Desert Ecology Quotes

I don't see the desert as barren at all; I see it as full and ripe. It doesn't need to be flattered with rain. It certainly needs rain, but it does with what it has, and creates amazing beauty.

The prime communities of the Southwest are survival communities. Their sustenance is governed by rainfall and wind direction. You can study little enclaves of plant materials, how they huddle together for protection. Some are nurse crops.

I think what I would really most like to write about is palm trees and bougainvillea and hummingbirds. I would like to go into the desert and write about salamanders and the Grand Canyon, but history keeps rupturing my experience because politics are everywhere.

Official education was telling people almost nothing of the nature of all those things on the seashores, and in the redwood forests, in the deserts and in the plains.

A cactus doesn't live in the desert because it likes the desert; it lives there because the desert hasn't killed it yet.

Water, water, water....There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.

As a matter of fact, an ordinary desert supports a much greater variety of plants than does either a forest or a prairie.

How are we to live with the desert, in the desert, within the desert?