Conservation

“ At this stage in the history of earth's conservation, when so much is waiting to be done, if each family, each village and town, each city state and nation will do its bit to conserve, plan, shape, utilize, beautify, improve what remains of the natural environment, the results will be impressive enough to justify the time and means devoted to the enterprise. ”

“ There is the great policy of conservation, for example; and I do not conceive of conservation in any narrow sense. There are forests to conserve, there are great water powers to conserve, there are mines whose wealth should be deemed exhaustible, not inexhaustible, and whose resources should be safeguarded and preserved for future generations. But there is much more. There are the lives and energies of the people to be physically safeguarded. ”

“ Nevertheless, as judged by our present knowledge, the possibilities are so great as to place this factor, I believe, among the important features of the conservation movement.
What do we not owe to our domesticated and improved plants and animals? They are the greatest heritage that has come down to us from our ancestors. ”

“ Conservation activities must repair errors of the past which have left denuded forest lands and empty game covers and waters; they must afford and direct the present use of the forests and the streams; they must safeguard the future supply, if they would meet the requirements of a conservation which shall raise the standards of life and lower the cost of living. ”

“ I shall never forget the look of indignation our dear old professor gave an ambitious youth who had uprooted for his paltry collection every plant of a species of rare fern which the professor had been trying for years to re-establish in its old location. After all is said and done, a live plant is better than a dead one. This is all a part of the great spirit of conservation that has so taken possession of our people of late years. Out of these little acts of preserving our resources will grow a more beautiful America and a better appreciation of all things beautiful. ”

“ Conservation as it was understood in its inception in this country, the preservation of our soils, our forests, and our resources presented a subject of little difficulty, and in connection with which we were all practically in accord and where apparently there would have been no occasion for any serious disagreement. No more new or difficult questions of Government are legitimately involved in Conservation and forestry than are involved in cultivation and farming. ”

“ You are here to consider practical Conservation; to discuss ways and means to develop and, so far as possible, to foster the natural resources of this country, and above all to check and prevent the wasting of them. ”

“ The Conservation of our Natural Resources.—Still another reason why we should study biology is that we may work understandingly for the conservation of our natural resources, especially of our forests. The forest, aside from its beauty and its health-giving properties, holds water in the earth. ”

“ CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE ANIMALS AND BIRDS
"There is no recovery of an extinct species. Conservation or devastation—which shall it be? Common sense demands the regulation of hunting in such a way that our wild life will persist as a permanent asset." Western Wild Life Call, published by the California Associated Charities for the Conservation of Wild Life.
Nature has done more for our land than for almost any other. She has given it vast forests, fertile soil, favorable climate, enormous water power, many minerals, and a wonderful variety of animal life. ”

“ While at first Conservation was supposed to apply only to forests, we see now that its sweep extends even beyond the natural resources.
The principles which govern the conservation movement, like all great and effective things, are simple and easily understood. Yet it is often hard to make the simple, easy, and direct facts about a movement of this kind known to the people generally.
The first great fact about conservation is that it stands for development. There has been a fundamental misconception that conservation means nothing but the husbanding of resources for future generations. ”

“ The conservation idea covers a wider range than the field of natural resources alone. Conservation means the greatest good to the greatest number for the longest time. One of its great contributions is just this, that it has added to the worn and well-known phrase, "the greatest good to the greatest number," the additional words "for the longest time," thus recognizing that this nation of ours must be made to endure as the best possible home for all its people. ”

“ They are for Conservation that is practical and adapted to their peculiar conditions; Conservation that shall develop and utilize their resources, and that shall yield the greatest good to the greatest number, and to the future as well as the present. ”

“ I know of no better conservators than our best farmers. They feel their responsibility. Quite the ideal of conservation is illustrated by a farmer of my acquaintance who saves every product of his land and has developed a system of self-enriching live-stock husbandry, who has harnessed his small stream to light his premises and do much of his work, who turns his drainage waters into productive uses, and who is now troubled that he cannot make some use of the winds that are going to waste on his farm. ”

“ Add to this the natural heedlessness exemplified in a prosperous and expanding environment—so pointedly shown in the exploitation of natural resources, now checked by the movement for conservation—and it becomes clear how sound policy has been sacrificed to temporary expediency, to the desire to get things done, to the neglect of the criterion of quality that in the end makes or mars. ”

“ However important it may be for the lumberman, the miner, the wagon-maker, the railroad man, the house-builder,—for every industry,—that conservation should obtain, when all is said and done, conservation goes back in its directest application to one body in this country, and that is to the children. ”

“ Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life, and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources, are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method. ”

“ The thought of conservation is comparatively new. It marks a new era in the development of the country, and nowhere are its lessons more intensely needed than in a country like ours, vast in its expanse, relatively sparsely populated and apparently inexhaustible in its natural riches. ”

“ The conservation of natural resources, the creation of new ones is a topic which combines the qualities of science, service and utility.
Of all our resources the soil is the most vital. Most of the others have some possibility of substitution, but for the soil there is no substitute. ”

“ Modern times have come to stay, but the spirit of Conservation will grow until we have accomplished the grand results of providing proper protection to our forests, mineral wealth, lands, water-power and waterways, and last but not the least our various climates that God Almighty has given us to conserve the health of our people. ”

“ Nature conservation and nature reserves Protection of nature and nature reserves; conservation and maintenance of existing genetic resources, especially rare animal and plant species; conservation of natural ecological systems; establishment of nature reserves and other protected landscapes and areas, including their use for research, tourism, recreation and other purposes ”

“ This discussion leads me to make an application to the conservation movement in general. We are so accustomed to think of privileged interests and of corporation control of resources that we are likely to confuse conservation and company ownership. The essence of conservation is to utilize our resources with no waste, and [Pg 191] with an honest care for the children of all the generations. ”

“ Funds, programmes and administrative structures necessary to achieve the objective of the conservation of nature shall be provided.
18. Constant efforts shall be made to increase knowledge of nature by scientific research and to disseminate such knowledge unimpeded by restrictions of any kind.
19. The status of natural processes, ecosystems and species shall be closely monitored to enable early detection of degradation or threat, ensure timely intervention and facilitate the evaluation of conservation policies and methods.
20. Military activities damaging to nature shall be avoided. ”

“ Plan for and regulate the development, use, conservation and re-cycling of the natural resources of Earth as the common heritage of Humanity; protect the environment in every way for the benefit of both present and future generations. ”

“ Such active and constant exercise of Conservation as this may be, in a field that directly affects our entire population in the most vital and direct manner possible, is a matter for our most earnest consideration.
What is being done to train the great body of mankind to whom this important task of Conservation is entrusted ”

“ The outgrowth of conservation, the inevitable result, is national efficiency. ”

“ It is especially important, in the opinion of this Committee, that the National Conservation Congress and the National Conservation Association lend their influence to the establishment of reserves in all parts of the country for the preservation of natural features of great scenic interest, for the protection of birds, animals, and native plants, and also for the Conservation of the lessons of history. ”

“ It is thus that Nature makes them expand and change, grow and decline, augment and diminish, approximate and remove, forms and destroys them, according as she finds it requisite to maintain the whole; towards the conservation which this Nature is herself essentially necessitated to have a tendency. ”

“ That is a conservation embracing both the aesthetic and the economic, the only kind worth while. It is a conservation wherein the arable areas and the so-called waste lands and waters have a very intimate interrelation of interests. And, I submit, Gentlemen, that the American people too long have failed to recognize and to account as in the class of waste lands, "The Farms by the Side of the Road." ”

“ In this official program some lectures in conservation are needed with reference to the animal life. I know that some education now is given to people with respect to conservation of the water, soil, and forest, but gather that there is little that covers also conservation of animals. ”

“ The very theories you as Conservationists are advancing are uppermost in the minds of association workers. And the greatest development in forest Conservation and fire protection has its origin and support from these associations. We have something to conserve and are not mere theorists. With rising values of timber and utilization of lower grades of lumber, the product of the entire tree will be saved. ”

“ Should it not be enjoined upon the people who live upon the earth today, while enjoying its benefits, to keep faithful stewardship of the interests of the inhabitants of tomorrow?
About the time Mr. Pinchot enunciated this famous definition, the New York State Conservation Department summed up the purposes of practical Conservation as: "The correction of past indiscretion, the perfection of present utilization, and the formation of future accumulation with respect to natural resources." ”

“ The facts show that there is as great room for improvement in our vital resources as in our lands, water, minerals and forests; and furthermore, this improvement must come first for through human life only is natural conservation possible. The dead past may bury the dead, but living and strong men, not the weakly and sickly, must do the work of Conservation. ”

“ The conservation of forests, the preservation of scenic wonders, of wild flowers, of native animals and birds for the enjoyment of all, has become the aim of a great movement throughout the country. It is well known that the fine balance of nature is maintained by birds, and that upon them depend in large measure the preservation of forests, parks, gardens, orchards, and farms. ”

“ This matter of soil conservation is of the greatest [Pg 14] importance to every one of us. If you are to own a farm, or rent a farm, or till a garden, or plant an orchard ten years from now, it will make a great difference to you whether the man who owns it from now until then knows how to care for it so as to make it produce well, or whether, by neglect, he allows it to become poorer each year. It will make a far greater difference if twenty years elapse. ”

“ The book touches upon every phase of conservation, but it deals at greatest length with saving the soil, the forests, and wild life. It is one of the author’s main purposes to arouse a stronger sentiment for preserving what remains of the forests as well as for extending their areas. This is because proper forestation will lessen the danger of floods and of erosion of the soil, and it will encourage the return of the wild creatures that are of so much economic importance and add so much to the joy of life. ”

“ We live from this forest they want to destroy. And we want to take this opportunity of having so many people here gathered with the same objective in mind to defend our habitat, the conservation of forest, of tropical forest. ”

“ The conservation legacy demonstrates that forests can be protected, while also being used for the economic and social benefit of mankind. Wood for our Nation's products is harvested from the vast forests but, like our food crops, new trees must be planted for the next generation. ”

“ There are two principles inherent in the very nature of things, recurring in some particular embodiments whatever field we explore—the spirit of change, and the spirit of conservation. There can be nothing real without both. Mere change without conservation is a passage from nothing to nothing. Its final 282integration yields mere transient non-entity. Mere conservation without change cannot conserve. For after all, there is a flux of circumstance, and the freshness of being evaporates under mere repetition. ”