People need to look at wildlife conservation in its totality. As soon as you lose the apex predator, it has harmful consequences right down the food chain.
Interpretation
Wildlife conservation should be approached holistically, as the removal of apex predators disrupts entire ecosystems.
In this quote, Thomas Kaplan emphasizes the importance of understanding wildlife conservation as a comprehensive issue. He highlights how the absence of apex predators, which play a crucial role in maintaining the balance of ecosystems, can lead to negative effects cascading throughout the food chain, illustrating the interconnectedness of nature.
In practice
During a speech on environmental policy, one might quote this to stress the interconnectedness of species.
Coral reefs, the rain forest of the ocean, are home for one-third of the species of the sea. Coral reefs are under stress for several reasons, including warming of the ocean, but especially because of ocean acidification, a direct effect of added carbon dioxide. Ocean life dependent on carbonate shells and skeletons is threatened by dissolution as the ocean becomes more acid.
For the true measure of agriculture is not the sophistication of its equipment the size of its income or even the statistics of its productivity but the good health of the land.
Despite all I have seen and experiences, I still get the same thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb toward it.
Many are outspoken about the climate crisis, but conveniently ignore the fact that support for fossil fuels is not just incompatible with curbing emissions but dangerously counterproductive.
I've travelled all around the world to see the rivers and the mountains, and I've spent a lot of money. I have gone to great lengths, I have seen everything, but I forgot to see just outside my house a dewdrop on a little blade of grass, a dewdrop which reflects in its convexity the whole universe around you.
Her concern with landscapes and living creatures was passionate. This concern, feebly called, "the love of nature" seemed to Shevek to be something much broader than love. There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to rotting and turning into humus. It was strange to see Takver take a leaf into her hand, or even a rock. She became an extension of it, it of her.
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