Thus far we have considered the problem of conservation of land purely as an economic issue. A false front of exclusively economic determinism is so habitual to Americans in discussing public questions that one must speak in the language of compound interest to get a hearing.

To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

Land is not merely soil, it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals.

To build a road is so much simpler than to think of what the country really needs.

A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke [of the axe] he is writing his signature on the face of his land.

Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.

Conservationists have, I fear, adopted the pedagogical method of the prophets: we mutter darkly about impending doom if people don't mend their ways. The doom is impending, all right; no one can be an ecologist, even an amateur one, without seeing it. But do people mend their ways for fear of calamity? I doubt it. They are more likely to do it out of pure curiosity and interest.