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Every
part of this country is sacred to my people. Every hillside, every
valley, every plain and grove has been hallowed by some fond memory
or some sad experience of my tribe. Even the rocks, which seem to
lie dumb as they swelter in the sun along the silent shore in solemn
grandeur thrill with memories of past events connected with the fate
of my people, the very dust under your feet responds more lovingly
to our footsteps than to yours, because it is the ashes of our
ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch,
for the soil is rich with the life of our kindred.
- Chief Seattle
Something
will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining
wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be
turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the
few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to
extinction; if we pollute the last clean air and dirty the last
clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the
silence, so that never again will Americans be free from noise, the
exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that
never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single,
separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the
environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other
animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it.
We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never
do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of
reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the
geography of hope.
- Wallace Stegner
Another
factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we
peer into society's future, we - you and I, and our government -
must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, our
own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We
cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without
asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We
want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become
the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
- From
Eisenhower's Farewell speech, 1961
The
battle for conservation cannot be limited to the winning of new
conquests. Like liberty itself, conservation must be fought for
unceasingly to protect earlier victories. There are always
plenty of hogs who are trying to get natural resources for their own
personal benefit! Public lands and parks, our forests and our
mineral reserves, are subject to many destructive influences. We
have to remain constantly vigilant to prevent raids by those who
would selfishly exploit our common heritage for their private gain.
Such raids on our natural resources are not examples of enterprise
and initiative. They are attempts to take from all the people for
the benefit of a few.
- President
Harry S. Truman, December 1948, at the inauguration of
Everglades National Park.
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