When is a protected butterfly no longer protected? The answer seems to be when it gets in the way of big business interests, or so a recent case in the USA indicates. The US Fish and Wildlife Service decided in mid-March that part of a mountain containing federally protected butterflies could be bulldozed as long as other areas were maintained in perpetuity for conservation purposes.

The series of IUCN Red Data Books on mammals, birds and reptiles is familiar to many people interested in conservation. The latest publication breaks new ground, being the first volume on animals without backbones, the invertebrates. Of all living things, the invertebrates have received least attention from conservationists, perhaps because they are often inconspicuous or poorly known. Governments and international organisations generally take an interest only in those relatively few species considered to be man’s enemies, the pests and disease carriers. The usefulness to man of many invertebrates is rarely emphasised, yet shrimps and lobsters are the bases of important fisheries, many invertebrates have potential medical use, and others, like earthworms and pollinating insects, play vital ecological roles. Conservation organisations also give the group a low priority, perhaps worried that the pandaloving public will withdraw its support if donations are seen to go to spiders, snails and other lowly animals.

In Oryx, October 1981, Huang Chuchien described the serious plight of China’s endemic alligator which had disappeared from most of its historic range and had been listed as a First Class Protected Animal. Earlier that year the author had joined him and other scientists to make a more complete study of the animal, to which ffPS contributed £100. The results of the study suggest that the alligator will perhaps only continue to exist in the wild for a few more years. The main hope for their conservation lies in alligator farming.

Ladakh, a remote region of India lying between the Himalayas and Tibet, is ethnically and geographically distinct from the rest of the country. Because of its isolation, change came later to Ladakh than to other parts of the Himalayas, but recent years have seen the familiar pattern of social change, human population increase, tourism and rural development beginning to affect the environment. The authors, jointly and individually, made a series of visits to the area to investigate the status of the wildlife and to look at conservation measures.

The wildlife of southern Sudan is profuse and diverse but its potential for tourism is scarcely developed. Its conservation is hampered by fuel shortages and the inaccessible nature of the country, and heavily armed poachers have slaughtered large numbers of elephants for ivory. The author, who visited the country in 1982, reports on the conservation work that is being carried out despite the problems.

n I 1981 the authors reviewed all the information then available to them on the world ivory trade to determine the number of elephants represented by Africa’s raw ivory exports. Their findings were published in Oryx in February 1982. Since then they have been able to collect and analyse more data, which has permitted a more accurate assessment of the situation up to the end of 1982. Contrary to their earlier conclusions, they expect the output in ivory to remain high throughout the coming decade.

The rain forests of southern Mexico represent the northernmost extent of this ecosystem in the Americas. In the past 30 years half of these forests have been destroyed; only three patches remain where once forest stretched unbroken from Veracruz to Chiapas. But at a university research station set up in 1967 something is being done. The authors, who work at the station, describe the conservation, research and education taking place there and the important role the station has in persuading the community of the necessity of conserving the country’s rain forests.