" What progress requires inexorably of human beings and of continents is that they should renounce their strangeness, that they should break with mystery; and somewhere along that road is inscribed inexorably the end of the last elephant. The cultivated lands must encroach upon the forests, and the roads will bite more and more deeply into the quietude of the great herds. There will be less and less room
for natural splendor. A pity. "

― Romain Gary , The Roots of Heaven