Natural heritage is the legacy of natural objects and intangible attributes encompassing the countryside and natural environment, including flora and fauna, scientifically known as biodiversity, and geology and landforms (geodiversity).
Heritage is that which is inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future generations.
The term "natural heritage", derived from "natural inheritance", pre-dates the term "biodiversity", though it is a less scientific term and more easily comprehended in some ways by the wider audience interested in conservation biology. "Natural Heritage" was used in the United States when Jimmy Carter set up the Georgia Heritage Trust while he was governor of Georgia; Carter's trust dealt with both natural and cultural heritage,. It would appear that Carter picked the term up from Lyndon Johnson, who used it in a 1966 Message to Congress. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Wilderness Act of 1964. "Natural Heritage" was picked up by the Science Division of The Nature Conservancy when, under Jenkins, it launched in 1974 the network of state natural heritage programs. When this network was extended outside the USA, the term "Conservation Data Center" was suggested by Guillermo Mann and came to be preferred.
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Famous quotes containing the words natural and/or heritage:
“Of all natural forces, vitality is the incommunicable one.... Vitality never “takes.” You have it or you haven’t it, like health or brown eyes or a baritone voice.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“The heritage of the American Revolution is forgotten, and the American government, for better and for worse, has entered into the heritage of Europe as though it were its patrimony—unaware, alas, of the fact that Europe’s declining power was preceded and accompanied by political bankruptcy, the bankruptcy of the nation-state and its concept of sovereignty.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)