Top 71 Quotes & Sayings by Steve Backshall - Page 2

It's going to sound terribly glib and cliched but the more I learn about animals, the more convinced I am that almost all the fears we have about them are unfounded.

All my books draw heavily on my own experiences, and these are not just places I have gone to on holiday, they're locations I know them intimately from lengthy expeditions, most of which have been spent on the hunt for wildlife.

I appreciate that I'm in the privileged situation of getting to spend my entire life outdoors with wildlife, and I know first hand how good it makes you feel, and it's a message that I have to try to get across to kids because as an adult, I can see the dangers that normal modern life exacts upon children.

Dehydration is a serious problem, particularly for young hedgehogs in the summer, so having some water out that they can drink is important.

I was lucky enough to be surrounded by all sorts of animals from a very young age. My sister Jo was much more into the domestic animals - horses and things. I was absolutely fixated on the blackbirds, and the grass snakes in the manure heap and everything that surrounded us.

I was always really into the facts and figures and the statistics about nature and I always loved learning about it and having a new fact on hand. For me it was non-stop dirt, climbing trees and catching lizards and beetles. That was my thing as soon as I could crawl.

There's nothing more paralysing or more likely to make people fall into a malaise of believing they are powerless than just hearing that everything's negative and everything's shot to bits. It's really important that we know we can change this planet for the better and that every single one of us, no matter how small we may feel, has that power.

My best generic tip, would be to be always thinking of an escape strategy. Always look around you and think 'what if'? That and making sure you are correctly trained and experienced.

I'm driven by the sense that there are still parts of the planet that no one knows anything about.

Fences split up the territory that a hedgehog has to forage in so having a little hole in your fence could well enable it to move in and out of your garden.

Hedgehogs need somewhere to hibernate through the winter, but also a place that they can lie out at during the day. So have a few places around your garden that are a bit wild, maybe a log pile, potentially even a hedgehog home, all of which are going to be prime real estate for one of these little guys.