"The human species is, in a word, an environmental abnormality. It is possible that intelligence in the wrong kind of species was foreordained to be a fatal combination for the biosphere. Perhaps a law of evolution is that intelligence usually extinguishes itself."

Edward O. Wilson, 1993

"...of North America's eighty-six spices of frogs and toads, nearly a third are in trouble. On a worldwide basis...researchers estimate that one-quarter to one-half of the earth's (frog and toad) species could be extinct in the next 30 years."

Emily Yoffe, 1992

"Meanwhile, in European forests a mass extinction of mushrooms may be taking place... (It) was found in test plots the number of viable mushroom species declined from thirty-seven to twelve over a twenty-year period. In general, European researchers believe that the mushroom decline is bound up with the decline of forests from acid rain, excess nitrogen, ozone, and related causes."

Charles E. Little, 1995

"...on the forest floor in the Middle West, and presumably elsewhere, the earthworms are dying. ...studies of soil invertebrates in parts of ohio and Indiana subject to air pollution deposition show a 50 percent decline in the density of invertebrates and a 97 percent decline in the density of earthworms."

Orie Loucks, 1991

About frogs and toads: "The causes of such declines and extinctions are, as in most ecological tragedies of this sort, hard to identify exactly, But acid rain and global warming are implicated, as well as massive changes in natural forest habitat. And now UV-B is suspected."

Charles Little, 1995

"A new ethic is required - a new attitude toward discharging our responsibility for caring for ourselves and for the earth. We must recognize the earth's limited capacity to provide for us. We must recognize its fragility. We must no longer allow it to be ravaged.

The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land."

Aldo Leopold, 1948

"A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these 'resources', but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and , at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state.

In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such."

Aldo Leopold, 1948

"Species routinely go extinct. That's normal. But the current level of human-caused extinction is not normal. We are killing off our brother and sister creatures at a rate one hundred to one thousand times faster than they would die off on their own. Our weapons have included habitat destruction, habitat fragmentation, chemical poisoning, and of course guns, nets, and the ancient custom of hand-to-hand combat."

Alan ArKisson, 1999

"One of the less-publicized impacts of the Indonesian economic crisis in the late 1990s was an all-out attack on the nation's endangered species. ...desperate Indonesians were capturing rare creatures in the jungle, and either eating them or selling them as delicacies to rich foreigners. Certain wealthy Taiwanese, for example, have a taste for raw baby monkey brains, eaten directly from a freshly opened skull."

Alan ArKisson, 1999