Category Archives: Quotations

L. A. Kenoyer on Saving Newton Woods

By rbrewer | Published: November 21, 2011

The essay that follows is a radio address by Leslie Alva Kenoyer, who served from 1922 to 1953 as Professor and Chairman of the Biology Department at Western Michigan University –at that time Western State Teachers College .  The piece is dated April 16, 1935.  It was written for Western’s Radio Hour, which was evidently a continuing feature [...]

Also posted in Conservation, Land Trusts (& other private land conservation), Michigan (including Kalamazoo), Plants and Plant Communities | 1 Comment

Quote 4, Jeremy Grantham on human population size as the latest bubble

By rbrewer | Published: August 22, 2011

Whether the stable population will be 1.5 billion or 5 billion, the question is: How do we get there?… I have no doubt we’re going to have a bad hundred years.  We have the resources to gracefully handle the transition, but we won’t.  We apparently can’t. –Jeremy Grantham   Jeremy Grantham is an investment strategist [...]

Also posted in Conservation, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Quote 3, John Eastman on Wetlands as Wilderness

By rbrewer | Published: July 18, 2011

And the fount of biodiversity is wilderness.  Today, American forest wilderness exists, when at all, in patches, “museum cases” of public lands, which give only pallid ideas of the large biodiversity our ancestors blithely relinquished. Wetland wilderness, however has not fallen quite so far…. Although many surviving wetlands have indeed suffered irreversible changes… it is [...]

Also posted in Conservation, Michigan (including Kalamazoo), Plants and Plant Communities | Leave a comment

Quote 2, Henry David Thoreau on Preserving Land

By rbrewer | Published: May 6, 2011

  Each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of five hundred or a thousand acres, where a stick should never be cut for fuel, a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation. We hear of cow-commons and ministerial lots, but we want men-commons and lay lots, inalienable forever….   All Walden [...]

Also posted in Conservation, Land Trusts (& other private land conservation), Plants and Plant Communities | 2 Comments

More About Aldo Leopold’s Subversive Ideas

By rbrewer | Published: April 24, 2011

@Dick Klade in Comment 3 to preceding post Thanks for restoring the interesting lost section of your comment. It’s not surprising that Leopold’s ideas didn’t always suit the bureaucracy.  Ecology is the subversive science, as Paul Sears said. The game managers seemed to accept Leopold early.  As an undergraduate in 1953 or 1954, I had [...]

Also posted in Conservation, Land Trusts (& other private land conservation), Southern Illinois Ecology | 1 Comment

Quote 1, Aldo Leopold and the Odyssey of Evolution

By rbrewer | Published: April 19, 2011

Every once in a while someone puts a thought so well that other people ought to know about it.  As I come across such a wise saying, or wise crack, I’ll put it in a post like this, for a while at least. Here’s the first one. We know now what was unknown to all [...]

Also posted in Birds, Conservation | 3 Comments