Some of the books/films/documentaries/quotes that are beautifully written, inspired me, and reminded me of the value of biodiversity and wilderness, the reasons for conservation and why we need to perservere, as bleak as the future may seem at times.
If you have something to recommend, do leave a comment!
Books
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
Hope for Animals and Their World by Jane Goodall with Thane Maynard & Gail Hudson
The Diversity of Life by E.O. Wilson
The Wild Trees by Richard Preston
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
Where the Wild Things Were by William Stolzenburg
Films
The Lorax
Rio
Pocahontas
Princess Mononoke
All of David Attenborough’s documentaries
Chasing Ice
Trashed
Midway film
Beyond the Brink
A Fierce Green Fire
Songs
Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell
Colours of the Wind by Stephen Schwartz for Pocahontas
Quotes
Where are the buffalo? Gone.
“The Great chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. How can you buy or sell the sky? The warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. Yet we do not own the freshness of the air, or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us? Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.
We know that white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy and when he has conquered it he moves on. He leaves his fathers’ graves and his children’s birthright is forgotten.
There is no quiet place in the white man’s cities. No place to hear the leaves of spring or the rustle of insect wings. But perhaps I am a savage and do not understand – the clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lovely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frog around the pond at night.
The whites too shall pass – perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the eagle? Gone. Where is the buffalo? Gone. And what is it to say goodbye to the swift and the hunt, the end of living and the beginning of survival.”
– Chief Seattle to President Franklin Pierce, 1855
“A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy” – John Sawhill.
And more here.
Nature rambles. 