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Wetlands Quotes

Browse 25 quotes about Wetlands.

Wetlands Quotes

“Thoreau the “Patron Saint of Swamps” because he enjoyed being in them and writing about them said, “my temple is the swamp… When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most impenetrable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place, a sanctum sanctorum… I seemed to have reached a new world, so wild a place…far away from human society. What’s the need of visiting far-off mountains and bogs, if a half-hour’s walk will carry me into such wildness and novelty.”

“As long as the wetland looks pretty and also attracts ducks from time to time, it is regarded as a complete success. An attractive appearance is fine and is of considerable concern in urban developments. It is the pretense that such wetlands also create rich habitats which is objectionable, when urban development is the primary cause of loss of diversity in a wide range of ecosystems around cities including wetlands. The one ecologically positive thing that most created wetlands do a reasonable job of is water treatment, because the limited range of plants likely to survive the semi-toxic soils and waters of newly created wetlands are invariably colonisers that will also use up a wide range of nutrients.”

“The physical reclamation of the floodplain of the Spey involved a hugely ambitious series of localised engineering projects, surely equal to any undertaking in lowland Britain - perhaps more so considering the region's remoteness and economic difficulties. ...Around 40 miles of banks were constructed over five decades, reclaiming some 4,000 acres of the most fertile land in Badenoch, dramatically increasing the region's pastoral and arable yields to the benefit of all. Many of these floodbanks still protect the riverside fields, a monument not just to the ideology of Enlightenment and improvement, but to the vision and labour of all involved - lairds, tacksmen, tenants and labourers. Ironically, the huge Invereshie reclamation scheme, the great drain and riverbanks, are now - in response to a new ideological vision being re-converted into wetlands, the Invereshie Meadows reverting to the Insh Marshes.”

“Later in February NatureScot published a report, Anticipating and Mitigating Projected Climate-driven Increases in Extreme Drought in Scotland, 2021 - 2040. Extreme drought events, the writers warned, could increase from an average of one every 20 years to one every three, and could also last up to three months longer than they have in the past. Water scarcity could impact crop yields, drinking water supplies, peat bogs and other wetland ecosystems.”

“I look at it this way... For centuries now, man has done everything he can to destroy, defile, and interfere with nature: clear-cutting forests, strip-mining mountains, poisoning the atmosphere, over-fishing the oceans, polluting the rivers and lakes, destroying wetlands and aquifers... so when nature strikes back, and smacks him on the head and kicks him in the nuts, I enjoy that. I have absolutely no sympathy for human beings whatsoever. None. And no matter what kind of problem humans are facing, whether it's natural or man-made, I always hope it gets worse.”

“The "developed" nations had given to the "free market" the status of a god, and were sacrificing to it their farmers, farmlands, and communities, their forests, wetlands, and prairies, their ecosystems and watersheds. They had accepted universal pollution and global warming as normal costs of doing business.”

“The number of people displaced by dams is estimated at between 40 million and 80 million, most of them in China and India. The costs of dams were on average 50% above their original estimate. Some designed to reduce flooding made it worse, and there were many unexpected environmental disadvantages, including the extinction of fish and bird species. Half the world's wetlands had been lost because of dams.”

“For many of us, water simply flows from a faucet, and we think little about it beyond this point of contact. We have lost a sense of respect for the wild river, for the complex workings of a wetland, for the intricate web of life that water supports.”

“A scientist with a poet's command of language, Cristina Eisenberg writes with precision and passion . . . takes her reader on a breathtaking, sometimes heartbreaking tour of the planet from the Gulf of Maine to the Amazonian rain forests, the tropical coral reefs to old growth forests of the Northwest as well as rivers, lakes, and wetlands. I found the wealth of information not only accessible but riveting . . . Eisenberg's powerful, beautifully written book . . . has the potential to open many people's eyes, minds, and hearts.”