Extinction Prevention Quotes

Humans regard animals as worthy of protection only when they are on the verge of extinction.

The commitment must be much deeper - to let no species knowingly die; to take all reasonable action to protect every species and race in perpetuity.

Space travel leading to skylife is vital to human survival, because the question is not whether we will be hit by an asteroid, but when. A planetary culture that does not develop spacefaring is courting suicide. All our history, all our social progress and growing insight will be for nothing if we perish. No risk of this kind, however small it might be argued to be, is worth taking, and no cost to prevent it is too great. No level of risk is acceptable when it comes to all or nothing survival.

Remember this: once the human race is established on more than one planet and especially, in more than one solar system, there is no way now imaginable to kill off the human race.

The Endangered Species Act was designed to preserve biodiversity, not enrich trial lawyers and political activists.

Experience as well as common sense indicated that the most reliable method of avoiding self-extinction was not to equip oneself with the means to accomplish it in the first place.

To preserve the buffalo as a species, the best thing we can do is eat them. Animals that people eat do not become extinct. That's why we have so many more chickens than bald eagles in this country.

Preventing ongoing extinction of elephants, rhinoceroses, and other threatened species is critically important. By all means, we must set priorities for allocating finite conservation resources.

Protecting eagles from the threat of extinction is a conservation success story that we must prudently safeguard for future generations to come.

I cannot concur with those who advocate saving gorillas from extinction by killing and capturing more free-living individuals only to exhibit them in confinement.

Most evolving lineages, human or otherwise, when threatened with extinction, don't do anything special to avoid it.