What I am interested in with birds, just as I am with spiders or monkeys, is what they do and why they do it.

That people will object very much to seeing a predator killing its prey, and yet, in the news, will accept showing shots of people shooting one another.

It's a moral question about whether we have the right to exterminate species.

I am an ardent recycler. I would like to think that it works. I don't know whether it does or not.

All we can hope for is that the thing is going to slowly and imperceptibly shift. All I can say is that 50 years ago there were no such thing as environmental policies.

The whole of science, and one is tempted to think the whole of the life of any thinking man, is trying to come to terms with the relationship between yourself and the natural world. Why are you here, and how do you fit in, and what's it all about.

Very few species have survived unchanged. There's one called lingula, which is a little shellfish, a little brachiopod about the size of my fingernail, that has survived for 500 million years, but it's survived by being unobtrusive and doing nothing, and you can't accuse human beings of that.