鈥淭he elephants do not like the smell of red pepper and after a while they turn tail.鈥�
Kasereka Kambere Mwinbi of the WWF on planting fences of chilli plants around crops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to ward off marauding elephants (AFP, 29 July)
鈥淚t can take some of the dirtiest, nastiest water on the planet and produce clean, safe drinking water.鈥�
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Ken Kearney of Water Security in Reno, Nevada, on the technology that NASA uses to purify sweat and urine, which the company has modified for use in the developing world (Wired, August)
鈥淣ow Elvis has come along and said, 鈥業鈥檓 the rock star. Look at me.'鈥�
Larry E. Mallard, manager of the 160,000-acre White River National Wildlife refuge, Arkansas, on the return of the ivory-billed woodpecker to the boggy woodlands, which have also seen bald eagles and swallow-tailed kites return (The New York Times, 2 August)
鈥淎s premier, I have to choose humans first.鈥�
Peter Beattie, the premier of Queensland, Australia, on calls to remove shark nets from Currumbin Beach during the northward winter migration of humpback whales. A 4-metre-long juvenile humpback whale got entangled and died in the nets (Sydney Morning Herald, 2 August)
鈥淭hat doesn鈥檛 sound like a fire hazard reduction plan to me. It sounds like a sustained yield logging plan.鈥�
Joe Fontaine, a past president of the Sierra Club, an environmental group, on the US Forest Service鈥檚 plans to log trees up to 75 centimetres in diameter in California鈥檚 Sequoia National Forest. The logging is meant to prevent planned fires from getting out of control. The trees will be sold to private mills (San Francisco Chronicle, 31 July)