These extracts from a memorandum by two scientists resident in Kenya describe the desperate situation to which poaching has brought the black rhino in East Africa. Dr Hillman is Chairman of the IUCN/SSC African Rhino Group.

‘Gorillas destroy our crops and they are vicious animals’, the authors were told last December in Gabon, where, along with Professor Roger Short and Dr Richard Wrangham, they were investigating the status of gorillas and chimpanzees. Gorillas can be shot on sight, and both animals are killed for meat. Gabon people are predominantly rural, and because they are so dependent on the forests for food, it may be that the Government will preserve these, and with them the wildlife, despite impending large-scale development.

Man depends on plants for his food – directly through crops and indirectly through animals – and all our staple foods are derived from only about 30 species of plants. Yet we continue to fell the forests and clear land, exterminating plants that could possibly avert disasters in the future – just as the apparently useless wild wheat discovered in Turkey in 1948 proved to be resistant to certain diseases, including four races of rust, and is now used to breed rust-resistant hydrids. The author lists some of the disasters now occurring, such as siltation of waterways resulting from erosion due to forest destruction – some bulk cargoes are now diverted round Cape Horn due to silt in the Panama Canal. He asks, how severe must ecological disasters become before we recognise our dependence? Dr Jarvis works for IUCN's Threatened Plants Committee (TPC) at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

For the past six years the Ministry of Agriculture has been tackling the problem of TB in badgers in a few areas in south-west England by gassing all infected sets and those in immediately adjoining territories as dangerous contact, with the expectation of eliminating all the infected badgers. The author points out that because TB is a stress disease, and because it is impossible to gas every badger in a group simultaneously, gassing may be driving infected individual badgers to join other groups and infect them, thus actually spreading the disease.

In 1977 the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland announced a six-year plan to reduce the Scottish grey seal population to the mid-1960s level, a reduction in numbers of up to a third; 900 breeding females and their pups and 4000 moulted pups in Orkney and North Rona were to be killed in the first year, 1978. But protests from the public and from conservation and animal welfare groups were such that the kill was called off.

With a wild population of only thirteen known birds, the California condor is close to extinction. In 1980 only two pairs even attempted to breed. Breeding in captivity seems the only hope of saving the species, but the project approved by the Federal Government has roused considerable controversy. The author, who spent two years in California, presents the arguments on both sides, outlines the reasons why he believes the experiment should be tried and assesses its chances of success. On June 30, however, after this article was written, a two-month-old California condor chick died while being handled. In a postscript to the article Stephen Mills comments on the effects of this death on the programme.

A Vice-President of the FPS, Dr Curry-Lindahl has long experience as a scientist studying wildlife in the field, especially in Africa, as adviser on ecology and conservation to African governments, as a Council member of IUCN and as a staff member of both UNESCO and UNEP. This analysis of the ways in which technical assistance is deployed by the international organisations leads him to answer his title question with a firm ‘yes’. This address was given to the FPS at the Annual General Meeting in London on July 4.

Coral reefs are being destroyed world-wide by fishermen and shell collectors, by developers and above all by direct extraction for building materials. In numbers of plants and animals the coral ecosystem is one of the richest in the world, but it is also extremely fragile. The author, who is Chairman of the Coral Group set up by the IUCN Survival Service and Ecology Commissions, describes the methods used to extract coral and the disastrous effects on the reefs. As a result of the Group's recommendations French Polynesia has decided to stop coral extraction from March 1981.

Nearly exterminated in southern Africa in the 19th century, the black rhino is now making a come-back thanks to the efforts of the National Parks Boards and other authorities. Successful translocations have been achieved in three national parks, including the Kruger, and two reserves, and more are planned.

Paraguay still has a vast area of almost undisturbed forest and savanna in the region known as the Chaco, where three large national parks, totalling over 1½ million hectares, protect a fauna that includes jaguar, puma, ocelot and a peccary that was ‘rediscovered’ in 1975. In 1979 the author, who is widely known as a scientist and conservationist, spent two months in Paraguay investigating the wildlife situation and national parks and has made recommendations for conservation measures to the Government.

Man's efforts to manage marine resources have so far proved conspicuously unsuccessful. The prime cause is human greed, which we rationalise as a scientific concept and call achieving ‘maximum sustainable yield’, in the arrogant belief that we know how to achieve it. But, says the author, we do not know; we do not even know how to manage ourselves. He believes that one path man should explore is the scientific study of communication between individuals of a species – he suggests dolphins or whales – as a pointer to the possibility of communication between animals and humans. Such studies might, he thinks, help humans to shed their present arrogance and save us from the consequences of our destructive behaviour.

In two years the new Wildlife Foundation in Argentina has created two reserves, one to protect a new species of grebe that was only discovered in 1974 in its only known habitat, the other to protect the endangered endemic race of the pampas deer.

Bali's endemic white starling, Rothschild's starling, is one of Indonesia's most endangered animals, along with the Javan and Sumatran rhinos. It is almost entirely confined to one reserve, in the north-west of the island, which has been severely reduced and disturbed in the 30 years since it was created. Only 13,000ha of the original 20,000ha of monsoon forest now survives, and estimates of starling numbers are 200 birds or even fewer. Capture for sale has also contributed to the bird's decline. The author urges the need for proper management of the reserve.

The author was one of the first people to see the white-winged guan Penelope albipennis, an endemic Peruvian bird thought to be extinct, after its rediscovery in September 1977. It is believed now that a few hundred of the birds may survive, and if protected could become a viable population. But some are taken for food, and it is urgent to create a sanctuary for them. The author is Head of the Department of Ornithology and Mammalogy in the Natural History Museum in Lima.

Until 1976 Gray's monitor lizard was known to science only by two museum specimens, neither of which gave any data more precise than ‘Luzon’. In 1975 the author discovered a third which identified an area on Luzon, and in 1976 he went to the Philippines and found this large monitor, which some scientists had thought might be extinct, widely distributed in forests in southern Luzon. But large areas of these forests have been and continue to be destroyed, and with them go the monitor’s habitat. Also local people hunt it for meat. The author discusses the ecology and distribution of the monitor and urges that a new national park be created.

To reach the Manu National Park means a day's journey by road over the Andes from Cusco, climbing up to the high puna grassland where one enters the park at the Tres Cruces guard post, 3300m above sea level. The last part of the road down to Shintuya at 300m has four unbridged river crossings that are impassable in the wet season from November to March. At Shintuya, if no park boat is available, the onward journey to Pakitsa, the administrative headquarters where there is accommodation, can only be made by hiring the Dominican Mission boat at $100 a day plus 30 gallons of gasoline (if you can get it) as well as enough for the return journey from Pakitsa to Cashu Cocha.

The Himalayan tahr Hemitragus jemlahicus occurs along the southern flanks of the Himalaya, from the Pir Panjal Range in northern India eastwards through Nepal to Sikkim, between 1500m and 5200m. It is also reported as being ‘not uncommon’ at 1500–2100m in southwest Bhutan. It is the only one of the three surviving tahr species that is not endangered. In Nepal its formerly continuous distribution has been disrupted by traditional land-use practices, which are spreading due to the increasing human population, and some hunting. Schaller mapped 14 populations known to occur in Nepal, but many more undoubtedly exist.

With numbers down to under ten birds and no evidence of successful breeding since 1975, the endemic echo parakeet in Mauritius seems doomed to extinction very soon. The main reasons are the destruction and degradation of the native forest on which these fruit-eating parrots depend and competition with introduced macaque monkeys and another parakeet, aided by cyclones that have defoliated and stripped trees of their fruit. All attempts at captive breeding have failed and numbers are now too low to consider translocation.

Very few reserves exist to protect the arid-lands fauna of West Africa, particularly in the sub-desert zone, and the large mammals, such as addax, scimitar-horned oryx and dama gazelle are disappearing. New reserves are planned but they could be too late. Many permanent waterholes have been dug, and the nomads (and their livestock) tend to stay near them, depriving the wild animals of their traditional dry-season haunts. Firearms have made hunting easier, and the slow-running desert animals cannot compete with motor vehicles – many die of heat exhaustion, calves are abandoned in the chase and unborn young aborted. Rational utilisation of wildlife could be of immense benefit to the people, but protection is the first priority. To achieve this FPS and PTES have launched an appeal for the scimitarhorned oryx.