We are the intelligent elite among animal life on earth and whatever our mistakes, [Earth] needs us. This may seem an odd statement after all that I have said about the way 20th century humans...

But as the Everglades continued to wither, a few of their colleagues began to wonder if conservation really should mean development more than preservation. These heretics did not believe that God had created man in...

…we do not own these woods. They own us.

Compared to forest or aquatic ecosystems, grassland is unstable. It requires rather precise geological and climatic conditions, and if these conditions are not maintained–if too much rain falls, or too little–it quickly turns into forest...

King Solomon’s Ring,” I have become increasingly interested in the study of animals for what they might teach us about man, and the study of man as an animal. I have become increasingly disenchanted with...

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn

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...

I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast...

On a grander scale, when a society segregates itself, the consequences affect the economy, the emotions, and the ecology. That’s one reason why it’s easy for pro-lifers to eat factory-raised animals that disrespect everything sacred...

…It’s not that the worm forgives the plough; it gives it no mind. (Pain occurs, in passing.) (lines 37-39 in the poem ‘Fantasia on a Theme from IKEA’)

The dominant culture eats entire biomes. No, that is too generous, because eating implies a natural biological relationship. This culture doesn’t just consume ecosystems, it obliterates them, it murders them, one after another. This culture...

Le regard analytique et le regard intuitif sur la vie ne peuvent s’harmoniser dans un même être que dans la mesure où le premier est subordonné au second. C’est du second, et notamment du sentiment...

I came to see that man finds meaning in his existence only through the active demonstration of his human self, a cosmos comprising the entire constellation of life’s factors: culture, civilization, tradition, history, ideals, facts,...

Some people hear the voice of God in their dreams or through prayer or meditation. For me, God is truly in the details—the details found in the connections between the living things on the planet...

Luxury as beauty” has nothing to do with a particular place or an object’s price tag. It is seeing with eyes for beauty. Once we cut the automatic but learned connection between buying stuff and...

It is clear that corporate America has an obligation to create a fairer, more equitable, more sustainable economy for no other reason than self-preservation.

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.

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been...

A forest ecology is a delicate one. If the forest perishes, its fauna may go with it. The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest.