For eight years the Nature Conservancy has been studying the grey seals on the island reserve of North Rona to get the necessary facts for a grey seal conservation policy. The programme involves an annual visit to this most remote British island each October to count and mark the pups. The author, who is in charge of the programme, describes the methods used and the results so far, but it is still not known, for instance, whether seals born on North Rona return there to breed, and if not, where they do go.

Before 1939 the Lengwe game reserve in Nyasaland sheltered a wide range of large animals, including the rare nyala antelope for whose protection it was originally declared. By the end of the war, with invasions and settlement and large-scale poaching, it hardly qualified as a reserve at all, says the author, who is honorary secretary of the Fauna Preservation Society of Malawi; and the situation was not much better in 1964 when the country achieved independence as Malawi. Then, thanks to the personal interest of Dr. Banda, a decision to abolish the reserve was reversed and a new water supply installed which has transformed the situation.

The author spent two years, 1963–65, as schoolmaster on Tristan da Cunha, during which he spent four weeks on Nightingale Island. On the main island he found that bird stocks were being depleted and the islanders taking too many eggs and young; on Nightingale, however, where there are over two million pairs of great shearwaters, the harvest of these birds could be greater. Inaccessible Island, which like Nightingale, is without cats, dogs or rats, should be declared a wildlife sanctuary.

Rats and red deer are two of the major hazards that have reduced several species of New Zealand birds to the verge of extinction. The author describes the efforts being made to save these birds, the new threat to Coppermine Island, main breeding ground of the flesh-footed shearwater, where tuataras share the shearwaters’ burrows, and the more hopeful outlook for the takahe.

A hunting club whose main task is wildlife conservation is Jordan’s unique contribution to the task of saving the world’s wildlife. A group of enthusiastic Jordanians, backed by the King and the Government, are making great strides in getting their message across to the people, enforcing the protection laws and at the same time building up the country’s wildlife stocks.