“Future generations will have the right to cast stones at us”

♦ Raoul de Clermont: “All friends of Nature must come together to raise their voices”

The subject of the congress was defined in December 1922 by Raoul de Clermont (1), secretary general of the congress: “Nature, in its three kingdoms, is threatened on all sides by the progress of industry. Man’s activity is reaching regions hitherto inaccessible to his enterprises; his caprice or his improvident utilitarianism endanger the existence of a large number of animal and plant species. Even those animals whose usefulness, rarity or beauty should be preserved are hunted down, massacred, destroyed, even on the verge of extinction; botanical species, isolated or grouped in stations and forests, are victims of disastrous innovations, which, under the very laudable cover of industrial progress, deprive us of the salutary help of the tree, or spoil the harmony of our most picturesque, of our most magnificent landscapes, sometimes destroying admirable witnesses of geological times. All friends, all defenders of Nature must come together to raise their voices, write effective protests and exercise protective action that safeguards our natural heritage for the future (2). »

♦ Jean Delacour (president of the LPO): “Future generations will have the right to cast stones at us”

May 31, 1923, International Nature Protection Congress: “An animal species once extinct cannot revive… Future generations will have the right to cast stones at us, if we do not try to avoid such misfortunes and pass on to them intact the natural heritage left to us by our parents. Urgent measures must therefore be taken (…).”

♦ Louis Ternier: “There is reason to protect all birds, without exception”

Member of the hunting commission at the Ministry of Agriculture, honorary president of the LPO:

“(…) There is reason to protect all birds, without exception. There are neither absolutely useful nor absolutely harmful ones. Birds are simply intended to maintain the balance between overproduction and the natural disappearance of insects, when they are insectivores; between the excessive abundance of grains and the needs of the natural sowing of plants, when they are granivorous; between the excessive multiplication of birds themselves, and their normal “depreciation” when it comes to birds of prey. Human intervention in maintaining these balances was not foreseen by Nature. Civilization alone, by substituting human activity for the role originally assigned to the bird, has modified the practical character of all species, many of which have become useless or indifferent. But, all of them, at their origin, had their determined function, foreign to our requirements.

(…) What bird lovers will have to strive to obtain from the public authorities in the future is protection based on reasons of aesthetics and sentiment, as well as political, diplomatic and self-interested considerations. have been subordinated to sometimes questionable and often contested reasons of utility. »

♦ Lucien Desnues: “It is indeed a crime to devastate a beautiful site or an ancient forest”

Vice-president of the Saint-Hubert Club of France : “It would seem at first sight that civilization had to attenuate the instincts of destruction. Halas! the most “modern” of men are not those who carry the least unforgivable attacks on the harmony established around us by the Creator. Do not the very progress of science and industry sometimes become complicit in the crimes which ruin the magnificence of Nature? Because it is indeed a crime to devastate a beautiful site or an ancient forest…”

(…)

“1° That it be established as quickly as possible, not only by private initiatives, but also by the care of the State, of Territorial Reserves with a view to the conservation of threatened animal species, game or not, and the nature in general.

2° That hunting legislation be supplemented by measures specially safeguarding certain species that have become rare.”

♦ Auguste Rey: “Bringing nature into the city”

Qualified architect, member of the SPPF steering committee: “Without delving into the latest discoveries of science on the beneficial action of greenery, let us limit ourselves to recalling that it is a capital element in cleaning the air, the subsoil, and the soil, as well as that through its beauty, its charm, the variety of its forms and its nuances, it tends to refresh the worried and tired spirit of the city dweller. »

“Bringing nature into the city, protecting it there, developing it there is not vain prodigality (…) but on the contrary constitutes one of the wisest operations that can be recommended to municipalities and the State for the safeguarding public health, which the trust of the people has given them to take care of. »

♦ Louis Mangin: “Nature needs protection”

Botanist, director of the MNBN and president of the National Acclimatization Society of France (Snaf, future SNPN). Closing speech of the Congress: “Nature needs protection and it is (our) role (to) prevent individual and collective selfishness from squandering a heritage of beauty which belongs to all. But we do not intervene only for the satisfaction of aesthetics, we also want to denounce and stop the disastrous destruction, even from a simple practical point of view, of incalculable wealth whose prudent exploitation should ensure perpetuity. »

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