At a past North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, A key conservation figure gave a talk entitled “The Future for Conservation”.  According to the meeting transactions available on WMI’s website, the talk contained the excerpt below.   Q:  Any guess on the year of this delivery or the speaker providing the remarks? 

Gary Thomson, Flickr

”May I remind you, in closing, that in conservation we may win many contests but if we lose the last one we lose the war. An unwise project for the destruction of natural resources may be defeated fifty times, but if it wins the fifty-first time we might as well have lost on the first occasion. We who understand the value and the vital necessity of maintaining natural resources of soil and water and their products, face a continuous job of making other Americans understand the vital character of this program. We face a never-ending battle to hold off those who would sacrifice anything in the future for immediate gain. And make no mistake, there will always be people, many of them, ready to do this if they can see profit in it for themselves. The forces of conservation will always have such groups to fight. There are now, and always will be, many who would take the last fish, kill the last bird or the last deer, or cut down the last tree, if in so doing they could realize an immediate personal gain. It is our duty as American citizens concerned with the national welfare and the future of this country to see that these groups do not prevail.”