One of my students told me that every time she learns the name of a plant, she feels as if she is meeting someone new. Giving a name to something is a way of knowing it.

Nature has been taken over by thugs who care absolutely nothing about it. We need to take nature back.

In every bio-region, one of the most urgent tasks is to rebuild the community of naturalists - so radically depleted in recent years, as young people have spent less time in nature, and higher education has placed less value on such disciplines as zoology……The times are right for the return of the amateur, twenty-first-century, citizen naturalist. To be a citizen naturalist is to take personal action, to both protect and participate in nature.

Kids are plugged into some sort of electronic medium 44 hours per week.

Leave part of the yard rough. Don't manicure everything. Small children in particular love to turn over rocks and find bugs, and give them some space to do that. Take your child fishing. Take your child on hikes.

Here is the beginning of understanding: most parents are doing their best, and most children are doing their best, and they're doing pretty well, all things considered.

Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart. If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature.