With amphibians declining globally, conservation breeding and reintroduction programmes are increasingly important management tools. Here we examine whether these conservation initiatives are targeting species at the greatest risk of extinction. We compared conservation needs of species involved in conservation breeding programmes to those of their closest relatives not involved in such programmes, using eight variables related to immediate and future extinction risk. We found that species in breeding programmes were more likely to be threatened and were equally range-restricted and specialized as their closest relatives not being bred for conservation purposes. This suggests that in contrast to patterns reported for zoo holdings more generally, these conservation initiatives target species of conservation priority in the short and medium term.

Although the Near Threatened jaguar Panthera onca ranges from the south-west USA to central Argentina, populations outside Amazonia are generally small and isolated. One such area, the Sierra Madre de Chiapas in the state of Chiapas, Mexico, is potentially an important area for jaguar conservation but information on the species in this region is limited and its conservation status is unknown. In this study we documented the occurrence and abundance of jaguars in the Sierra Madre de Chiapas complex. We compiled all available records of the species within the region and conducted a camera-trap survey during August 2015–December 2016. Interviews were conducted to determine the perception of the jaguar by cattle owners and to obtain information on any livestock predation. We found that jaguars still occur throughout the Sierra Madre de Chiapas landscape, including the plains on the Pacific Coast of Chiapas, but its abundance in the region is low. On the basis of our findings we have incorporated the Sierra Madre de Chiapas in Mexico's National Jaguar Conservation Strategy, and recommend that international organizations include this area in their priorities for jaguar conservation. To improve coexistence between jaguars and the communities of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, strategies need to be developed, in collaboration with the local communities, to improve livestock practices for reduction of predation by jaguars, to strengthen government conservation policies and to implement educational and communication programmes about the importance of this species in the region.

The decision to build a dam at Kariba involved the Federal Government and the governments of both Northern and Southern Rhodesia in a vast amount of planning. The resettlement of 50,000 Tonga tribesmen was undertaken at a cost of about £4 million. Plans for the development of three township areas on each side of the new lake are under way.

The ghor-khar is a rare subspecies of onager, or Asiatic wild ass, and its habits are little known. The only known wild population inhabits the Little Rann of Kutch Desert in Gujarat State in western India and, after its numbers fell dramatically in the 1960s, it was declared a protected species. Conservation measures, including the establishment of a Wild Ass Sanctuary in 1973, have been so successful that the most recent census, in 1983, recorded nearly 2000 individuals, compared with 362 in 1967. The authors made four visits to Gujarat to study wild asses between 1984 and 1986.

Delegated protected area management (transferring management responsibilities from a public to a private partner) has been promoted to give impetus to ailing protected areas in West and Central Africa. Since their inception in 2005, the number of partnerships has increased to 20 protected areas covering c. 250,000 km2, an area similar to that of the UK. A review of the lessons learnt from these first 15 years shows that delegated management has improved day-to-day management of these protected areas. There remain, however, challenges with funding and with the capacity of national managerial staff, and also concerns regarding human rights. Based on an analysis of these challenges, I develop five recommendations to guide more mature delegated management: governments should (1) ensure an enabling legal–procedural environment; and (2) prepare delegated management contracts systematically; (3) private partners should render themselves dispensable through capacity building of national managerial staff and by initiating sustainable financing mechanisms; (4) governments and private partners alike should respect human rights and build coalitions with communities; (5) governments, private partners and funders should strive to delegate non-core management tasks, such as tourist guiding and reception, community development and research, to specialized locally-based individuals and organizations. Although these recommendations have a specific West–Central African perspective, they have relevance for the increasing number of delegated management initiatives elsewhere in Africa and beyond.

Estimating the population parameters, performance and factors that influence reproduction from long-term, individual-based monitoring data is the gold standard for effective wildlife management and conservation. Yet this information is often difficult and costly to collect or inaccessible to managers. We synthesized a 20-year set of individual-based monitoring data from a subset of black rhinoceros Diceros bicornis subpopulations across a range of environmental conditions in Namibia. Our findings demonstrate that despite the relatively arid landscape in Namibia, the black rhinoceros metapopulation is performing well, measured by age at first reproduction, inter-birth interval, population growth and survivorship. Information-theoretic modelling revealed that a univariate model including normalized differential vegetative index had a greater influence upon age at first reproduction than population density. The inter-birth interval model set identified cumulative rainfall during the 15 months prior to the birth month as the top model, although the mean normalized differential vegetative index during the inter-birth interval was comparable. There was little evidence for density-dependence effects on reproduction. These findings suggest that although browse quality could have a greater impact on parameters spanning multiple years, shorter-term parameters could be more influenced by rainfall. Our analysis also revealed a synchronous pattern of conceptions occurring in the rainy season. Our study provides a set of population parameter estimates for Namibian black rhinoceros subpopulations and preliminary insights on factors driving their reproduction. These expand our collective knowledge of global black rhinoceros population dynamics and improve our confidence and capability to adaptively manage the black rhinoceros metapopulation of Namibia.

We report on the first population found in Tanzania of the Vulnerable African golden cat Caracal aurata, extending its documented range c. 200 km to the south and south-east. This is one of the least-known and truly forest-dependent felines in Africa, ranging across the Guinea–Congolian forest block. We recorded the new population in Minziro Nature Forest Reserve, north-west Tanzania, during a 3-month survey in 2018. We deployed 70 camera traps on a regular grid and obtained 33 detection events of the golden cat at 26% of sites, with a minimum of 10 individuals across 257 km2. We estimated occupancy and detection probability and modelled these in relation to the distance of sampling sites to the forest edge, which coincides with both the Reserve boundary and proximity to human settlements surrounding the Reserve. Mean estimated occupancy was 0.41 ± SE 0.12 (mean detectability = 0.13 ± SE 0.05), with occupancy increasing significantly with distance from the forest edge. Detectability did not vary significantly with distance from the forest edge, but was higher for camera models that had a shorter trigger time. Our findings add to the scant data available for this species. It appears threatened by human activity, which we recorded both outside and within the Reserve, and the presence of the species indicates Minziro Forest is an important site for its conservation.

Of the two rhinos formerly found in Thailand, the Javan is believed now to be extinct there, although the authors of this survey report that some villagers in southern Thailand insist that the rhinos in their area are Javan. The Sumatran rhino is in desperate straits, with poaching a major threat – not surprisingly when a dead animal can be sold for die equivalent of up to twenty years' wages for a farmer.

The Liberian mongoose Liberiictis kuhni, the only member of its genus, was described as a new species from skulls in 1958. The first two complete specimens were obtained as recently as 1974. Although several more animals have been captured since then, all in Liberia, the species's status and ecology remain poorly known. In 1988 the FFPS contributed £500 towards a field study of the mongoose in Liberia and while this expedition succeeded in finding only one animal that had been killed by a hunter, a subsequent attempt in 1989 was more successful.