Expedition garbage is an unfortunate by-product of Himalayan mountaineering expeditions. High transport costs, lack of concern amongst climbers, and lack of direction by authorities, results in squalid garbage heaps around mountain campsites. Growth in numbers of expeditions, climbers, and trekkers, to the Himalaya necessitates prompt action to prevent despoliation of those areas.

Such despoliation of campsites by inadequate treatment or unsatisfactory disposal practices cannot be halted by reliance on improved climber behaviour alone. Host-country authorities must develop and enforce more comprehensive guidelines and policies for garbage disposal than currently prevail. A combination of burning and transport to pits off-site seems likely to be typically the best disposal practice to follow. A combination of change in expedition behaviour, provision of leadership in garbage disposal, and use of environmental protection levies, seems necessary to combat the problem of growing squalor at campsites and expanding desecration of surrounding areas.

Black-and-white aerial photographs were used to map the lithology, land-use/forest types, and landslide zones (namely old, active, or potential) in a part of Central Himalaya. The landslide and land-use/forest type maps were simultaneously studied, and the frequency distribution of the landslide zones in different land-uses and forest types was estimated. The correlation between the maps indicated the following: In old landslide-affected sites, agriculture was the predominant land-use, followed by Pinus roxburghii forest (≤ 40% crown cover), scrub vegetation, and wasteland (including grassland). The presence of other forests (e.g. forests dominated by climax species such as Shorea robusta at low elevations and Quercus spp. at higher elevations) indicates a high potentiality of recovery of the ecosystems involved, provided biotic (especially anthropic) factors are not too intensive.

The active and potential landslide zones were concentrated along geologically active planes, namely thrusts and faults, and/or in the vicinity of toe-erosion of hill-slopes. These two were dominated by P.roxburghii forest (≤ 40% crown cover). The broadleaf forests showed minimal signs of active and potential landslides, perhaps because of their multistratal character which is conducive to minimizing soil-loss compared with the mostly single-storeyed Chir Pine forest. It is, therefore, suggested that the sites should be maintained under a multistratal broadleaf canopy to conserve the soil. Where, however, the Chir Pine forest is already developed, appropriate silvicultural measures may be taken to increase its crown cover to more than 40%.

Efforts to protect the wild Vicuña, an endangered relative of the domesticated Llama and Alpaca of the central Andes, and to increase the species' numbers, have been more successful in achieving technical wildlife management goals than in complementing agro-pastoral activities of the indigenous peoples of the region. In both Pampa Galeras National Reserve in Peru and in Lauca National Park in Chile, lack of consultation with native pastoralists, whose lands the reserves occupy, reflects weak commitment to broader social and economic goals on the part of national authorities, as well as the inadequacy of international technical assistance in involving local communities in such projects.

Specifically, those projects have neglected to consider the importance of local patterns of land tenure, which are only in small part communal, and of economic differentiation with those communities. At the same time, authorities have controlled or monitored access to such subsistence resources as pasture and fuel for local residents, while failing to offer short-term alternatives for economic opportunity. This is in contrast to the free hand enjoyed by energy and agricultural irrigation projects such as those which benefit Chile's Atacama port of Arica. Continuation of such policies jeopardizes long-term success of wildlife protection as well as the economic future of the region's human inhabitants.

Prespa National Park in Greece is an important breeding-area for rare and endangered waterbird species, but people living within the Park and using its resources create serious conservation problems. An environmental management plan which will regulate mainly the human activities within the Park is therefore necessary. Such a plan should be based on a land cover/use analysis of the area, for which much of the necessary information, in the form of a thematic map, has been collected by interpreting blackand-white aerial photographs. The procedure involved the development of a classification system, transferring the interpreted data onto a base-map, field-checking the results, and tabulating the area measurements with the pertinent errors.

Of the total Park area (25,690 ha), 66.5% is classified as terrestrial (forestland, rangeland, agricultural land whether irrigated, non-irrigated, or abandoned, wet meadows/marshland, barren and eroded land, and urban areas), and the remainder as aquatic (water, reedbeds). The most extensive category in the Park is forestland, much of which is seriously degraded. Rangeland provides forage for sheep and goats, being also degraded owing to uncontrolled grazing. Wet meadows/marshland are invaluable as waterbird breeding and feeding habitats, but the present use of this category as grazing fields, and its proximity to agricultural land and to the existing irrigation/drainage system, have all had negative impacts on the resource. Irrigated land is almost half of the cultivated area.

The abandoned agricultural land is interspersed within the forestland and is a result of the human population decline in the area, while barren and eroded land has resulted from prolonged land misuse. Twelve old villages are distributed over the Park, being visually unobtrusive. Lake Mikri Prespa is the main water-body and covers almost the entire nucleus of the Park. Extensive reedbeds are found along the lakeshores, which are the main breeding habitats of certain waterbirds. As land cover/use analysis of the Park has shown much serious environmental degradation, conservation measures should be undertaken urgently.

A quantitative measurement of tourist off-road driving was conducted in Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya. Off-road driving was simulated in a grassland area of the Reserve that was heavily used by tourists. A mathematical model was employed to estimate the overall impact of tourist off-road driving on the Reserve's grassland communities.

The results of off-road driving simulation experiments showed that damage increased with the number of vehicular passes. Off-road driving was more destructive to the vegetation at the loops than on the straight. The magnitude of the estimated loss due to extrapolation of the findings of the simulation experiments to the whole reserve was very small. The aesthetic quality of the reserve was, however, adversely affected by the off-road driving, as was, doubtless, the privacy of the animals.

Four selected reserves in Jordan have been studied to find out the effect of conservation on wildlife. These reserves are: Shaumari in the eastern desert; Surra in the Irano-Turanian region in the north of Jordan; Dab'aa in the Irano-Turanian in the southeastern part of Jordan; and Al-Fugaug in the Mediterranean region in the south of Jordan. The four reserves are representative of the three major biogeographical regions represented in the country.

Using the quadrat method of survey, the vegetation height, cover, phytomass, diversity, and total number of macrophytic species, were statistically analysed. The results obtained show that the values of the factors studied tended to be 2–3 times as much inside as outside the fence in the unprotected area.

These reserves were not subjected to any special treatment, merely being fenced and protected under natural condition without any human interference such as spreading of seeds, irrigation, fertilization, or any other anthropogenic factors.

The following recommendations are offered in order to protect wildlife: foundation of reserves for wildlife protection; increasing well-planned rangelands and grazing areas for meat production; implementation of the laws against offences; improvement of the rangelands through research and by using fertilizers or nodular Bacteria associated with leguminous plants adapted to dry conditions; increased water research in dry areas in the hopes of producing irrigated rangelands; marginal lands with a low rainfall must not be used for cultivation; scientific research is needed to determine the carrying capacity of rangelands in different regions of the country; development of new methods of animal feeding to decrease the grazing pressure on natural rangelands; prohibition of hunting for at least five years; and finally, intensive information and publicity through the different media should be given out to educate the public and make them aware of the urgent need to protect wildlife and make proper use of it.

An experiment to suggest a technique for rehabilitation of a hard-limestone quarry floor in northern England was carried into its seventh year (see also Dixon & Hambler, 1984). The stress-tolerant grass Festuca rubra var. fallax Hack, cultivar Cascade proved suitable as a primary colonist, especially when sown onto rubble treated with a powdery manure derived from sewage. The community so produced was composed mainly of F. rubra and mosses, their proportions varying reciprocally with time but remaining approximately stable in a series of summer estimates of percentage cover.

The dry-weight per unit area of this vegetation, and that of other experimental sets, did not increase between the third and sixth years of the experiment. The organic content of the developing soil, however, increased considerably. Trifolium repens, where sown with the grass, had no obvious ecological impact, although its improved performance on Rabbit ‘middens’ indicated the general nutrient deficiency of the site.

A net flow of immigrant flowering-plants into the experimental site slowed down by the seventh year. Limestone grassland species arrived but the most abundant species were ruderals. All of the potentially large ruderal species failed to attain their full competitive potential, as did F. rubra. The community dominated by F. rubra and mosses proved unfavourable for the establishment of both Poa annua and Epilobium angustifolium— the latter being regarded as a particularly undesirable weed in this context.

The concept of visual acceptability was applied as a measure of the success of each sowing/treatment combination; the most successful might be recommended for rehabilitation of a worked-out limestone quarry.

There has been a systematic increase in the length of the freeze-free season in several Canadian cities since 1940. This increase is believed to be due mainly to urbanization. Although the rate of urbanization during the period 1940–70 was not significantly higher than the rates in the preceding decades, urban growth during those thirty years was accompanied by higher levels of fossil-fuel conversion, which produced higher temperatures in towns and cities than in surrounding rural areas, and a generally reinforced ‘greenhouse effect’. The higher temperatures in turn combined with other urban factors to enhance the length of the freeze-free season.

In a northern climate where the growing-season is already precariously short, a longer freeze-free season should have beneficial effects on agriculture and affect other aspects of the environment. There is general agreement among research workers that the energetics of solar variability are too small to affect tropospheric or stratospheric processes directly to any significant degree. This study reinforces belief in the importance of local factors; such influences tend to override any subtle connection between solar variability and the weather.