68 Important Quotes About Biodiversity
Look closely at nature. Every species is a masterpiece, exquisitely adapted to the particular environment in which it has survived. Who are we to destroy or even diminish biodiversity?
The value of biodiversity is that it makes our ecosystems more resilient, which is a prerequisite for stable societies; its wanton destruction is akin to setting fire to our lifeboat.
It is that range of biodiversity that we must care for -- the whole thing -- rather than just one or two stars.
Collective human actions are transforming, even ravaging, the biosphere -- perhaps irreversibly -- through global warming and loss of biodiversity.
Biodiversity is fun, fascinating, functional, and fortunate. But foremost, it is fundamental to our species' and our planet's health and prosperity.
We need to act now. Otherwise the biodiversity that makes Australia so wonderfully unique is going to be lost to us forever.
It's fair to say when you go out and walk in the woods or on a beach, the most conspicuous forms of life you will see are plants and animals, and certainly there's a huge diversity of those types of organisms, perhaps 10 million animal species and several hundred thousand plant species.
We're losing biodiversity globally at an alarming rate, and we need a cornucopia of different plants and animals, for the planet's health and our own.
Biodiversity is the totality of all inherited variation in the life forms of Earth, of which we are one species. We study and save it to our great benefit. We ignore and degrade it to our great peril.
Known as the biosphere to scientists and as the creation to theologians, all of life together consists of a membrane around earth so thin that it cannot be seen edgewise from a satellite yet so prodigiously diverse that only a tiny fraction of species have been discovered and named.
The race is now on between the technoscientific and scientific forces that are destroying the living environment and those that can be harnessed to save it... If the race is won, humanity can emerge in far better condition than when it entered, and with most of the diversity of life still intact.
We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity.
Life -- all life -- is in the service of life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships.
To survive, humans need food, water, and air. Yet biodiversity, the Earth's bodies of water, and the planet's atmosphere are all under threat.
Just as the natural environment depends on biodiversity, so the human environment depends on cultural diversity, because no one civilization encompasses all the spiritual, ethical and artistic expressions of mankind.
Turtles are very stable and have been around forever. But they have problems adapting. When humans came along, turtles came under serious threat. Biodiversity is good, and I think it is good in technology as well.
Biological diversity is messy. It walks, it crawls, it swims, it swoops, it buzzes. But extinction is silent, and it has no voice other than our own.
Well I think on a simple ecological level that the diversity of this planet is important for our survival, that all of our different cultures, people are important to the health of the whole the same way that a species of animal should be saved and at a simple ecology level.
The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.
Planets that don't currently sport plate tectonics, such as Venus and Mars, are scarcely habitable. Tectonics might be a requirement of any world that aspires to a rich diversity of life.
Clean air and water, a diversity of animal and plant species, soil and mineral resources, and predictable weather are annuities that will pay dividends for as long as the human race survives -- and may even extend our stay on Earth.
Aside from bringing back extinct species, reanimation could help living ones by restoring lost genetic diversity. The Tasmanian devil (aka Sarcophilus harrisii) is so inbred at this point that most species members can exchange tumor cells without rejection.
We're close to losing our essential diversity. Look at our wheat crops -- we rely on a handful of grain crops and plants that we've refined and bred over hundreds of years.
We're adding a billion people every decade. We're just spin doctors. Whatever we do is supposedly great, and yet it's always at the expense of diversity and nature. We're like elephants. The ecology of the elephant is more similar to human than any other.
The production of natural resources in agriculture, forestry and fisheries, stable natural hydrological cycles, fertile soils, a balanced climate and numerous other vital ecosystem services can only be permanently secured through the protection and sustainable use of biological diversity.
Diversity is the magic. It is the first manifestation, the first beginning of the differentiation of a thing and of simple identity. The greater the diversity, the greater the perfection.
The evolution of the cosmos invokes in me a sense of mystery; the increase in biodiversity invokes the response of humility; and an understanding of the evolution of death offers me helpful ways to think about my own death.
The preservation of biodiversity is not just a job for governments. International and non-governmental organisations, the private sector and each and every individual have a role to play in changing entrenched outlooks and ending destructive patterns of behaviour.
This is the assembly of life that took a billion years to evolve. It has eaten the storms-folded them into its genes-and created the world that created us. It holds the world steady.
In the area of species protection, we should concern ourselves with what is right as opposed to what might be easier, or popular in the short term.
It's the next annihilation of vast numbers of species. It is happening now, and we, the human race, are its cause.
Instead of trying to understand agriculture in its own terms, acknowledge that agriculture ultimately comes out of nature. Right now agriculture is the No. 1 threat to biodiversity on the planet.
We have environmental laws for a reason: to protect endangered biodiversity. And as a country that has one of the highest loss of species anywhere in the world, they're important.
Protecting biodiversity is just as important and critical to the survival of mankind as stabilizing the climate. Species protection and climate are interdependent.
Little by little people are understanding that we need to change, but whatever we decide to do in next 10 to 15 years will decide the future of biodiversity on Earth.
What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit.
Economic desperation often drives wildlife destruction like poaching or illegal logging. But trade can help create powerful financial incentives for communities to preserve the biodiversity around them.
People still do not understand that a live fish is more valuable than a dead one, and that destructive fishing techniques are taking a wrecking ball to biodiversity.
We advocate biodiversity for biodiversity's sake. It may take our extinction to set things straight.
We see evidence that lakes and forests and wetlands can have different equilibria -- so you have a savanna system that may be stable and thriving, but it can also tip over and become an arid steppe if pushed too far by warming, land degradation, and biodiversity loss.
If we pollute the air, water and soil that keep us alive and well, and destroy the biodiversity that allows natural systems to function, no amount of money will save us.
Whether we consciously realize it or not, the biodiversity with which we are most familiar, and the biodiversity with which we have most intimate historical, cultural and biological connections, is that associated with food plants.
