Edward Abbey
Edward Paul Abbey
American author, essayist, environmental activist, wrote The Monkey Wrench
Gang
(1927-1989)
"The rancher strings barbed wire across the range, drills wells and bulldozes stock ponds everywhere, drives off bighorn sheep, poisons coyotes and prairie dogs, shoots eagle and bear and cougar on sight, supplants the native bluestem and grama grass with tumbleweed, cow shit, cheat grass, snakeweed, anthills, poeverty weed, mud and dust and flies - and then leans back and smiles broadly at the Tee Vee cameras and tells us how much he loves the West."
"Overgrazing is much too weak a term. Most of the public lands in the West, and especially in the Southwest, are what you might call 'cowburnt.' Along every flowing stream, around every seep and spring and water hole and well, you'll find acres and acres of what range-management specialists call 'sacrifice areas.' Our public lands have been overgrazed for a century...and overgrazing means eventual ruin, just like strip-mining or clear-cutting or the damming of rivers."
"Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live on."
