Land health is the capacity for self-renewal in the soils, waters, plants, and animals that collectively comprise the land.

That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.

The problem, then, is how to bring about a striving for harmony with land among a people many of whom have forgotten there is any such thing as land, among whom education and culture have become almost synonymous with landlessness. This is the problem of conservation education.

Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow. Invasions can be arrested or modified in a manner to keep an area usable either for recreation, science or for wildlife, but the creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible. It follows, then, that any wilderness program is a rearguard action, through which retreats are reduced to a minimum.

There is time not only to see who has done what, but to speculate why.

All conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?