My two favourite things in life are libraries and bicycles. They both move people forward without wasting anything. The perfect day: riding a bike to the library.

Can there be any question that the human is the least harmonious beast in the forest and the creature most toxic to the nest?

rights of the unborn” as though a human life begins at conception but we don’t need to concern ourselves with its prospects after birth. Raging over the divine sanctity of anyone else’s pregnancy is a...

Put on a sweater.

You are so going down for that.” He grabbed the keys and headed back to the road. “When you least expect it,” he added over his shoulder.”I’m shaking in my shoes,” she called out.”You’re not...

I guess even the prettiest things eventually end up stinking. Everything does. We all will die and rot and decay and be reborn as dirt or flowers or worms, or polar bears who will drown...

The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.

This is how social change ultimately happens: enlightened values do not change behavior; the contours of self-interest are altered and new values rush into the vacuum.

That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics. That lands yields a cultural harvest is a fact long...

Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.

Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy...

Saving the world requires saving democracy. That requires well-informed citizens. Conservation, environment, poverty, community, education, family, health, economy- these combine to make one quest: liberty and justice for all. Whether one’s special emphasis is global...

Cleanliness promotes better health.

Oh, crap.The last person she wanted to run into this morning when she had to be super-professional was Hot Pool Guy. Before she had a chance to hide behind a plant or something, his gaze...

In this image-driven age, wildlife filmmakers carry a heavy responsibility. They can influence how we think and behave when we’re in nature. They can even influence how we raise our kids, how we vote and...

Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterpreted experience, in which body, mind, and nature are the same. This retreat from...

The writer Richard Manning has argued that ‘the most destructive force in the American West is its commanding views, because they foster the illusion that we command.

We forest officers, who acquiesced in the extinguishment of the bear, knew a local rancher who had plowed up a dagger engraved with the name of one of Coronado´s captains. We spoke harshly of the...

To be poor and be without trees, is to be the most starved human being in the world. To be poor and have trees, is to be completely rich in ways that money can never...

Surely our people do not understand even yet the rich heritage that is theirs. There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon...

The hole in the ozone layer is a kind of skywriting. At first it seemed to spell out our continuing complacency before a witch’s brew of deadly perils. But perhaps it really tells of a...

The truth is: the natural world is changing. And we are totally dependent on that world. It provides our food, water and air. It is the most precious thing we have and we need to...

Goldilocks in the flesh. He zoned out for a second, lost in the smooth texture of her skin, so he had zero time to react when the bikini top flying through the air hit him...

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...

…there were only fifteen thousand polar bears in the world, and five billion of me. To let one of them devour my all-too-common flesh would, if only slightly, help adjust the grievous imbalance.

Getting up too early is a vice habitual in horned owls, stars, geese, and freight trains. Some hunters acquire it from geese, and some coffee pots from hunters.

Today humanity faces a stark choice: save the planet and ditch capitalism, or save capitalism and ditch the planet.

Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of...

Another glorious feature of many modern science museums is a movie theater showing IMAX or OMNIMAX films. In some cases the screen is ten stories tall and wraps around you. The Smithsonian’s National Air &...

Eating dinner with conservation biologists was like walking through a minefield of ethical decisions: grasslands have been overgrazed by steer raised for beef, and all cattle emit greenhouse gases though enteric fermentation; the poop from...

I’ve always had this fantasy of being at the top of a Ferris wheel with a gorgeous guy and having him kiss me.””Really? That’s your fantasy?””One of them.” She narrowed her eyes, but it didn’t...

Man is a complex being: he makes deserts bloom – and lakes die.

There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.

bad work” – work that is only generally and crudely defined, that enacts a dependence that is ill understood, that enacts no affection and gives no honor. Every one of us is to some extent...

There is an allegory for historians in the diverse functions of saw, wedge, and axe.The saw works only across the years, which it must deal with one by one, in sequence. From each year the...

A photograph of a disposable diaper floating in the arctic miles away from human habitat fueled my daily determination to save at least one disposable diaper from being used and created. One cloth diaper after...

To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very...

As it is there isn’t a single thing isn’t an opportunity for some ‘alert’ person, including practically everybody by the ‘greed’, that, they are ‘alive’, therefore. Etc. That, in fact, there are ‘conditions’. Gravelly Hill...

We rich nations, for that is what we are, have an obligation not only to the poor nations, but to all the grandchildren of the world, rich and poor. We have not inherited this earth...

Charlie had kissed a lot of guys. And Connor’s kiss had been the best ever. Ever, ever, ever.

One of the maxims of the new field of conservation biological control is that to control insect herbivores, you must maintain populations of insect herbivores.

It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we...

The goal for most people should not be to feel better, but to get better at feeling.

Individual thinkers since the days of Ezekiel and Isaiah have asserted that the despoliation of land is not only inexpedient but wrong. Society, however, has not yet affirmed their belief.

There seems to be no way to save wildness from human intrusion without establishing and enforcing rules and regulations that are themselves intrusions on what, by definition, are meant to be areas outside humanity’s control.

We should not forget that it will be just as important to our descendants to be prosperous in their time as it is to us to be prosperous in our time.

I wrapped my arms around him like I was saving an oak tree.

I come to oil country with a book about radicals who wish for the end of pipelines. But that’s not what it’s about. It’s the friction point of prosperity and concern, ability and disability, the...

The only time I get to be alone is while traveling.””Except this week,” Charlie said.He turned his head and she saw herself reflected in his shades. “True. And you’re not at all what I expected.”Not...

Take nothing but memories, leave nothing but footprints!