In December 1974 I was privileged to make a fifteen-day journey in the northern reaches of the vast Ouadi Rimé–Ouadi Achim Faunal Reserve in the sub-saharan belt of the Republic of Chad. In size this reserve is comparable with Scotland and it has received much less attention than is its due. Created in 1969 to protect ostrich Struthio camelus, cheetah Acinonyx jubatus, addax Addax nasomaculatus and scimitar-horned oryx, Oryx dammah, it is of particular significance to the oryx, harbouring one of the few viable wild breeding populations. My guide to the reserve was John E. Newby, a British ecologist who has been studying its wildlife for the past three years; he helped me to appreciate the enormous difficulties involved in protecting its endangered species.

At Uda Walawe in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) a group of about thirty elephants have become isolated in a small pocket of jungle as a result of large-scale agricultural development. There is not sufficient food for them and they are completely surrounded by farms. Inevitably they raid the fields at night, and are shot at by the farmers; some are injured, have become dangerous and killed people. Forced to act, the Wildlife Department has been trying to move them. The author, who is resident Veterinary Officer at Whipsnade Park in England, assisted with the second removal, and here describes how it was done and some of the problems.

The Comoro lemurs, the only wild lemur populations outside Madagascar, are protected and seem secure. But after spending seven months in the islands the author believes that they could become threatened if forest destruction, particularly of the protected forest, continues at the present rate. He urges the need to enforce both forest protection and the hunting laws.

In August 1974 a young male tiger moved into a populated area in the Sundarbans, the delta of the Ganges, and killed one woman and a number of livestock. Rather than destroy the animal the Forest Directorate decided to capture it, using immobilising drugs, and release it in the Sundarbans Tiger Reserve. This was successfully done, but less than a week later it was found dead from wounds evidently inflicted by another tiger. The authors discuss the implications of the incident, the publicity it attracted, and the changes in public attitudes.

This abstract of a paper read at the 10th International Symposium on the Biology of Amphibians and Reptiles, in Frankfurt last year, points to the endangered status of three of Britain's six reptiles, the lack of knowledge about them, and suggests measures that should be taken to protect them.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for biomedical research workers to get the wild primates they consider essential for their work. Successful primate ranching could help solve the problem. In 1967 a well-known animal dealer in Colombia, Mike Tsalickis of Leticia, released over 5000 squirrel monkeys on an island in the Amazon in the hope of quick breeding results. Five years later he estimated the island monkey population at over 20,000, and the experiment appeared to have been very successful; later counts, however, suggested considerable errors in the figures and that the monkeys had in fact decreased catastrophically. The authors describe this and other experiments, some successful, but only as a result of expensive supplemental feeding.

The guanaco, a wild South American camel, like the vicuña, is not on the IUCN endangered list, but numbers have decreased steadily, and it is on Peru's list of endangered species. The author, who describes a brief study of the largest population in Peru, suggests that protective measures are needed.

The author spent six weeks in Zaire early in 1975 to get first-hand experience both of mountain gorillas, in the Kahuzi Biega and Virunga national parks, and of bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees) in forests south of the Zaire river. As a result he believes that, Tor the mountain gorillas, the enlargement, already planned, of the Kahuzi Biega park is important to ensure that population's viability, and also that thought should be given to introducing new blood into the Virunga population, which may already be suifering from inbreeding. For the bonobos he suggests that, if investigation confirms the view that the Salonga National Park is not a good area for them, the Lomako-Bolombo region should be considered for a bonobo reserve. Dr MacKinnon is a member of the IUCN Survival Service Commission's Primate Group and has made major studies of the orang-utan.

The Italian grey partridge Perdix p. italica is in danger of extinction. It has been overhunted and stocks have been polluted by the importing and release of other subspecies. The author urges that the few small flocks of the pure native bird known to survive should be located and given strict protection.

The black-footed ferret depends on prairie dogs for both shelter and food, living in their underground ‘towns’ and preying on them. But the prairie dogs, regarded as pests by the ranchers and farmers, have been subjected to intensive poisoning campaigns which successfully exterminated them over most of their range and heavily reduced their numbers in the rest. This has brought the ferrets to the verge of extinction. A conservation management programme is urgently needed but difficult to devise, because so little is known about these elusive, nocturnal and now very rare underground dwellers. The author believes that computer simulation models now offer a good study method, and suggests how this should be done.

This report of the author's six-week study of the European black vulture in Mallorca suggests that this endangered species has declined still further in the island and now numbers about 40. He believes that disturbance and direct persecution could be having a serious effect on such a small population, but food may be a factor and needs closer study. The FPS aided this study with an Oryx 100% Fund grant.

Found in only one small area in north-east Kenya, the Tana mangabey is both seriously depleted and highly endangered. Numbers are estimated at under 1500. The author, who spent two years on a field study in the Tana River area, shows how the combination of increased pressure from the growing human population and the long-term effects of new hydroelectric and irrigation schemes will affect especially the food supply of this monkey, which has adapted itself to a complicated river regime that may now be destroyed.

Although the tamaraw occurred on Luzon during the Pleistocene, in historic times this buffalo has been restricted to the Philippine island of Mindoro. There it established a reputation for aggressiveness that made it widely known in the Philippines, but it was not described for science until 1888. It has been estimated that 10,000 tamaraw Bubalus mindorensis occupied Mindoro island in 1900 but by 1949 numbers had declined to 1000 animals, and in 1953 fewer than 250 remained. In 1969 Harrisson estimated that about 100 survived in three of their four known areas. Poaching was the main cause of the decline. Thanks to Harrisson's and General Lindbergh's efforts, 1969 also marked the start of the Philippine Government's tamaraw conservation effort, and wardens and guards were posted at the Mt Iglit Game Refuge and Bird Sanctuary in Occidental Mindoro. Between May 1972 and March 1974 I conducted a tamaraw study on 2000 hectares of the refuge where the major tamaraw population was to be found.

Management in a national park is the art of maintaining harmony between living things; it must work with nature, not against, if only because that is so much easier. The author suggests a three-point plan, and shows how it is applied in the Arusha National Park.

The Nilgiri tahr Hemitragus hylocrius, a wild goat confined to mountain tops along the Western Ghats in southern India, is listed in the IUCN Red Data Book of endangered species on the basis of surveys made by the author. In 1963 he organised the first tahr census for the Nilgiri Wild Life Association, of which he was Hon. Superintendent, and since then has made surveys in the Grass Hills (in the Anamallais) and the High Range (Eravikulam) in Kerala and Kodayar (Tamil Nadu). In 1972/73, sponsored by the Fauna Preservation Society, he made the population studies in the upper Palani Plateau, and the Highwavy Mountains, both in Madurai District in Tamil Nadu, described in this article. In both areas he found tahr numbers seriously reduced, and the main causes to be poaching and habitat destruction. In March this year the Kerala State Government declared the Eravikulam/Rajmallay/Animudi area a sanctuary, which brings most of the range of the tahr under protection. But enforcing the protection may be more difficult, and it remains to be seen whether the tahr were better protected by the High Range Game Association, who protected the largest tahr population from poaching in the interests of their members' strictly limited hunting. Photographs in this article are by the author.

How valuable as a nature reserve is a small wood? How much more valuable is a bigger wood, and why? The author shows how ecological considerations and the requirements of different species affect the value of particular areas and should be taken into account in selecting nature reserves.

One of the key papers at the Technical Meetings that accompanied the IUCN General Assembly in Zaïre was Dr Dasmann's showing how the emphasis in nature conservation has shifted. No longer can the ‘biosphere people’ – the people of the developed nations who draw on the resources of the whole world to maintain their life-style – simply urge developing countries to ‘protect’ wildlife and establish national parks while at the same time pressing them to cut back their population growth. One extra person in the USA will consume more in energy and materials than 20 extra people in Tanzania. What Dr Dasmann calls the ‘ecosystem people’—those who depend for all their resources on supplies within their local ecosystem – lived in balance with nature and, moreover, did not live impoverished lives, Today we can only solve our world problems by getting back to some better balance, ‘the old partnership with nature that existed without people being aware of it’. What we need, he suggests, is ‘conservation as if people mattered’ and ‘development as if nature mattered’. Nature conservation today demands new life-styles.