National Parks Quotations

Glaciers are almost gone from Glacier National Park

Biodiversity can't be maintained by protecting a few species in a zoo, or by preserving greenbelts or national parks. To function properly, nature needs more room than that. It can maintain itself, however, without human expense, without zookeepers, park rangers, foresters or gene banks. All it needs is to be left alone.

Although biodiversity loss continues globally, many countries are significantly slowing the rate of loss by shoring up protected natural areas and the services they provide, and in expanding national park systems with tighter management and more secure funding.

Wilderness, like the national park system, was an American idea.

I grew up on the edge of a national park in Canada - timberwolves, creeks, snow drifts.

I haven't been to Tasmania. I haven't been to the South Pole, and I haven't been to the North Pole. I want to see the polar bear migration before there are no polar bears. I want to see Glacier National Park before the glacier melts.

Television was supposed to be a national park. (Instead) it has become a money machine... It's a commodity now, just like pork bellies.

The scenic ideals that surround even our national parks are carriers of a nostalgia for heavenly bliss and eternal calmness.

That is all the National Parks are about. Use, but do no harm.

If the national park is, as Lord Bryce suggested, the best idea America has ever had, wilderness preservation is the highest refinement of that idea,

National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.

...Skyscraper National Park

The establishment of the National Park Service is justified by considerations of good administration, of the value of natural beauty as a National asset, and of the effectiveness of outdoor life and recreation in the production of good citizenship.

National parks and reserves are an integral aspect of intelligent use of natural resources. It is the course of wisdom to set aside an ample portion of our natural resources as national parks and reserves, thus ensuring that future generations may know the majesty of the earth as we know it today.