By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber. – Henry David Thoreau

“Whatever is not nailed down is mine.” This is the motto of the exploiter. “Whatever can be pried loose is not nailed down.” This is the second maxim in a country where people are rich, caring little in their present prosperity what shall become of the future. – David Starr Jordan, 1910