Many of the medicines we use today, to fight everything from AIDS to cancer, originate as a toxin in an amphibian skin. When we lose these animals, we lose resources. We lose keystone species in the environments where they live.

I think the hardest part about my job is the best part of my job - the travel.

Our health as a society, our robustness as a community, as a nation, as a people, is not only dependent upon fiscal stability, military might, political strength - it's also dependent on a healthy planet.

The natural resources we've depended on, if the places where they exist are not stable, our own livelihood and our health is put at risk.

We live in uncertain times when it comes to the future of life on Earth.

Many scientists would argue that we are now in what is called Extinction, and it's caused by this perfect extinction storm: climate change, habitat loss, pollution, unsustainable exploitation of species and habitat resources, and of course, human population explosion. All of these factors work together and conspire to drive a species to extinction on our planet, every half an hour.

I'm really worried about what the world is going to be like when my daughters are young women, [when] they are young leaders or mothers or businesspeople - whatever they're going to be. I'm afraid they're going to have a less healthy and less biologically rich planet.