Endangered Animals Quotes

“She asked another question: "What does it matter if the rhinos die out? Is it really important that they are saved?"

This would normally have riled me... but I had come to think of her as Dr. Spock from Star Trek - an emotionless, purely logical creature, at least with regards to her feelings for animals. Like Spock, though, I knew there were one or two things that stirred her, so I gave an honest reply.

"... to be honest, it doesn't matter. No economy will suffer, nobody will go hungry, no diseases will be spawned. Yet there will never be a way to place a value on what we have lost. Future children will see rhinos only in books and wonder how we let them go so easily. It would be like lighting a fire in the Louvre and watching the Mona Lisa burn. Most people would think 'What a pity' and leave it at that while only a few wept”
― Peter Allison, Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide

“Earl: Augh! They're trying to take the wolf off the endangered list .
Mooch: I know. But did you hear what they're putting back on the endangered list?
Earl: What?
Mooch: Empathy and compassion.”
― Patrick McDonnell

“Right now, in the amazing moment that to us counts as the present, we are deciding, without quite meaning to, which evolutionary pathways will remain open and which will forever be closed. No other creature has ever managed this and it will, unfortunately, be our most enduring legacy.”
― Elizabeth Kolbert

“The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animals can have. Eventually rarity is all they are made of. The condor is an icon of extinction. There's little else to it now but being the last of its kind. And in this lies the diminution of the world. How can you love something, how can you fight to protect it, if all it means is loss?”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

“The more a species is rare
the more we like and protect it...
So what about humans?”
― Erik Tanghe

“...sometimes we see things in animals that aren't really there. It's called transference, if that makes any sense.

...I think there are a lot of people who say they do things for animals when they're really doing it for themselves. They see things in animals that might not really be there. I think sometimes that hurts the animals in the end, and it hurts other people, too.

...There are people on both sides of the issue who think animals are more valuable than people are...”
― C.J. Box, Open Season

“Exploiting nature has no real benefits; only irreversible consequences.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, These Words Burn Like Fire

“It is not enough to talk about the change we want in the world. We must care enough to change it by taking action.”
― Susan B. Wile

“Although justifications for wild meat harvest in terms of food for impoverished communities must be weighed seriously, it is critical to acknowledge that the terms ‘protein’ and ‘meat’ are not synonymous.”
― William J. Ripple