Michelle Nijhuis

“As individuals and as species, living organisms are part of interdependent communities, existing within a web of mutualisms that Leopold once imagined as “a universal symbiosis.” Given the harm our species is capable of doing to others, it’s understandable that over the course of the conservation movement, some have tried to sever our relationships with other species, drawing hard boundaries in an attempt to limit our exploitation of other forms of life. Boundaries have been useful to conservation—and will continue to be. But the lesson of ecology, much like that of Aesop’s fables, is that human relationships with the rest of life are both inescapable and inescapably complex. The great challenge of conservation is to sustain complexity, in its many forms, and by doing so protect the possibility of a future for all life on earth. And for that, there are no panaceas.”
― Michelle Nijhuis, Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction

“As Leopold, in one of his grimmer moods, wrote to a friend, “That the situation is hopeless should not prevent us from doing our best.”
― Michelle Nijhuis, Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction