Among twenty-one representatives of as many nations comprising the World Commission on Environment and Development, there was unanimous agreement on all issues concerning the environment, except two—the causal significance of population growth, and what to do with Antarctica. The lack of consensus on population is symptomatic of widespread confusion not only in the theoretical and empirical literature, but also among advocates of population control.

This paper argues that confusion stems from insufficient attention to the nature of the causes involved. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds—ultimate and proximate. Ultimate causes include polluting technologies, affluence-related wastes, environmental consequences of warfare, land and urban mismanagement policies, and so on. In contrast, proximate causes such as rapid population growth are shown to be more situation-specific, contemporary, and of a confounding nature.

This paper first identifies the main trends which have operated in the countryside of Great Britain since 1950, assessing the costs and benefits of these to different countryside interest-groups. This section concludes that the British countryside since World War II has been more or less willingly sacrificed for material affluence.

The paper then relates this process to economic activity, and in particular to the linear-model of such activity which is posited as currently dominant, together with the principal objectives which it is used to promote. This situation is compared with a circular economic model with different objectives. The comparison yields the conclusion that such a model would yield significant improvements over the linear model in terms of countryside diversity, amenity, and sustainability. The paper then moves on to a consideration of resources, and contrasts the different values given to different resources depending on the economic model which is being employed.

The final conclusion of the paper is that while renewable resources — many of them located in or deriving from the countryside — would seem to have much economic potential, the extent to which that potential will be sustainably realized will depend on the extent to which the circular economic model, and the values and objectives underlying it, replace the linear model in economic decision-making.

Insect species etc. comprise about 80% of the specific and subspecific taxa of the animal kingdom, and their conservation is an important, integral, and contemporary, aspect of the conservation of biological diversity. The species richness of this vast group makes detailed studies of all components insurmountable relative to the urgency for diversity conservation solutions. Landscape ecology offers a way of conceptualizing the situation, and is a tool for management. This approach is explored in the present paper, using the extensive data available on decticine bush crickets in the Montpellier region of southern France. Corridors, patches, and matrices, are considered, with special reference to the bush crickets' distributions at the boundaries of these elements.

As well as movement across the boundaries and resident interpenetration of these elements by those insects the ecotones are also important ecological entities in their own right. Additionally, vertical, as well as horizontal, aspects of landscape elements are important for these small animals with small home-ranges.

The Galapágos Archipelago is an area of very special significance to ecologists. Its unique flora and fauna, rugged scenery, and historical connections with Charles Darwin, make it a place of environmental pilgrimage. Between 1970 and 1985, visiting tourist numbers, comprised largely of foreign naturalists, grew from negligible levels to about 15,000 per annum. In 1987, visitor arrivals to the Galápagos grew to 32,500 following the opening of a second airport in 1986.

Management of tourism has involved a policy which requires most visitors to be accommodated on boats, places strict controls on the sites which can be visited, and requires tourists to be accompanied by highly-trained Naturalist Guides. The policy precludes development of any substantial island-based tourist infrastructure. Recently this approach has become increasingly inadequate in the face of rapid small-scale, little coordinated, tourist development.

The fluxes of heavy-metals, and the fly-ash component magnetite from coal-burning, to sediments of the Lake of the Summer Palace in Beijing, China, have increased measurably over the last fifty years. The excess metal contents and the magnetite are attributed to the combustion of coal.

Even with a doubling of coal usage by the year AD 2000. the anthropogenic metal fluxes in Beijing, China, will still be less than those recorded for recent times in metropolitan Tokyo and US lakes. In principle, these fluxes can be reduced by the installation of appropriate emission controls at the coal-burning facilities.

The 3,162 sq. km Desert National Park (DNP) is one of the largest protected areas in India. It represents all of the natural features of the Thar Desert in India. Since its establishment in the early 1980s, the wildlife population has increased, and now the Indian Gazelle, the Great Indian Bustard, the Desert Fox, etc., are easily seen in it. But although many core areas of 500 to 1,000 hectares each have been established, progress in the development of the Park is slow, and now the future of the Park itself is in jeopardy owing to a plan to construct a feeder canal of the main Indira Gandhi Nahar (canal) Project (IGNP), which would bisect the Park. It is feared that such improvement in irrigation facilites would make it impossible to shift the villagers outside the Park boundary, as had been planned earlier—and moreover, it would attract settlers to the Park. Salient features of the DNP, its important fauna, and various options to save the Park, are described in this paper.

Lakes Visthonis, Kerkini, and Mikri Prespa, in Greece – Mikri Prespa being designated also a national park – although wetlands of international importance, suffer severe conservation problems with a continuous deterioration of their resources. A major cause of this problem is unsustainable utilization of the wetlands by their main users, local fishermen. The aim of this paper is to present several demographic and fishing-activity characteristics of the fishermen, and to analyse the conflict by associating these attributes with the conservation attitudes towards elements of the wetland ecosystems, the pelicans, and other birds.

The US Department of Energy's Hanford Site, by virtue of its large size of 1,450 km2 (560 mi2) and conservative use of undeveloped land, provides a sanctuary for plant and animal populations that have been eliminated from, or greatly reduced on, surrounding areas primarily as a result of decades of intensive agriculture. This paper describes Hanford Site biota with emphasis on fishes and other animal wildlife that are currently surveyed as part of a continuing environmental monitoring programme.