In 1961 the Uganda National Parks captured ten white (squarelipped) rhinoceros in West Madi district, west of the Albert Nile, where (hey were being poached out of existence, and transferred them to the Murchison Falls National Park. The operation was financed partly by Anglia Television and described by John Savidge in ORYX, September 1961, vol. VI, 5. Unfortunately the six animals released in the park included only two cows and no mature bull, and the chances of their reproducing were small. So in 1964 a second operation was mounted, financed by the World Wildlife Fund. In this article the author, then Scientific Warden of the Murchison Falls Park, describes this operation which captured and released another five rhino, four of them cows. This greatly improves the chances of breeding, and with freedom from poaching in the park, the rhino now have a reasonable chance of building up the herd.

Even at the time that Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick whalers were alarmed at the decline in whale stocks. To-day the situation is so serious as a result of overhunting that the whaling industry, which could produce more than half a million tons of meat and edible oils a year, is destroying itself. John Gulland, of the Fisheries Research Laboratory at Lowestoft, was one of the Committee of four scientists appointed by the Whaling Commission to investigate the whale stocks. Their report last summer showed how serious the depletion had been. Nevertheless, die recommendations for cuts in the whale quotas were rejected by the four whaling countries. In this article, originally broadcast by the B.B.C., Mr Gulland suggests an ingenious solution which he regards as the only hope for saving both whales and whaling.

Independence for Malaysia and the resulting hostilities with Indonesia have led to changes affecting wildlife as well as humans and not always for the worse. Not only was the smuggling of animals via Singapore stopped dead, which particularly affected orang utans, and the sale of firearms and ammunition drastically controlled, with already noticeable effects on some animal populations, but the new leaders feel strongly about national assets going out of the country, whether antiques or animals, with the result that more has been done for wildlife in the past two years man in decades before. The real killer, says the author, who is Curator of the Sarawak Museum, is timber felling with vastly accelerated techniques which take machines up to 1000 ft. and lay whole jungles by the square mile a day.

With three mammals certainly extinct in the last seventeen years, two probably extinct and several more now on the danger list, there is argent need for an investigation into the status of Hong Kong's wildlife and the setting aside of reserves for its conservation. Building and industrial development are increasingly destroying some of the hitherto unspoiled areas, and a group of people in Hong Kong have drawn up plans for a national park and several small nature reserves, including an island one on which it would be possible to re-establish local species of animals which could be used to re-stock other areas. Professor Phillips is head of the Department of Zoology in the University of Hong Kong of which Dr Marshall is also a member.