You can do the best science in the world but unless emotion is involved it's not really very relevant. Conservation is based on emotion. It comes from the heart and one should never forget that.

There are never victories in conservation. If you want to save a species or a habitat, it's a fight forevermore. You can never turn your back.

Mountains and deserts, with their sparse life at the limit of existence, make one restless and disconsolate; one becomes an explorer in an intellectual realm as well as in a physical one.

A large animal needs a large area. If you protect that area, you're also protecting thousands of other plants and animals. You're saving all these species that future generations will want - you're saving the world for your children and your children's children. . . . The destruction of species is final. If you lose a species, you lose the genes, you lose all the potential drugs and potential foods that could be useful to the next generations. The ecosystems will not function as they have.

A ruin is not just something that happened long ago to someone else; its history is that of us all, the transience of power, of ideas, of all human endeavors.

My interest in wildlife began early and I don't know how early because it's the only thing I've ever been interested in. I've always had a certain curiosity, a certain wonder about the natural world. I like to be outdoors.

Humans are the one species the world could do very well without.