6 Quotes by Julia Corbett

Rural Americans greatly value animals (wild and domestic) for what they provide, and dislike them for what they take or harm.

In the continental United States, 83 percent of the land area is now within two-thirds of a mile from a road. Even in large forested regions, two-thirds of the land is within a football-field-length of a road or a forest edge.

While I applaud all efforts to incorporate authentic nature into cities, not acknowledging noise levels is a serious oversight. Our cities' collective racket is making all of us sick. Our hearts race and breathing speeds. We must talk louder, our voices hitting higher and higher pitches, our faces contorting, trying to communicate and claim our place in the landscape. Hearing lost is epidemic.

Aircraft, snowmobiles, and ATVs disturb a range of animals from harlequin ducks to mountain goats. Stress enzyme levels in both elk and wolves rose in direct proportion to the amount of snowmobile noise; enzyme levels returned to normal when snowmobiles were absent.

Noise does not respect boundaries. And the less control you have over sounds you do not want--barking dogs, loud music, the interstate--the more it affects you, and not just your mind, but your body.

We often attribute today's short attention spans to electronics, both cell phones and screens, but a powerful underlying contributor to inattention is noise.