stride, I said to myself. But he was so sincere. We’d talked about having children before, but for some reason it hit him that the time was now. “We have got to have children,” he said. “I know that if we have kids, they will carry on when we’re gone.” “Great,” I said. “Let’s get right on that.

But the psychological change accompanying these technologies is more subtle, and perhaps more important. Consciously and unconsciously, we have gradually grown accustomed to experiencing the world through disembodied machines and instruments. As I stood in line to board an airplane recently, the young woman in front of me was primping in her mirror—straightening her hair, putting on lipstick, patting her checks with blush—a female ritual that has been repeated for several thousand years. In this case, however, her “mirror” was an iPhone in video mode, pointed at herself, and she was reacting to a digitized image of herself. I take walks in a federally protected wildlife preserve near my home in Massachusetts. A dirt trail winds for a mile around a lake teeming with beavers and fish, wild ducks and geese, aquatic frogs. Bulrushes and cattails wrap the perimeter of the pond, water lilies float here and there, rippling when a fish goes by. In the winter, the air is crisp and sharp, in the summer soft and aromatic. And a thick silence lies across the park, broken only by the honking of geese and the croaking of frogs. It is a place to smell, to see, to feel, to quietly let one’s mind wander where it wants. More and more commonly, I see people here talking on their cell phones as they walk around the trail. Their attention is focused not on the scene in front of them, but on a disembodied voice coming from a small box. And they are disembodied themselves. Where are their minds and bodies? Certainly not present in the park. Nor can they be located in the electromagnetic waves and digital signals flowing through cyberspace. Only their voices can be found at the other end of their conversations, in the offices and boardrooms and homes of the people they are talking to. They are attempting to be several places at once, like quantum waves. But I would argue that they are nowhere.

Bindi the Jungle Girl aired on July 18, 2007, on ABC (Channel 2) in Australia, and we were so proud. Bindi’s determination to carry on her father’s legacy was a testament to everything Steve believed in. He had perfectly combined his love for his family with his love for conservation and leaving the world a better place. Now this love was perfectly passed down to his kids. The official beginning of Bindi’s career was a fantastic day. All the time and effort, and joy and sorrow of the past year culminated in this wonderful series. Now everyone was invited to see Bindi’s journey, first filming with her dad, and then stepping up and filming with Robert and me. It was also a chance to experience one more time why Steve was so special and unique, to embrace him, to appreciate him, and to celebrate his life. Bindi, Robert, and I would do our best to make sure that Steve’s light wasn’t hidden under a bushel. It would continue to sine as we worked together to protect all wildlife and all wild places. After Bindi’s show launched, it seemed so appropriate that another project we had been working on for many months came to fruition. We found an area of 320,000 acres in Cape York Peninsula, bordered on one side by the Dulcie River and on the other side by the Wenlock River--some of the best crocodile country in the world. It was one of the top spots in Australia, and the most critically important habitat in the state of Queensland. Prime Minister John Howard, along with the Queensland government, dedicated $6.3 million to obtaining this land, in memory of Steve. On July 22, 2007, the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve became official. This piece of land means so much to the Irwin family, and I know what it would have meant to Steve. Ultimately, it meant the protection of his crocodiles, the animals he loved so much. What does the future hold for the Irwin family? Each and every day is filled with incredible triumphs and moments of terrible grief. And in between, life goes on. We are determined to continue to honor and appreciate Steve’s wonderful spirit. It lives on with all of us. Steve lived every day of his life doing what he loved, and he always said he would die defending wildlife. I reckon Bindi, Robert, and I will all do the same. God bless you, Stevo. I love you, mate.

People who wrote novels about universities hardly ever got them right. Max had spent his short working life untenured, but still he'd managed to be a charming magnet wherever he taught, and Amy had surfeited on faculty gossip and professorial antics and the general behavior of academics, who were as a whole no more brilliant or Machiavellian than travel agents. They tended toward shabbier clothes and manners, and of course there was the occasional storied eccentric or truly original mind, but most college campuses — especially the older ones — functioned less as brain trusts than as wildlife preserves, housing and protecting people who wouldn't last a week in GenPop.

I fought hard for such a framing at the Conference of the Parties 6 in The Hague in 2000, but was opposed not by the usual suspects—industrial interests and OPEC—but rather by those who were more “green”—World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, and European Green Party delegates. I was dumbfounded. Why didn’t they want to support a plan to both keep carbon in the forests and get a double bonus of biodiversity protection? The debates were heated. I thought the argument against it—no baseline for additionality—was legitimate, but not an insurmountable obstacle. Baselines are negotiable, and protecting primary forests should at least have been on the agenda. The passion of the opponents seemed totally misplaced. One evening during COP 6, I went to the environment NGOs’ tent for a reception. In this more informal setting,

Steve always had a feeling that he wouldn’t live a long life. He would sometimes say that he hoped a croc wouldn’t get him, because he felt it would undo all of his hard work convincing people that crocs are wonderful animals worth protecting. After losing his mother, Steve seemed even more focused on accomplishing as much as possible in the time he had here on earth. He was convinced that when it was his time to go, it would be quick, as his mum had died in the car accident. Steve didn’t fear death. Maybe that was part of his secret for being so gifted with wildlife. He had such perfect love for every animal, and especially crocodiles, that there didn’t seem to be any room left over for fear.

BENJAMIN Age: 10 Height: 5’1 Favourite animal: His dog, Spooky   Of all the Cluefinders, Benjamin is the most interested in sports. He is very physically active, playing football and cricket at the weekends, and often going for a morning jog with Jake, his next-door neighbour, and their Dads. Ben took some karate lessons until he decided that he never wanted to fight another person if he could help it. Like Chris, he loves to read comic books, and his favourite super-hero is Spider-Man, who is also very athletic. He says, “I love to exercise because it means I can eat whatever I want without getting fat!” Ben especially loves spaghetti Bolognese and pizza.   Ben has a dog, Spooky, who he plays with all the time. Ben has a soft spot for all animals, and supports the World Wildlife Fund, which aims to protect endangered wild animals which are at risk of going extinct. His goals for the future include travelling around the world, an ambition he shares with Clara. He would like to visit the countries of South America, where there is an abundance of wildlife.

As I got up, I posed the last question to him. ‘Baba, somebody told me that your government has initiated stringent measures for wildlife protection. Is that true?’ ‘Yes. There is a complete ban on the shooting of tigers and elephants. We have explained the importance of conservation to all the villages and they seem to have understood.’ ‘I wish our government had been as serious about it,’ I told him as we headed for the hut where dinner was waiting for us. Instead

It felt fantastic to be back filming again, and it made me realize how much I missed it. The crew represented our extended family. I never once caught a feeling of annoyance or impatience at the prospect of having a six-day-old baby on set. To the contrary, the atmosphere was one of joy. I can mark precisely Bindi Irwin’s introduction to the wonderful world of wildlife documentary filming: Thursday, July 30, 1998, in the spectacular subtropics of the Queensland coast, where the brilliant white sand meets the turquoise water. This is where the sea turtles navigate the rolling surf each year to come ashore and lay their eggs. Next stop: America, baby on board. Bindi was so tiny she fit on an airplane pillow. Steve watched over her almost obsessively, fussing with her and guarding to see if anything would fall out of the overhead bins whenever they were opened. Such a protective daddy. Our first shoot in California focused on rattlesnakes and spiders. We got a cute photo of baby Bindi with a little hat on and a brown tarantula on her head. In Texas she got to meet toads and Trans-Pecos rat snakes. Steve found two stunning specimens of the nonvenomous snakes in an abandoned house. I watched as two-week-old Bindi reacted to their presence. She gazed up at the snakes and her small, shaky arms reached out toward them. I laughed with delight at her eagerness. Steve looked over at me, as if to say, See? Our own little wildlife warrior!

Suddenly I heard him come thundering up the front stairs. He burst wild-eyed into the kitchen. He’s been nailed by a snake, I thought immediately. I didn’t know what was going on. “I know what we have to do!” he said, extremely excited. He pulled me into the living room, sat me down, and took my hands in his. Looking intensely into my eyes, he said, “Babe, we’ve got to have children.” Wow, I thought, that must have been some fire. “Ok-aaay,” I said. “You don’t understand, you don’t understand!” he said, trying to catch me up to his thoughts. “Everything we’ve been working for, the zoo that we’ve been building up, all of our efforts to protect wildlife, it will all stop with us!” As with every good idea that came into his head, Steve wanted to act on it immediately. Just take it in stride, I said to myself. But he was so sincere. We’d talked about having children before, but for some reason it hit him that the time was now. “We have got to have children,” he said. “I know that if we have kids, they will carry on when we’re gone.” “Great,” I said. “Let’s get right on that.

As much as he influenced her, Bindi changed Steve, too. After our Florida trip, Bindi and I went home, while Steve flew off to the Indonesian island of Sumatra. We couldn’t accompany him because of the malaria risk, so we kept the home fires burning instead. At one point, Steve was filming with orangutans when his newfound fatherhood came in handy. A local park ranger who had worked with the national park’s orangutans for twenty-five years accompanied Steve into the rain forest, where they encountered a mother and baby orangutan. The rangers keep a close eye on the orangutans to prevent poaching, and the ranger recognized a lot of the animals by sight. “She reminds me of Bindi,” Steve exclaimed, seeing the infant ape. It was a mischievous, happy baby, clinging to her mother way up in the top branches of a tree. “This will be great to film,” Steve said. “I’ll climb into the tree, and then you can get me and the orangutans in the same shot.” The ranger waved his hands, heading Steve off. “You absolutely can’t do that,” the ranger said. “The mother orangutans are extremely protective. If you make a move anywhere near that tree, she’ll come down and pull your arms off.” Steve paused to listen. “They are very strong,” the ranger said. “She won’t tolerate you in her tree.” “I won’t climb very close to her,” Steve said. “I’ll just go a little way up. Then the camera can shoot up at me and get her in the background.” The ranger looked doubtful. “Okay, Steve,” he said. “But I promise you, she will come down out of that tree and pull your head off.” “Don’t worry, mate,” Steve said confidently, “she’ll be right.” He climbed into the tree. Down came the mother, just as the ranger had predicted. Tugging, pulling, and dragging her baby along behind her, she deftly made her way right over to Steve. He didn’t move. He sat on his tree limb and watched her come toward him. The crew filmed it all, and it became one of the most incredible shots in documentary filmmaking. Mama came close to Steve. She swung onto the same tree limb. Then she edged her way over until she sat right beside him. Everyone on the crew was nervous, except for Steve. Mama put her arm around Steve’s shoulders. I guess the ranger was right, Steve thought, wondering if he would be armless or headless in the very immediate future. While hanging on to her baby, Mama pulled Steve in tight with her other arm, looked him square in the face, and…started making kissy faces at him. The whole crew busted up laughing as Mama puckered up her lips and looked lovingly into Steve’s eyes. “You’ve got a beautiful little baby, sweetheart,” Steve said softly. The baby scrambled up the limb away from them, and without taking her eyes off Steve, the mother reached over, grabbed her baby, and dragged the tot back down. “You’re a good mum,” Steve cooed. “You take good care of that little bib-bib.” “I have never seen anything like that,” the park ranger said later. I had to believe that the encounter was further evidence of the uncanny connection Steve had with the wildlife he loved so much, as well as one proud parent recognizing another.

No matter how developed it is, a country which does not protects its own wild life can never be called as a civilized country!

One day, babe,” Steve said softly to me, “we’ll look back on wildlife harvesting projects and things like croc farming the same way we look back on slavery and cannibalism. It will be simply an unbelievable part of human history. We’ll get so beyond it that it will be something we will never, ever return to.” “We aren’t there yet,” I said. He sighed. “No, we aren’t.” I thought of the sign Steve had over his desk back home. It bore the word “warrior” and its definition: “One who is engaged in battle.” And it was a battle. It was a battle to protect fragile ecosystems like Lakefield from the wildlife perpetrators, from people who sought to kill anything that could turn a profit. These same people were out collecting croc eggs and safari-hunting crocodiles. They were working to legalize a whole host of illicit and destructive activities. They were lobbying to farm or export everything that moved, from these beautiful fruit bats we were watching, to magpie geese, turtles, and even whales.

We didn’t know what to do. It was as though we were being hunted. Steve went off to the back block of the zoo to try to get his head around everything that had been happening. He built a fire and gazed into it. I didn’t have to think about it. I knew beyond certainty that the most important part of Steve’s life was his family. His children meant everything to him. All of a sudden, my wonderful, sharing, protective husband was being condemned. His crime was sharing wildlife experiences with Robert, exactly as he had done for the last five and a half years with Bindi. The media circus escalated. Helicopters hovered over the zoo, trying to snag any glimpse of the crazy Irwin family. Steve erected shade cloth around our yard for privacy. We soon realized we couldn’t go anywhere. There would be no visits to the zoo, no answering the phone, no doing croc shows. The criticism and the spin continued. I stood by Steve’s side and watched his heart break. I couldn’t believe the mean-spirited, petty, awful people in the world. Editors manipulated film footage, trying to make the croc look bigger or closer to Robert than it actually was. What possible end could that serve? I have seen Tasmanian devils battle over a carcass. I have seen lionesses crowding a kill, dingoes on the trail of a feral piglet, an adult croc thrashing its prey to pieces. But never, in all the animal world, have I witnessed anything to match the casual cruelty of the human being. It was about to get worse. We stepped off a very dark cliff indeed.

As a wildlife warrior, Steve fought against age-old practices that were destroying entire species. He felt it was time to focus on the nonconsumptive use of wildlife. Poachers were still hunting tigers for their bones, and bears for their gallbladders, all for traditional medicines that have been far surpassed by modern pharmaceuticals. It should be simple. We should be able to take an aspirin instead of powdered rhino horn, make whaling something that we read about in history books, and end our appetite for shark-fin soup, which is causing one of the world’s most ancient and important species to vanish from the oceans. Until the day comes when the senseless killing ends, we will all have to fight like wildlife warriors to protect our precious planet. Steve came back from his Antarctica trip with renewed determination. In his last documentary, Steve showed how penguins actually play. He tried to demystify the fierce reputation of the leopard seal. He talked about how humpback whales have a family structure similar to ours, that they are mammals, they love their children, and they communicate.

Every morning and evening at Lakefield, the fruit bats would come and go from the trees near our campsite. During the day, you could hear them in the distance as they squabbled over territory. Each fruit bat wanted to jockey for the best position on a branch. But when evening came, as if by silent agreement, all the bats knew to fly off at the same time. Steve grabbed me and the kids one evening just at dusk, and we went out into the river to watch the bats. I would rank that night as one of the most incredible experiences of my life, right up there with catching crocs and swimming with manatees. Sitting at dusk with the kids in the boat, all of a sudden the trees came alive. The bats took flight, skimming over the water to delicately dip for a drink, flying directly over our heads. It was as if we had gone back in time and pterodactyls flew once again. It was such an awe-inspiring event that we all fell quiet, the children included. The water was absolutely still, like an inky mirror, almost like oil. Not a single fish jumped, not a croc moved. All we heard were the wings of these ancient mammals in the darkening sky. We lay quietly in the bottom of the boat, floating in the middle of this paradise. We knew that we were completely and totally safe. We were in a small dinghy in the middle of some of the most prolifically populated crocodile water, yet we were absolutely comfortable knowing that Steve was there with us. “One day, babe,” Steve said softly to me, “we’ll look back on wildlife harvesting projects and things like croc farming the same way we look back on slavery and cannibalism. It will be simply an unbelievable part of human history. We’ll get so beyond it that it will be something we will never, ever return to.” “We aren’t there yet,” I said. He sighed. “No, we aren’t.” I thought of the sign Steve had over his desk back home. It bore the word “warrior” and its definition: “One who is engaged in battle.” And it was a battle. It was a battle to protect fragile ecosystems like Lakefield from the wildlife perpetrators, from people who sought to kill anything that could turn a profit. These same people were out collecting croc eggs and safari-hunting crocodiles. They were working to legalize a whole host of illicit and destructive activities. They were lobbying to farm or export everything that moved, from these beautiful fruit bats we were watching, to magpie geese, turtles, and even whales.

After Bindi’s show launched, it seemed so appropriate that another project we had been working on for many months came to fruition. We found an area of 320,000 acres in Cape York Peninsula, bordered on one side by the Dulcie River and on the other side by the Wenlock River--some of the best crocodile country in the world. It was one of the top spots in Australia, and the most critically important habitat in the state of Queensland. Prime Minister John Howard, along with the Queensland government, dedicated $6.3 million to obtaining this land, in memory of Steve. On July 22, 2007, the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve became official. This piece of land means so much to the Irwin family, and I know what it would have meant to Steve. Ultimately, it meant the protection of his crocodiles, the animals he loved so much.

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

At the park’s dedication ceremony, President Harry Truman promised the crowd that “in this park we shall preserve tarpon and trout, pompano, bear, deer, crocodiles and alligators—and rare birds of great beauty. We shall protect hundreds of all kinds of wildlife which might otherwise soon be extinct.

The acreage of our federal public lands is equivalent to the entire country of Germany seven times over. These lands provide space for hunting, fishing, and leisure activities; wildlife habitats; clean-water protection; sustainable industry; and much more. All for the public. It's about as profoundly American an idea as you can find: the democratization of land and resources and food and recreation and wildlife and scenery and space and solitude.

Wildlife is meant to be treasured and protected as part of our natures ecosystem, and not to be carelessly slaughtered as trophies for the purpose of self glorification.

What could one child do for the realm of the sea?

No one would be allowed to walk into the Louvre and pick any painting they fancy. Why should we allow people to remove endangered wildlife from areas that we deem so important that we should protect them?

That's one reason wildlife films matter: they're a set of permanent memories we can all share, making real those things we have not seen for ourselves, such as the plight of the albatrosses. In time perhaps this will make us wiser about protecting what we still have, by making it harder for anyone to say, 'I didn't know.

Congressman Upton insisted that he hadn’t changed his position on environmental issues. But Jeremy Symons, then a senior vice president of the nonpartisan National Wildlife Federation, said that the transformation was “like night and day.” He continued, “In the past the committee majority viewed the Clean Air Act as an effective way to protect the public. Now the committee treats the Clean Air Act and the EPA as if they are the enemy. Voters didn’t ask for this pro-polluter agenda, but the Koch brothers spent their money well and their presence can be felt.” At

Isn’t man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife—birds, kangaroos, deer, and all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes and dingoes—by the million in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billion and eats them. This in turn kills man by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative—and fatal—health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals.20

Primatologists estimate that within five decades the only great apes left will be in zoos, sanctuaries, and pockets of wildlife habitat in their native lands, most of them protected by armed rangers.

Love them or leave them, it will always hurt of we kill them.. #wildlife

Love them or leave them, it will always hurt if we kill them..! #wildlife

Love them or leave them, because killing them will hurts us all.. Save wildlife..!

Cultural conservatism originated in the experience of a way of life that was under threat or disappearing. The memory of that way of life could be preserved, and its spiritual meaning enshrined in works of art. But the way of life itself could not be so easily protected. Should we then appeal to the state to subsidise a dying lifestyle, establishing wildlife parks like those in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, in which the agrarian way of life stumbles on, unconscious of the world that lies beyond its sensitively policed perimeter? Or should we devote ourselves, instead, to the idea of the thing that we are bound to lose, keeping it alive in art, as did Strauss and von Hofmannsthal in perpetuating the sugar-coated seductiveness of the aristocratic life in Der Rosenkavalier, or D. H. Lawrence in celebrating the close-knit cohesion of the old mining communities in Sons and Lovers? But then, to whom will such works of art be addressed? Necessarily, to those who have become conscious of the old way of life as something lost, something that can be preserved only in this aesthetic form. For its practitioners it would have meant nothing to preserve their way of life as an idea, rather than as the reality of their being in the world. To put it more severely: culture becomes an object of conservation only when it has already been lost.

Though rarely acknowledged as such, LBJ is arguably the patriarch of our contemporary environmental movement, as Theodore Roosevelt was of an earlier environmental crusade. LBJ put plenty of laws on the books: Clean Air, Water Quality, and Clean Water Restoration Acts and Amendments, Solid Waste Disposal Act, Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Act, Aircraft Noise Abatement Act, and Highway Beautification Act. The 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act protects more than two hundred rivers in thirty-eight states;19 the 1968 Trail System Act established more than twelve hundred recreation, scenic, and historic trails covering fifty-four thousand miles.20 These laws are critical to the quality of the water we drink and swim in, the air we breathe, and the trails we hike. Even more sweeping than those laws is LBJ’s articulation of the underlying principle for a “new conservation” that inspires both today’s environmentalists and the opponents who resist their efforts: The air we breathe, our water, our soil and wildlife, are being blighted by the poisons and chemicals which are the by-products of technology and industry. . . . The same society which receives the rewards of technology, must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for control. To deal with these new problems will require a new conservation. We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities.21

In the meantime, we would wreck the US economy and actually do little to clean up the environment. The proposal calls for covering hundreds of thousands of acres of land with windmills and solar panels, which would do irreparable damage to land on which wildlife is protected by federal statutes. It also addresses only the United States’ carbon emissions and gives countries like China and India a pass for a decade. I’m no scientist, but I’m pretty sure we can’t keep China’s dirty air from sneaking into the atmosphere over the United States. I am pretty good at economics, though, and economists have a term for that type of thinking: freaking stupid. AOC once said that people her age should reconsider having children because of global warming. Can you imagine? I think the best answer to that ridiculous statement was by my friend, Jerry Falwell, Jr., “People her age should reconsider having children if people like AOC ever get to be in charge of this country.

I wanted to help rescue this species from endangerment by learning about the elephants’ intricate social structure, increasing worldwide attention to this species through my research and scientific advancements in knowledge. However, when the scientific papers that I had spent years writing finally came out, there was little reaction. I felt proud of my scientific accomplishments but was sad that I wasn’t doing more for the species that I cared about so much. The following year after I graduated, a new paper by one of my colleagues in Gabon found that between 2002-2011, the duration of my Ph.D. plus a few years, over 60% of the entire forest elephant population declined due to poaching[5]. The poaching was almost exclusively driven by the consumption of their tusks as sources for carving statues, jewelry, and other decorative objects. The true conservation issue had nothing to do with studying the elephants themselves. What was the point of studying a species if it might not exist in a few decades?  If I really wanted to help forest elephants, I should have been studying the people, the consumers who were purchasing ivory to determine if there were ways to change attitudes towards ivory and purchasing behavior. Yes, having rangers on the ground to protect parks and elephants is important, but if there is no decrease in demand, it will constantly be an uphill battle. All of the solutions to the conservation problems of forest elephants are social, political, and economic first.  If you are interested in pursuing wildlife biology as a career for conservation purposes (like I was) or because you love animals (also me), you might be better suited in another career if research is not your thing but can still work for a conservation organization. Nonprofits need lawyers, financial planners, fundraising experts, and marketing executives to name a few. When I perused the job boards of nonprofit organizations, I was surprised by how few research positions there were. There were far more in fundraising, marketing, and development. Even if you don’t work directly for conservation, honestly, you can still make a difference and help conservation efforts in other ways outside of your career. A lot of conservation is really about investing in programs and habitat, so species stay protected. For example, if you can purchase and/or donate money to organizations that buy large areas of land, this land can be set aside for wildlife conservation. The biggest threat to wildlife is habitat loss and simply buying more land, keeping it undeveloped, and/or restoring it for species to live on, is one of the major means to solve the biodiversity crisis.

If there is a happy wildlife in a country in addition to the happiness of the people, we can sincerely applaud that country!

It sounds on paper the slightest of shelters for the most powerful of predators. A hole in a snowdrift, sealed by more snow, scarcely seems sufficiently substantial to provide privacy and protection for one of the largest truly carnivorous mammals on Earth. And yet, the hostile environment is an impediment to all but the most curious and determined, and the monochrome surroundings render the dens invisible to all but the keenest, most experienced eyes.

It’s not just about recycling that piece of plastic you hold in your hand; it’s about protecting our wildlife, cleaning up our planet, and reducing pollution and climate change impacts.

All we have, nature gave to us. All we have lost, greed took from us.

Only the continued attention of a concerned public, plus genuine scientific research into the biology and natural history of these remarkable animals, will ensure that our children and grandchildren will be able to see for themselves the largest animals to have ever lived on earth. Stay informed, eat seafood responsibly, speak out, and support genuine marine biological research. If you enjoy the offshore environment, then act to protect it. Today we are the stewards of our environment, and if we lose these precious ocean resources through our ignorance, greed, or indifference, we will have caused an immeasurable loss to future generations of humanity.

the people understand that protecting the forest is not just for wildlife but for their own future, and so they have become our partners in conservation

Public lands seizure, conceived as a fell swoop of the sword, will likely never come to pass. The law bars it, precedent bars it, and the Supreme Court has spoken to this effect repeatedly. FLPMA, unless amended by Congress, establishes that the land shall remain in the hands of all citizens in perpetuity. I think the seizure will require more delicate schemes, slowly moving and imperceptibly violent. In Congress it starts with an amendment to an appropriations bill here and there. A rider or two or three to bills that otherwise must pass to maintain the budget. It’s easy to curtail the protection of seeming irrelevancies like grass, soil, water, air, and wildlife when the public is distracted with the question of whether the government will go on functioning.

Bill and Virginia both said that their association with the lions during the filming of Born Free had had an enormous influence on their lives, and we frequently discussed with them the whole question of the conservation and protection of wild animals. We realized for the first time how drastically short-sighted man has been. Many of these issues have since become even more urgent, with the competition between man and wildlife for habitats and resources, including water, the degradation of the environment, and the ramifications of global warming. What has become even more obvious to us in the interrelationships between man and the natural environment, and how holistic any solutions will have to be.

Presented in the mainstream discourse as stimulus-response-driven or genetically programmed automatons, who lack agency and experiential perspective, animals are the archetypal Other, inferior to humans and an object that can be exploited for work, consumer goods, entertainment, science, or killed and displaced at liberty. This instrumental relationship served as a blueprint for the subjection of Nature, which transformed 'fish into fisheries, forests and trees into timber, animals into livestock, wildlife into game, mountains into coal, seashores into beachfronts, rivers into hydroelectric factories' and converted the animals’ homes into resources for unlimited human use and capitalist profit.

Conservation is everyone's responsibility. We must all do our part to protect our planet for future generations.

I am always looking for new ways to capture the beauty of the natural world. I want my photographs to inspire people to appreciate nature and take action to protect it.

The belugas spent the winter in the Bering Sea, between Russia and Alaska, where Arctic pack ice could not trap them. Now it's almost spring. The ice is melting, splitting, retreating toward the pole. The whales' migration route is opening up. The older females lead the way, north and east, teaching younger belugas how to find Canada's Beaufort Sea. At more than 2500 km (1550 mi.), the belugas' journey takes months to complete. It's worth it. When the whales reach the Mackenzie River Delta, they'll rub against the ocean floor, shedding itchy layers of yellowed skin until they're glowing white again. Pregnant mothers will also give birth. The shallow coastal waters will protect the newborns from hungry orcas. While the babies play, their mothers will feast on krill and codfish, regaining their strength. Their rich milk will fatten the calves all summer, before the journey south begins.

A personal bioplan can take a form as humble as a pot on the balcony of an urban high-rise. One beneficial plant, a mint for example, releases aerosols that open up your airways. That plant does the same thing for the birds and other small creatures, and for the people you love and keep close. The true goal of the global bioplan is for every person to create and protect the healthiest environment they can for themselves, their families, the birds, insects and wildlife. That personal bioplan then gets stitched to their neighbours’, expanding outward exponentially. If we each start with something as small as an acorn and nurture it into an oak, a master tree that we have grown and protect and are the steward of, if we have that kind of thinking on a mass scale, then the planet is no longer in jeopardy from our greed. We’ve become the guardians of it. It’s a dream of trying to get a better world for every living thing.

It’s impossible for a person to retaliate against the government,” Madden said. “But you can retaliate against the wildlife that the government is trying to protect. It is a symbolic retaliation. It’s a ‘Screw you’ psychological retaliation.

The logical conclusion of the development of wildlife corridors and protected areas -- even mobile ones -- is that there are places which must be left to non-humans, even in a more-than-human world. This is not a new suggestion. It goes back at least to the beginning of the twentieth century in Western culture, to the founding of National Parks in Europe and America, and it is intrinsic to non-Western conceptions of our place among the species of the planet. But there is growing awareness that it is now more urgent and must be much more extensive than a few scattered parks and sanctuaries. Indeed, there is a strong scientific and moral case that it should comprise at least half the entire Earth.

Our modern lives are very different from those of early humans, who hunted and gathered to survive. Their reverence for the natural world is evident in the early murals of wildlife they painted on cave walls and in the stylized visions of life they sculpted from bone and ivory. Our lives reflect remnants of our ancestral attachment to nature and the diversity of life - the concept of biophilia that was introduced early in this chapter. We evolved in natural environments rich in biodiversity, and we still have a biophilia for such settings. Indeed, our biophilia may be innate, an evolutionary product of natural selection acting on a brainy species who survival depended on a close connection to the environment and a practical appreciation of plants and animals. Our appreciation of life guides the field of biology today. We celebrate life by deciphering he genetic code that makes each species unique. We embrace life by using fossils and DNA to chronicle evolution through time. We preserve life through our efforts to classify and protect the millions of species on Earth. We respect life by using nature responsibly and reverently to improve human welfare. Biology is the scientific expression of our desire to know nature. We are most likely to protect what we appreciate, and we are mostly likely to appreciate what we understand. By learning about the processes and diversity of life, we also become more aware of ourselves and our place in the biosphere. We hope this text has served you well in this lifelong adventure.

He’d become a district wildlife manager—his official title—because he had always loved animals and someone had to protect them.

Polar bears have a thick layer of blubber, protecting them from the cold.

Testosterone-fueled programs that depict sharks as vicious, man-eating killers only make it more difficult to convince the public of the need to protect sharks. Sharks are an essential part of the ocean ecosystem, keeping prey species in check

Steve’s memory lives on in the zoo he created and the wildlife he protected. No one will ever forget his passion, his dedication, and his message. Wild animals are gorgeous, he said. Respect them. It’s their planet, too.

A visiting scientist tell of Africa’s disappearing wilderness: More than two-thirds of its wildlife had already been eliminated, pushed out of its habitats by large ranches and urban sprawl. In the southern regions, thousands of predators were being trapped, shot, snared, and poisoned to protect domestic stock. In some African nations, conservation policies and practices were virtually nonexistent.

The bird that is shot is a parent,” he observed in an address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. “We take advantage of its most sacred instincts to waylay it, and in depriving the parent of life, we doom the helpless offspring to the most miserable of deaths, that by hunger. If this is not cruelty, what is?” Newton argued for a ban on hunting during breeding season, and his lobbying resulted in one of the first laws aimed at what today would be called wildlife protection: the Act for the Preservation of Sea Birds.

As our ancestral populations spread across the globe, they encountered the same environments and selective forces that shaped the phenotypes of other populations endemic to these regions. The imprint of these regional selective forces is still evidenced by genetically determined differences in the characteristics of indigenous populations of humans, who often exhibit the same ecogeographic patterns described earlier for other native wildlife. In comparison to populations endemic to tropical regions of the continents, human populations native to lands in the higher latitudes tend to be larger and have relatively shorter limbs—following Bergmann’s and Allen’s rules, respectively. Our indigenous populations also exhibit latitudinal variation in skin color reminiscent of Gloger’s rule: darker skin (greater melanism) in the tropics, protecting native humans from the potentially destructive effects of intense solar radiation; lighter skin in high latitude populations of our species promoting absorption of the limited sunlight to levels sufficient to stimulate the production and storage of vital nutrients in the skin. On islands, the body size of primates (including insular populations of hominids) generally follows the island rule—exhibiting a graded trend toward more pronounced dwarfism in the larger species. The hominid of Flores Island (the “hobbit”) was only one-third to one-half the mass of its ancestor (most likely, Homo erectus). The island peoples of Indonesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and the Philippines also tend to be relatively small in stature, again consistent with the island rule.

Languages contain within themselves not only rich cultural histories but also important insights on life, and thus their preservation is no less important than the protection of endangered wildlife.