One should perhaps be a bit more wary of milestones — spotting them too often is a sign of fog or of going round in circles — but there do seem to be grounds for hoping that the international conference on the conservation of wetlands and waterfowl, held at Ramsar on the Caspian Sea, last February, is a genuine milestone on one of conservation's more difficult roads. Certainly this was the view of the half-dozen participants who, eight years ago, attended the MAR Conference at Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, in the Camargue, which began the campaign for recognition of the importance of conserving 'marshes, bogs and other wetlands' — hitherto almost universally regarded as wasteful nuisances, or even menaces to health, to be drained at the first possible moment.