The Leuser Ecosystem, northern Sumatra, Indonesia, contains the world's largest orang-utan Pongo pygmaeus population. We examine the consequences of the recent wave of forest conversion, and legal and illegal logging, on orang-utan numbers in the Leuser Ecosystem. We review density variation inside the Leuser Ecosystem and its causes, and the consequences of selective logging, exhaustive logging and clear-felling for habitat conversion on orang-utan densities. The analysis of the orang-utan's decline is based on information on forest loss, logging intensity, and the delineation of logging concessions and legal changes in land use status. The results indicate a very rapid decline, by c. 45 per cent, from c.. 12,000 in early 1993, over a 6- to 7-year period. During 1998 and 1999, losses occurred at a rate of about 1000 orang-utans per year. At this rate, further losses in the near future are expected to put the survival of Leuser's orang-utans in serious doubt.

The Sumatran orang-utan is in dramatic decline, including the population in its main stronghold, the Leuser Ecosystem, in Sumatra, Indonesia (C. P. van Schaik et al. (2001) Oryx 35, 14–25). The major threats to the survival of Sumatran orang-utans are identified as habitat loss (mainly from conversion to oil palm plantations), habitat degradation and habitat fragmentation. The immediate causes of this are identified as weak compliance with regulations and laws; weak law enforcement and the weak legal environment. Corruption is identified as the ultimate causal factor underlying these three immediate causal factors, along with a frontier mentality and bureaucratic constraints. Together, they have resulted in the destruction of prime orang-utan habitat. Several political actions are recommended to improve the effectiveness of habitat conservation for the orang-utan and several technical challenges are to be overcome once the policy context is right. The most crucial problem to solve is the lack of regular funds for enforcement operations and establishing a new system of enforcement that is effective. In addition, the Gunung Leuser National Park needs to be redesigned by enlarging it to cover all high biodiversity areas within the Leuser Ecosystem. Moreover, habitat corridors between important forest tracts need to be re-established.

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in south-west Uganda supports a population of gorillas that has become the primary gorilla population for tourism following the genocide in Rwanda. Previous estimates made in the early 1990s indicated that the population numbered around 300 individuals. The census reported here was the first in Bwindi to use the method successfully developed in the Virungas, which utilizes a complete sweep across the park within a short period of time by a large number of teams working simultaneously. We estimated the population to be 292 individuals; to the best of our understanding – based on previous estimates – the population, therefore, appears to be stable. Most gorillas were found within the centre of the southern section of the park. It appears that there are some areas of unused habitat and, therefore, room for the population to grow. We found no clear relationship between gorilla distribution and human presence, but some forms of disturbance were more frequent and close to the edge of the park and may contribute to the gorillas' avoidance of these areas. The effects of human disturbance, including tourism, on the gorillas and other wildlife should be investigated in more detail and monitored over time. This is particularly important in multiple-use zones which have been established around the edges of the park for bee-keeping, collection of nontimber forest products, and tourism.

This paper analyses the impact of a community conservation programme (CCP) implemented over a 7-year period around a national park in Uganda. Programme activities included dialogue, conflict reduction, education, community resource access and support for community development. Surveys of attitudes show that communities benefited from the programme were significantly more positive towards the park and wildlife than communities that did not. The community conservation programme built an understanding of conservation objectives amongst communities whose members were more likely to recognize positive aspects of the park and less likely to demand that it be degazetted. Comparison over the 7-year duration of the programme, however, did not show that communities were generally more positive towards conservation. They were more critical of management and demanded more support and resources than they had received. Their behaviour was not greatly changed, and high levels of poaching and illegal grazing continued. Attitudes were influenced by communities receiving development assistance, but improvements were fragile, vulnerable to poor behaviour of park staff and lawenforcement activities. Both were seen as contradicting community approaches. Attitudes were also influenced by land ownership and economic occupation. The CCP was not a panacea for the problems of the park and did not resolve fundamental conflicts of interest between communities and park management. However, it did change the way the protagonists perceive and interact with each other.

Surveys for shushuks Platanista gangetica were conducted during January to April 1999 in Kaptai Lake and the southern rivers of Bangladesh. A population of at least 125 dolphins was recorded in the Karnaphuli and Sangu rivers and connecting canal. The overall encounter rate was 0.76 dolphins per km. Density was highest in the lower reaches of the Sangu, where we recorded 1.36 dolphins per km. These rates are fairly high when compared with other areas of shushuk distribution. Dolphin movements in the Sikalbaha–Chandkhali Canal were consistent with it being used as a corridor for migration and dispersal between the Karnaphuli and Sangu. Shushuks were also sighted in marine waters of the Karnaphuli and Sangu river mouths, adding credibility to the hypothesis that dolphins move along the coast between the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna and Karnaphuli–Sangu systems, perhaps during the monsoon when freshwater plumes extend into the Bay of Bengal. No dolphins were nobserved in Kaptai Lake, a dam-created reservoir of the upper Karnaphuli, despite reports of occasional sightings by local fishermen. No shushuks were observed in the Bagkhali and Matamuhuri rivers, possibly because of seasonal-closure dams present near the mouths of both rivers. The main threats to dolphin survival in the Karnaphuli-Sangu system are probably accidental entanglement in monofilament gillnets, bioaccumulation of persistent contaminants and possibly collisions with motorized vessels and a decline in prey as a result of over fishing. The most significant conservation measure that could be taken would be to establish a protected area for dolphins in the Sangu River below the Dohazari Bridge.

Four species of monarchs (Pomarea spp.) presently inhabit French Polynesia, one on Tahiti and three on the Marquesas Islands. Although all species populations were abundant during the nineteenth century or at the beginning of the twentieth century, their range and population numbers have recently decreased dramatically: intensive field surveys conducted between 1998 and 2000 reveal that four subspecies are now extinct from five islands in the Marquesas in the last decades. Introduction of the black rat is the major cause of extinction and decline, now amplified by new threats such as aggressive introduced birds and invasive alien plants reducing suitable habitats for breeding.

This article reconsiders the use of financial incentives for securing the participation of ‘local’ people on conservation programmes by raising several less discussed social consequences which such incentives may entail. To this end, it outlines the involvement of a South Indian honey-hunting ‘tribe’ with an ecodevelopment programme and the market economy, noting how commercializing ‘traditional’ livelihoods may increase the general ‘standard of living’ but undermine the social ‘fabric’ of the community and aid in the rationalization of custom. It concludes by suggesting that social development should precede economic development for communities in transition between subsistence and commodity-orientated economic practices.