The Mountain Gorilla Project started with four main programmes for the conservation of the gorilla in Rwanda's Pare National des Volcans: the Training and Equipping of a Park Guard Force (AWLF/PTES responsibility); Conservation Education (FPS/PTES); Tourism Development (FPS/PTES); and a Building Programme of offices and housing for the park guards (AWLF/WWF). Thanks largely to Bill Weber and Amy Vedder of the University of Wisconsin, two of these, the Conservation Education and Tourism Development Programmes, have been as successful as we could ever have hoped. Progress on the others has been distressingly slow due to probably almost inevitable bureaucratic delays. Nevertheless, the training and equipping programme is now under way, and only the building project remains to be started.

The 3rd World Conference on Breeding Endangered Species in Captivity, covering both self-sustaining captive populations and re-introductions into the wild, was held in San Diego, California, from November 12 to 16,1979. It was co-sponsored by the Fauna Preservation Society, which initiated the conferences and had co-sponsored the earlier ones at Jersey Zoo in 1972 and London Zoo in 1976, and by the Zoological Society of San Diego, which made all the very efficient local arrangements.

The hawksbill turtle is seriously threatened with extinction, due mainly to trade in tortoiseshell. This has sent the price rocketing. Divers hunting for lobsters and snappers find it rewarding to search even the remotest reefs in the hope of getting the odd turtle – worth $200 or more. The authors urge that only by stopping the trade through CITES can the hawksbill be saved.

Uganda's national parks are littered with elephant carcasses, poachers' camps and meat-drying racks, and poachers are better armed and equipped than the guards. And the slaughter continues. Dr Edroma, who is Director of the Uganda Institute of Ecology, lists the steps that must be taken if the present disastrous situation is not to deteriorate to the point where Uganda's wildlife is effectively exterminated.

In 1979 the Nature Conservancy Council revealed that the large blue butterfly Maculinea arion was probably extinct in Britain, despite much research and valiant efforts to save it. The author, a member of the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, who since 1972 has been engaged full time on the research and conservation work for the butterfly, tells the story as it is now known.