Between 1970 and 1972 the East African Wildlife Society removed 38 roan antelope to the Shimba Hills National Reserve, near Mombasa, because their habitat in central Kenya was about to be destroyed. Since then the author has visited the reserve several times to study the roan. In 1973 she could find only eight; in 1976 there were 13, but by 1978 numbers had risen to 22. She suggests that, while most of the practical problems of translocating wild animals have been solved, there are many species about whose social organisation very little is known, and this may have been the main reason for the initial lack of success with the roan. But now they are threatened by the Forest Department's policy of planting the grasslands with pines.

Almost every one of the speakers at the FPS'Mammal Society Symposium on mammal conservation in February made the point, directly or implicitly, that as man continues to press ever greater demands on the earth's space and resources, other animals to survive will have either to be of use to him, adapt to live alongside him, or be preserved by him in small remnant populations. Dr Keith Eltringham, for example, suggested that one way to conserve the African elephant would be to domesticate it. Its only economic values today are as a tourist attraction and a source of ivory – the one undependable and the other destructive – while much of the land that elephants occupy is coveted by a burgeoning human population. In many places elephants only exist by courtesy of man, who, as he becomes hard-pressed, may only continue t o extend this courtesy if he gets an economic return.

The author is a biologist working in Chad with WWF support. He explains why he sees the new deep boreholes for watering cattle, installed on the edge of the Sahel by international aid, as the greatest single threat to the survival of arid-land wildlife, especially the scimitar-horned oryx.

The seven species of Podocnemis river turtles, in northern South America, have long been important sources of meat for local people; as such they have many advantages over both native mammals and imported domestic species. But most of the populations are now severely depleted, and several species are endangered. The author suggests that if nesting beaches were effectively protected these turtles would recover their numbers, and this, combined with careful management and sustained-yield cropping, would ensure their survival as a valuable resource.

The author shows how the Kafue lechwe in Zambia are dependent on the complicated flood regime of the Kafue Flats. But the dams that have been built on the Kafue River to provide electricity for industry are likely to diminish both the extent and the duration of the flooding so drastically as to threaten the survival of the Kafue lechwe.

The author has studied the behaviour of the lechwe on the Kafue Flats, and shows how their remarkable breeding behaviour would be destroyed by changes in the flood regime of the Flats; this in turn could destroy this unique subspecies.

Despite its dense population Burundi still has a wildlife remnant that includes hippopotamus, buffalo, waterbuck and bushbuck, crocodiles, monkeys and many birds, especially water birds. But there are no nature reserves, and there is no legal protection. Now the Government has commissioned wildlife surveys, including one by the author, and there are plans to create a 50,000-hectare national park in the Ruvubu Valley, as well as some smaller reserves, and to preserve the surviving forest on the Zaire–Nile watershed.

The author suggests that the Kalamaloue National Park in north Cameroon, where he worked in 1974 and 1975, has considerable potential despite its small size. Well populated with a large variety of mammals and birds and, unlike many African parks, safe to walk in, it offers scope for both tourism and scientific research.

Destruction of the native forests is the chief reason for the decline of the Barbary macaque Macaca sylvanus in Morocco and Algeria, its last wild refuges. (This is the monkey that occurs in a semi-wild state on Gibraltar.) The wild populations now are mostly small and widely separated, and the few that are in protected areas are unfortunately not the most viable. The author spent 15 months on a behavioral study of the macaque in Morocco in 1973–74, and three months on a survey in both countries, partly aided by an FPS Oryx 100% Fund grant. After his report, which underlines the urgency of protecting some of the Middle Atlas cedar forests, was presented the Moroccan Government inivited him to advise them on wildlife management and conservation programmes, including the development of national parks.

This survey of the status of the three gorilla races was made in 1974. Part One, below, covers the western lowland race, and Part Two, to be published in the next Oryx, will discuss eastern lowland and volcano gorillas.

I cannot claim to be dispassionate or unbiased about Stella Brewer's lovely book The Forest Dwellers. I played a part, albeit a small one, in the tale it has to tell. It is the story of Stella Brewer’s life from the age of seventeen until her middle twenties; of the lives of several chimpanzees from early childhood until young adulthood; of one orphan chimpanzee that Stella found in pitiful circumstances in the Banjul market in the Gambia and resolved to save, and of how it comes to be not so much life itself that must be saved but the chance for the chimpanzees to live their lives to the full in the wild. Several of the animals die or get lost in the course of the book, but there is no feeling of failure in this story of a very brave and, in the end, successful attempt to do something useful in man's relations with this close relative. It is gently written, but the story is full of bite, with plenty of amusing incident.