In Colombia, despite the protection laws, illegal trade in wildlife products, especially articles made from endangered species, continues in Colombia. The laws are adequate; the difficulty is enforcement. The author, a graduate student in ecology at Rutgers University, USA, describes what he found during a day spent visiting tourist shops where wildlife products were displayed for sale.

By the end of the last century the white rhino was extinct in Rhodesia. But by the 1960s South Africa had a surplus in the Umfolozi Game Reserve, and since 1962 140 white rhinos have been taken to Rhodesian national parks, reserves and private ranches. In 1975 numbers were estimated at about 150 and the future of the species in Rhodesia should be secure. This paper, written in 1975, has not been brought up to date, as the author has left the Rhodesia National Parks Department, where he had access to records, on taking a post-graduate degree.

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.

An endemic species in Ethiopia, the Simien fox survives in only four areas, and is in danger of extinction in three of them, including the mountains from which it is named. Its only predator is man, and the chief causes of its decline are habitat destruction and the unfounded belief that it takes domestic stock. The Balé Mountains now hold the largest Simien fox population, which the authors estimate at between 350 and 475 animals. The urgent need is for the Balé Mountains National Park, proposed in 1970, to be gazetted.

The swamps and rivers of Papua New Guinea still have large numbers of both freshwater and saltwater crocodiles, and the Government is fully aware of the value of this resource and committed to conserving it. Both crocodile species can be successfully bred in captivity, but an attempt to establish village crocodile farms, where crocodiles would be raised from eggs laid on the farm as distinct from raising captured young wild animals, was not economically attractive to villagers. So farm breeding continues as a research project, while in the villages the aim is to achieve wise utilisation and conservation of the wild stocks.

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.

Experiments in domesticating fringe-eared oryx on a Kenya ranch suggest they could be an economic proposition in semi-arid areas, where domestic cattle can only be kept for a few months each year. Oryx have also proved superior to eland, at one time believed to be the most promising wild ungulate for domestication, largely because they feed by day, whereas in this climate eland feed at night, a time when domesticated animals have to be penned to protect them from predators, notably lions.

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.

In 1963 Oryx published an article by Dr Bertram called Man Pressure. This second article returns to the theme, the argument being now reinforced by the addition in the interval of another 1000 million people to the world's population. At this rate what hope have we of conserving the other species that share the planet, and without them what hope is there for human survival?

In 1966 the USSR and Bulgarian governments prohibited dolphin fishing in the Black Sea after a population crash. Turkey, however, continues to catch dolphins (mainly for the oil) and is the only nation in the world to have such a fishery. Little is known about the stocks of the three dolphin species involved, and the author urges the importance of accurate catch records.

Part One of this survey of the three gorilla races—western lowland, eastern lowland and volcano—was published in the last Oryx (June 1978) and covered the western lowland gorillas. Eastern lowland and volcano are discussed below.

Food is the main use for wildlife in Liberia, but trade in ivory, skins and live animals is also considerable. Unfortunately Liberia has neither national parks nor wildlife refuges. There are still vast areas of tropical forest, but timber companies are now opening up some areas with their new roads. The author made this survey while living in Liberia between July 1974 and August 1975.

Nigerian people eat meat mainly from wild animals, and the strawcoloured fruit bat is a popular meat in the south-west, where colonies may number a million animals. But the killing methods are inefficient and wasteful, and no management of the populations is attempted. The author suggests there is need to improve the former and embark on the latter if this valuable resource is to be conserved.