Zoos should concentrate more on the preservation side of things.

I can't be expected to produce deathless prose in an atmosphere of gloom and eucalyptus.

They were maps that lived, maps that one could study, frown over, and add to; maps, in short, that really meant something.

You cannot begin to preserve any species of animal unless you preserve the habitat in which it dwells. Disturb or destroy that habitat and you will exterminate the species as surely as if you had shot it. So conservation means that we have to preserve forest and grassland, river and lake, even the sea itself. This is vital not only for the preservation of animal life generally, but for the future existence of man himself - a point that seems to escape many people.

If naturalists go to heaven (about which there is considerable ecclesiastical doubt), I hope that I will be furnished with a troop of kakapo to amuse me in the evening instead of television.

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.

My childhood in Corfu shaped my life. If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood.