If We Lose Our Wilderness, We Have

Conservationists Have, I Fear, Adopted The Pedagogical Method Of The Prophets: We Mutter Darkly About Impending Doom If People Don't Mend Their Ways. The Doom Is Impending, All Right; No One Can Be An Ecologist, Even An Amateur One, Without Seeing It. But Do People Mend Their Ways For Fear Of Calamity? I Doubt It. They Are More Likely To Do It Out Of Pure Curiosity And Interest.

If We Lose Our Wilderness, We Have Nothing Left, In My Opinion, Worth Fighting For; Or To Be More Exact, A Completely Industrialized United States Is Of No Consequence To Me.

A Thing Is Right When It Tends To Preserve The Integrity, Stability And Beauty Of The Biotic Community. It Is Wrong When It Tends Otherwise.

We Reached The Old Wolf In Time To Watch A Fierce Green Fire Dying In Her Eyes. I Realized Then, And Have Known Ever Since, That There Was Something New To Me In Those Eyes – Something Known Only To Her And To The Mountain. I Was Young Then, And Full Of Trigger-itch; I Thought That Because Fewer Wolves Meant More Deer, That No Wolves Would Mean Hunters’ Paradise. But After Seeing The Green Fire Die, I Sensed That Neither The Wolf Nor The Mountain Agreed With Such A View.

The Only True Development In American Recreational Resources Is The Development Of The Perceptive Faculty In Americans. All Of The Other Acts We Grace By That Name Are, At Best, Attempts To Retard Or Mask The Process Of Dilution.