Many people seen to think that the conservation of nature is simply a matter of being kind to animals and enjoying walks in the countryside. Sadly, perhaps, it is a great deal more complicated than that. For one thing nature consists of both plants and animals as well as the places and environment in which they struggle to survive. Furthermore every animal and some plants only survive at the expense of other animals or plants and mankind has gradually become the most significant exploiter of nature of them all.

The most urgent problem of the conservation of nature is to control this exploitation and to modify the consequences of the massive increase in the world's human population.

Part of the solution lies in specific projects designed to directly protect the most endangered species and their habitats but these can only be last ditch attempts to save species from almost immediate extinction. In the long term effective conservation of the multitude of species in the plant and animal worlds depends upon acceptance and conscientious application of specific obligations under national and international law.

In this book Simon Lyster has rendered a most valuable service to the cause of conservation of nature worldwide by setting out in detail the purposes and provisions of the major international treaties and conventions designed to give the remaining wild places and populations of our world a reasonable chance of survival.