Conservation philosophy is swinging away from the traditional approach of setting up reserves to give absolute protection to wildlife and is replacing it with more realistic strategies. To succeed today, conservationists should take into account the needs of the people who share their land with wild species. The author examines some of the ways in which wildlife can be valuable to local people and made to pay for its own conservation – game viewing, sport hunting, game cropping and ranching. The advantages and pitfalls are discussed and it is concluded that while these uses are possible for some some wildlife species, others will never have a direct economic value. Someone will have to pay for their conservation – and it should not be those who can least afford it.

In May 1992 the discovery of three pairs of horns in the only remaining area of pristine forest in northern Vietnam led to the description of a new species of ox. A total of 20 specimens have now been found, most of them consisting of only the horns and part of the skull. The Ministry of Forestry in Vietnam is enlarging and upgrading protected areas in the suspected 4000-sq-km range of the Vu Quang ox and surveys are under way in two proposed reserves in neighbouring Laos where the ox is also reported to occur. Meanwhile a local campaign is necessary to inform villagers of the valuable nature of this species and to ban further hunting.

Biodiversity – a measure of the wealth of species, ecosystems and ecological processes that make up our living planet –received public prominence as a result of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. The loss of biodiversity, say the authors, is the greatest environmental problem the world faces but the issue has not been given the attention it deserves. With the emergence of the Global Environmental Facility in 1990 came the chance to fund biodiversity conservation on a unprecedented scale and in 1992 the GEF was adopted as the interim funding mechanism for the Convention on Biological Diversity signed at the Earth Summit. Three years after its foundation, the authors of this paper suggest that the GEF has to be reformed radically if it is to become an effective force in conservation. Their conclusions are based on Conservation International's experience with the GEF over the last 3 years in more than 10 countries.

Current evidence suggests that Europe's dolphins in the 1990s require urgent action to conserve them. This paper reviews the nature of the threats to these animals and outlines some measures designed to help counter them.

Butterfly ranching is an important facet of promoting habitat conservation in tropical regions. Recent developments, emphasizing centralized co-ordination of rural cottage industries, are summarized to indicate progress in integration of trade and larger scale species and habitat sustainability.

Pteropus livingstonii is one of the world's most endangered fruit bats, with a small population limited to two of the Comoro Islands (western Indian Ocean), Surveys carried out in 1992 and 1993 suggest that the population numbers around 150 individuals. Loss of habitat through deforestation is the major threat to this species. Old World Fruit Bats: An Action Plan for their Conservation recommends captive-breeding of this species as one of 20 priority projects. The FFPS helped fund both the preparation of the Action Plan and the field projects described in this paper.

Wild animals are an important source of protein for the rural peoples living in or near tropical forests. However, the resource can easily be overexploited and game species can become locally depleted, or even extinct. This paper discusses attempts to measure the sustainability of hunting in tropical forests. It examines five indices of sustainability in current use and two models that attempt to model sustainability.

The three species of crowned pigeons are endemic to New Guinea and nearby islands where they are declining in numbers, especially near human settlements where hunting pressure is high. Little is known about their biology and ecology or about the magnitude of the impact of the threats from hunting, capture for trade, and loss of their lowland forest habitat. The authors make recommendations for action needed to secure the future for these large and attractive birds.