The great ecosystems are like complex tapestries - a million complicated threads, interwoven, make up the whole picture. Nature can cope with small rents in the fabric; it can even, after a time, cope with major disasters like floods, fires, and earthquakes. What nature cannot cope with is the steady undermining of its fabric by the activities of man.

Zoos should concentrate more on the preservation side of things.

Animals generally return the love you lavish on them by a swift bite in passing-not unlike friends and wives.

All over the world the wildlife that I write about is in grave danger. It is being exterminated by what we call the progress of civilization.

Gradually the magic of the island [Corfu] settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen.

In conservation, the motto should always be 'never say die'.

Until we consider animal life to be worthy of the consideration and reverence we bestow upon old books and pictures and historic monuments, there will always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings.