The three species of lion tamarins face extinction as the last remnants of Brazil's coastal forests are whittled away. The Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust has been directly involved in captive breeding of the golden lion tamarin and its Zoological Director is an elected member of the seven-person International Management Committee for the species. He visited Brazil in 1983 to see the conservation work being carried out and describes attempts that have been and are being made to save these spectacular New World primates.

Rees (2005) states in his critical review of the EC Zoos Directive that ‘zoos have no incentive to undertake conservation research because they can legitimately ignore this requirement providing they carry out an alternative conservation measure. Zoos therefore can comply with the EU Zoos Directive by doing nothing.’ Zoo conservation took a major step forward when the Council of EC Environment Ministers agreed in 1998 to an EC Zoos Directive to strengthen the conservation role of zoos. The Directive came into force in 1999 and requires that all Member States set up national systems for the licensing and inspection of zoos. The Zoo Licensing Act 1981 already implements many of the measures in the Directive, including the provision of proper accommodation and care for the animals, keeping up to date records, and taking appropriate measures to prevent escapes. But the requirements that zoos participate in conservation and education activities are new. Although many zoos already participate, the new legislation has made this a statutory requirement. Each European country is now responsible for enforcing the EU Directive with their national zoos. The Directive needs to be general because it applies to animal collections of very different sizes and structures. It cannot be expected that the Directive sets standards higher than is achievable for its smallest members.

Bilkis gazelle Gazella bilkis was first described in 1985 from material collected in Yemen in 1951. No new information about the species has been forthcoming since then and the animal's current status is uncertain in two respects. First, it is difficult to establish the taxonomic relationship between G. bilkis and a possible subspecies of the Arabian gazelle, G. gazella erlangeri, which also occurs in the south-west Arabian peninsula. Secondly, uncontrolled hunting and the general lack of conservation measures in Yemen mean that, if it does still survive, its continued existence is far from assured. Systematic field surveys and taxonomic research are urgently needed to clarify the status of this animal and draw up conservation measures.

Training plays a central role in the pursuit of conservation goals, and it is vital to know if it is having the desired effect. However, evaluating the difference it makes is notoriously challenging. Here, we present a practitioner's perspective on overcoming these challenges and developing a framework for ongoing evaluation of a conservation training programme. To do this, we first created a theory of change, describing the pathway of change we expect from training delivery to conservation impact. This provided the clarity and structure needed to identify indicators of change in the short, medium and long term. For data collection, we utilized both quantitative and qualitative methods to provide a more complete understanding of the change expected and capture any that might be unexpected. However, the more time that passes since a training event, the more difficult it becomes to attribute results; in response, we shifted predominantly to the use of qualitative methods to understand the long-term results achieved. After 3 years of implementation, this framework has enabled us to measure the difference our training makes to individuals and their work, and to provide evidence for the contribution it makes to achieving conservation impact. We believe that the lessons learnt can be used to improve the evaluation of training activities across the conservation sector and maximize the impact they achieve.

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.

In western Spain, especially in Extremadura, the typical Mediterranean flora and fauna are more abundant, both in species and numbers, than almost anywhere else in the Mediterranean region. For Europe’s birds of prey it is a key area. But all, especially the birds of prey, are gravely threatened, despite excellent protection laws, by reafforestation (with eucalyptus and pines) and industrial development destroying their habitats. The authors, who spent a total of ten months between 1970 and 1977 studying the birds of prey in the region, stress the urgent need to protect at least some of this superb country, which includes primeval cork oak forests and natural vegetation undisturbed by man.

The seriously endangered Mediterranean monk seal has not been recorded off Libya since 1810. Mr Norris lived in Libya in 1966–68, and is able to report regular offshore sightings on the inaccessible Marmarican coast, two occasions in the early 1960s when a ‘strange fish’ with ‘whiskers like a man’ and a cry ‘like a woman’ hauled up on a beach within Tobruk harbour, and one established breeding colony of 20 or more animals living in submarine offshore caves, known to local fishermen and never molested by them.

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.