The Internet is part of this ongoing, species-long project we've been working on since we climbed down out of the trees in the savanna. We've been working on it without really knowing it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
You know the way trees break through the canopy in the rainforest and they go from having this tiny column of light to having all this light - the Internet is kind of like that.
We fill the woods with invasive primates camouflaged to look like piles of leaves who sneak around, sprinkling estrus doe urine and manipulating gadgets that sound like antlers clashing.
What we need is an electronic encyclopedia of life, with one page for each species. On each page is given everything known about that species.
All over the world the wildlife that I write about is in grave danger. It is being exterminated by what we call the progress of civilization.
One of the basic steps in saving a threatened species is to learn more about it: its diet, its mating and reproductive processes, its range patterns, its social behavior.
Native trees are so important to our ecosystem.
The distribution of plants in a given locality is not more marked and defined than that of the birds. Show a botanist a landscape, and he will tell you where to look for the lady's-slipper, the columbine, or the harebell. On the same principles, the ornithologist will direct you where to look for the greenlets, the wood-sparrow, or the chewink.
You look at the fact that for millions of years species on earth have been developing and we've been knocking them off at like a hundred a day.
The genus Drosophila is one of the great success stories. There's hundreds of species within the genus. They're on every continent except Antarctica, they're in tropical rain forests, they're in deserts, they've evolved many exotic mating behaviors, and they're capable of incredibly long-distance flights.
You can cut a tree down, and it grows back. Once a species goes, it's gone forever.