Independence for Malaysia and the resulting hostilities with Indonesia have led to changes affecting wildlife as well as humans and not always for the worse. Not only was the smuggling of animals via Singapore stopped dead, which particularly affected orang utans, and the sale of firearms and ammunition drastically controlled, with already noticeable effects on some animal populations, but the new leaders feel strongly about national assets going out of the country, whether antiques or animals, with the result that more has been done for wildlife in the past two years man in decades before. The real killer, says the author, who is Curator of the Sarawak Museum, is timber felling with vastly accelerated techniques which take machines up to 1000 ft. and lay whole jungles by the square mile a day.

Since 1939 Norwegian hunters of minke whales have been required by the government to keep detailed records of their catches. Arthur Bourne has recently studied these records for the FPS and has found a significant decline in the number of calves taken, which, together with other evidence, suggests a decrease in stocks. As a preliminary step to a study of the minke population the Norwegians started marking experiments in 1964 which are being continued. The minke whale has several names: Slijper calls it the lesser piked or minke; the Handbook of British Mammals the lesser rorqual or pike.

Polar bears are on the IUCN list of endangered species. In 1961, when there were signs of serious depletions, the Canadian Wildlife Service started a five-year research project on the polar bear's biology and ecology, and the author is engaged on this work. He points out that polar bears are a most valuable resource, especially to the Canadian Eskimos, and if their numbers are allowed to dwindle to the point at which they have to be given complete protection they will have little more than aesthetic value, which in the case of an Arctic species is limited. These extracts from a comprehensive paper on the polar bear's life history and status are reproduced from “Canadian Audubon” by kind permission of the author and editor.

The Ford Foundation has made a grant of £70,000 for research into the elephant problem in the Tsavo National Park in Kenya, which has become acute. In recent years the number of elephants has increased rapidly to some 15,000, and the widespread destruction of trees in the park is generally attributed to them. Are they destroying the habitat? If so, what should be done? One suggestion is to cull up to 5,000 of them. In this article, based on an interview with “Africana” and reprinted by kind permission, Dr Harthoorn of the University College, Nairobi, suggests that some of the tree destruction could be the result of excessive burning, and that until the effects of keeping fire out of the Tsavo have been studied, massive killings of elephants should not be attempted.

In 1964 Ambassador Philip K. Crowe, who is a member of the Board of the US section of the World Wildlife Fund, visited seven South American countries to survey the wildlife situation for the Fund. This article is compiled, with his kind permission, from the newsletters that he wrote on his journeys. All too often he found that if an animal is edible or useful it is shot. Even the guano birds of Peru have declined seriously with the discovery that it is more profitable to convert the fish on which they depend for food into fish meal. But there are some hopeful exceptions, notably in Venezuela. Chief among the problems in all the states is the enforcement of such protection laws as do exist, and the author sees in education the only hope for conservation in South America.

The Government is unaware of the value of wild animals; the people mostly regard them as inferior sorts of cow to be eaten or got rid of; the Game Department struggles to guard them with inadequate staff: what should be done? The author, a zoologist who has spent three years at the University of Khartoum, surveys the situation, comments on the recommendations in the Fraser Darling Report, and concludes that, if the Sudan is to become one of the principal game countries in Africa, as it should be, some at least of these recommendations must be implemented in the next five to ten years.

An isolated mountain range, 40 kilometres long, in the rain forest of tropical West Africa, Mount Nimba lies at the meeting point of three countries: Liberia, Guinea and the Ivory Coast, the last two both former French territories. In 1942 the French initiated ecological research on their parts of the mountain, discovered its extraordinary interest and the very high number of endemic species, and declared a strict nature reserve. Of the Liberian part nothing was known until the discovery of high-grade iron ore in 1955, and the immediate formation of a company to mine it, led the International Union for Conservation of Nature to start an ecological study there. The authors of this report are respectively the first Director of the research unit which, aided by a grant from the mining company, began work in August 1964, and the chairman of the IUCN Mount Nimba Committee.

With three mammals certainly extinct in the last seventeen years, two probably extinct and several more now on the danger list, there is argent need for an investigation into the status of Hong Kong's wildlife and the setting aside of reserves for its conservation. Building and industrial development are increasingly destroying some of the hitherto unspoiled areas, and a group of people in Hong Kong have drawn up plans for a national park and several small nature reserves, including an island one on which it would be possible to re-establish local species of animals which could be used to re-stock other areas. Professor Phillips is head of the Department of Zoology in the University of Hong Kong of which Dr Marshall is also a member.

In 1964 twelve nations made conservation history when they produced the Agreed Measures for conserving the Antarctic fauna and lora, the first time such an international agreement had been achieved. The movement towards Antarctic conservation stems from the International Geophysical Year, in 1957–58, when the twelve nations, all in the Antarctic, and including the USA and the USSR, achieved an informal political truce and started collaboration in scientific research. After the end of the IGY this collaboration continued, under the aegis of the International Council of Scientific Unions and with the secretariat at the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, of which Dr. Roberts is a member. One result was the Antarctic Treaty, which came into force in 1961, and this in turn led to the Agreed Measures.

For several hundred years the small whales of the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean and Black Seas have been hunted with varying degrees of intensity. All too often the story has been one of overhunting followed by rapid decline of stocks, but so little is known about these small whales that today it is impossible to assess their populations or the effects of present hunting on the stocks. The author recounts the history of eight species of small whale and urges the need for more research to ensure planned cropping of a valuable resource. A Canadian proposal for whale hunting as a sport is perhaps a sign of a new danger to come.

Dr Glover is a zoologist who has devoted the greater part of his scientific life to work on tsetse problems throughout Africa. He has been particularly concerned with the study and application of fly-control methods in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda and his knowledge of the tsetse situation in these parts is probably unrivalled. This scholarly, well-balanced review, presented at the First International Congress of Parasitology held in Rome in 1964, and now published by the FPS for IUCN, is the work of a scientist of wide experience, and fairly presents all the known facts. It leads one to the inevitable conclusion that there is no valid justification for using game-destruction as a practical or lasting means of tsetse control.