The prospect of game-farming or game-cropping is very much in the news in parts of Africa to-day, as a means of conserving wild life and at the same time managing it so as to provide a supply of meat and other animal products. It is, therefore, very interesting to see how the Russians have succeeded in rescuing from extermination an animal only recently in grave danger of becoming extinct, and in converting it, in the space of a few years, into a major national resource. The animal at the centre of this exciting and encouraging story is the saiga, a small steppe antelope (Saiga tatarica). Sometimes called the big-nosed saiga, this antelope is found only in the U.S.S.R. It has a body length of 120 to 135 cm., stands 75 to 80 cm. at the shoulder, and weighs 40 to 45 kg. Its natural habitat is the steppe, an environment eminently suitable for a population of social ungulates.

Manatees appear on the list of animals deemed by the Survival Commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature to be in danger of extermination. Fortunately they are not yet very high on the danger list, but are nevertheless in need of proper conservation. A study of these animals in British Guiana and neighbouring countries was therefore undertaken early in 1962 to investigate the problems involved in their use and protection. British Guiana was chosen for this study since it was believed still to have as large a stock of manatees as any country, and because helpful people there made possible the best use of the three months available. This paper is concerned primarily with the status of manatees, both as regards their present abundance and their possible economic uses. Other aspects of the work will be published elsewhere.

During the first world war all the bison in the Białowieża Forest were destroyed but a new chapter in the history of the species started in 1929 with the introduction of captive stock. An area of 500 acres in the forest was fenced and 70 acres of it deforested. Thirty-two bison were living in this closed reserve on 31st December, 1962.

The Charles Darwin Research Station in the Galapagos has as its most urgent duty the protection of the remaining giant tortoises, which, besides being one of the most interesting and spectacular elements in the unique fauna, and giving the islands their name, are at present in greater danger of extinction than any other native animals. Accurate knowledge of their present status is a prerequisite of conservation, and this is not easy to obtain in the extremely difficult terrain where most of the surviving tortoises live. This paper summarises very briefly the previously available information: its main purpose is to present the new information which has been obtained in the last year and a half (time of writing, August, 1964), to discuss the factors threatening their continued existence, and to outline the conservation measures which have already been taken and those that are planned for the future.

In December, 1962, during a brief stay in Japan I visited the north island of Hokkaido in order to see the Japanese Cranes which are carefully preserved near the seaport of Kushiro. A forty minute bus ride takes you to the nature park where five cranes which have been pinioned are enclosed in an area of grass and brushwood enclosed by a high fence. Another forty minutes by bus takes you further up the river valley to the neighbourhood of the small town of Akan. On farms in this area I saw thirty-three of the wild cranes. A recent census put the total for the whole crane population at 186 birds for the whole island.

Discovered less than a hundred years ago, the Persian fallow deer Dama mesopotamica is in serious danger of becoming extinct. Mr. Pepper describes this large deer and the little that is known of its history, and urges the need for establishing a captive herd based on the two females in a German zoo, the only ones in captivity.

Those with the enthusiasm and zeal for fauna preservation and conservation even yet, I believe, remain inadequately aware of the enormity of the human tide which sets against them. This essay is intended to help towards a fuller perspective, biologically frightening though it is.

The African continent with its remarkable wealth of large mammals represents a zoological community which is unique in the world. For many centuries it has been a hunter’s paradise and since the dawn of human history in Africa, the wild animals of this vast continent were hunted by primitive man. Despite the toll taken by the super-predator the great herds of game encountered by the earliest European explorers bore ample testimony to the supposition that man and beast subsisted in perfect harmony in their chosen habitats, and the primitive hunter in fact occupied an important niche in the natural order.

The progressive loss of marshes, bogs and others wetlands through drainage and “improvement” led the Executive Board and the Ecology Commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature to undertake a special project—project MAR—on the conservation and management of temperate wetlands. As with their African Special Project, the work is divided into three stages. First came the collection of data on the status and importance of wetlands and the methods by which they might most profitably be conserved: also the compiling of an inventory of important wetland areas in Europe and north-west Africa.

Discovered by seal hunters at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Hawaiian monk seal was slaughtered with such thoroughness that by the end of the century it was almost extinct. Since then it has slowly built up again to a population of about 1,200 in 1958. This is the total world population. Dale Rice studied the breeding behaviour of this monk seal when working on the albatrosses in Hawaii as a wildlife biologist for the Fish and Wildlife Service. Today he is in charge of whale research at the Marine Mammal Biological Laboratory in Seattle. The article is reproduced by kind permission from “Natural History” journal of the American Museum of Natural History.

Last October, Oryx published an article on the decimation of fauna in the Okavango Swamp country of the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Now comes the story of the astonishing sequel.