So great are the advantages of a light aeroplane for all aspects of game management, including anti-poacher operations and research, that the effective management of the 5,000-square-mile Serengeti National Park, in Tanzania, now depends on the plane. The running costs are considerably less than those of a Land Rover. The authors, who have been engaged on this work since early 1962, describe some of their observations on wildebeest migration which could only have been made from the air, and their methods of co-operating with ground-based rangers for effective anti-poacher control. Incidental advantages of the plane include its ability to swoop down and “buzz” the meat-carrying poachers, and its speed in discovering the “lost” tourist who has run out of petrol in the park.

Many people want to conserve wildlife and the countryside for purely aesthetic and moral reasons, because they look nice and are part of our natural heritage, not because conservation has any intrinsic importance or practical value. But conservation is a strictly scientific concept, meaning the maximisation of the flow of energy through any area, so there are also good scientific and economic reasons for conservation, which Richard Fitter, who is Honorary Secretary of the FPS, discusses here.

The human race is setting itself some formidable problems by both increasing at an unprecedented rate and raising its living standards at an even faster rate. Have we the resources to feed, house, clothe, let alone provide leisure and culture, for all? What, for example, are the untapped food resources of the sea, of rivers and lakes, of wildlife? Nobody knows. The task of the International Biological Programme is to find the answers. Dr. Worthington, deputy director of the Nature Conservancy, and scientific director designate of the IBP, explains the task, and outlines the methods.

In 1964 Ambassador Philip K. Crowe, who is a member of the Board of the US section of the World Wildlife Fund, visited seven South American countries to survey the wildlife situation for the Fund. This article is compiled, with his kind permission, from the newsletters that he wrote on his journeys. All too often he found that if an animal is edible or useful it is shot. Even the guano birds of Peru have declined seriously with the discovery that it is more profitable to convert the fish on which they depend for food into fish meal. But there are some hopeful exceptions, notably in Venezuela. Chief among the problems in all the states is the enforcement of such protection laws as do exist, and the author sees in education the only hope for conservation in South America.

The grey seals in the Baltic, like those on the Fame Islands in Britain, are accused by the fishermen of serious damage to fisheries and nets. But unlike the British seals the Baltic ones are not only entirely unprotected, but bounties are paid for their destruction in Sweden and Finland, and their numbers are decreasing. Moreover, because of their accessibility on the ice where they are born, a high proportion of calves is killed each year, which seriously unbalances the population and could lead to a crash.