The world is threatened as never before by an insane buildup of nuclear weapons some five hundred times as strong in their explosive capacity as the latest estimate of all the chemical explosives that have ever been used throughout history. Leaders in major countries probably know the awful consequences of a nuclear war too well to start one, but the world has still to reckon with possible acts of aggression by other nations or flaring-up through technological failure, mechanical or other accident, malfunctioning or faulty feeding of computers, misinformation, neglect of machines or of constructional faults, terrorist or lunatic action, organized banditry, or the outcome of mere ‘acts of God’!

IUCN is a unique, international but independent, organization which promotes and carries on scientifically-based action for conservation throughout the world. Founded originally for the ‘Protection of Nature’, it has evolved greatly in the intervening nearly 35 years in response to current needs, and now occupies a very prominent position in the environmental/conservational movement to withstand ever-increasing human population-pressures through rational use of resources and seeking to assure that development is environmentally sound.

Planning for the best use of land and its resources should take fully into consideration the long-term consequences of each type of use in order to stretch out most beneficially the well-being of society in the future, and to protect the integrity of the land and its biota. Three kinds of land-use can be distinguished for planning purposes. Reversible land-use leaves the land, after use, essentially as it was before; little or no man-induced modification remains. An example of reversible use in the United States is the designation of certain public lands as Wilderness. Terminal land-use commits the land to a chosen particular use, and any attempt at reversal requires either time-scales that are long compared with the expected lifespan of the social and political institution, or a commitment of resources that is too high for society to consider worth bearing. Examples of terminal land-use are location of metropolises and sites of toxic and/or radioactive waste disposals; by its nature the list grows monotonically. A current source of some social tension arises from the fact that Wilderness designation appears to assign a terminal-use status by legislative fiat, whereas in fact the land is being used reversibly.

A coming ‘Age of Interdependent Forms’ seems destined to mark the success of what could be called ‘despecialized/interspecific fitness’ among neotenic strains (perpetuating juvenile traits) of species such as humans and domestic animals. Humans as well as the first domesticants underwent a neotenic evolution in the wild during the repeated interglacial periods which, acting on a number of mammalian forms, selected against adult species-specific ancestral adaptations to a stable environment. Neotenic species continue to look and behave more like ancestral youths than adults—even after sexual maturity and throughout their life-history. As they retain lifelong youthful dependency motivations, they can easily, under suitable conditions, become interdependent forms. By the time of melting of the last Pleistocene glacier, all the domestic partners had already become more dependency-prone than formerly, and were behaviourally despecialized enough to form the alliance that is now changing the order of Nature.

Recognizing the recency of establishment of the conservation principles in Article II of the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, and that no current analysis can be definitive or should pretend to be, the following preliminary conclusions stem from this paper:

1. The three principles of Article II of the Convention should be read as complementary guides in pursuing the overall goal of preserving the natural marine ecosystems of the Antarctic while also allowing some degree of harvest.

2. Sound implementation of the principles requires subdivision of the Convention area. The six baleen whale Areas designated by the International Whaling Commission are one possibility, but poorly justified ecologically. Priority should be given to identifying geographic divisions that rest upon a more sound and more finely-constructed ecological foundation.

3. Management indicator species and depleted species should be identified as soon as possible, and sampled periodically for appropriate life-history statistics in each agreed-upon subdivision of the Antarctic marine complex of ecosystems. The statistics appropriate for such monitoring are likely to vary with different species, and should generally be those parameters that are least sensitive to environmental fluctuations in general and most sensitive to changes in resource availability.

4. A substantial portion of each ecologically differentiated area should be completely protected from harvest and associated activities.

5. Harvest effort in portions of such areas open to exploitation should be regulated differentially, in order to facilitate assessment of the effects of harvest pursuant to an agreed-upon experimental design.

6. Harvest of krill and other species should be so regulated in any open area that the harvest is consistent with the maintenance or restoration of the harvested species, indicator species, and depleted species to levels of greatest net annual increment or above, defined with respect to initial population size.

7. Article II's principle of reversibility should address adaptive change resulting from artificial selection as well as ecological change. A methodology for correlating harvest practices with rates of reversal of the effects of harvest should be developed for harvested species, indicator species, and depleted species. No alien species should be introduced into Antarctica unless its existence there can be easily terminated.

8. As soon as possible, a limit should be placed on the allowable annual rate of increase of krill harvest by Man.

9. Basic research on Antarctic marine ecosystems should be enhanced, even though the research may have no obvious application to stable recruitment or to reversibility of change.

In order to ensure that the full range of species and natural ecosystems continue to form part of the human habitat, national parks and other types of protected areas must be better designed and managed than is usually the case at present. While IUCN has a long history of involvement in protected areas, often in cooperation with UNESCO, the World Wildlife Fund, and UNEP, the World National Parks Congress (held in Bali, Indonesia, during 11–22 October 1982) marked a major turning-point in promoting protected areas as part of the social and economic development process. In this approach, the Congress provided ways and means for the philosophy of the World Conservation Strategy (1980) to be put into action on the ground.

The increasing popularity of national parks and other wilderness areas has focused attention on the need for effective wilderness management policies. In many cases active management programmes are required to assure that naturally functioning ecosystems are preserved. External influences such as air pollution, exotic species, and impacts from visitor-use, must be understood and controlled. This paper reviews a case-example of management strategies that were utilized to minimize visitor use-impacts in the backcountry wilderness of Kings Canyon National Park in the southern Sierra Nevada of California.

This paper reviews the legislation, the government institutions, and some recent developments, in landscape conservation and planning in Belgium. The overall effects of the recent constitutional and institutional reforms on the achievement of sound landscape planning and management strategies in the broader context of environmental conservation will be beneficial. This is because the decade-long disputes between Flanders and Wallonia over different orientations to landscape planning policies can now be resolved independently, suiting each region's specific environmental and socio-economic conditions. There is also scope to improve on, and to integrate, various government agencies and departmental environmental policies through the reconciliation of the exigencies of independently evolved and sometimes inherently conflicting laws and regulations. Thus, a great number of laws and regulations on scenic and heritage landscapes, the protection of woods and forests, the conservation of historic buildings and landscapes, the management of rivers and polders, town and physical planning, Nature conservation, and the re-allotment of land, contributed to the need to coordinate policies and to reconcile bodies of the public taking an interest in the promotion of the goals of these laws and regulations.

The hydroelectric developments portended in South-West Tasmania would inundate tracts having major wilderness and archaeological values as well as threaten a much larger area of wilderness. The development of the region is ‘justified’ by the construction authority, in terms of an expected high rate of electricity demand towards the year 2000. However, a range of independent demand analyses suggest that the demand for electricity in Tasmania will not approach the Hydro-Electric Commission's expectations. Thus a lag in demand may be identified which should provide time for a rigorous evaluation of the wilderness value of the region together with an appraisal of the alternative electricity-generation options.

Currently, it appears that a cost advantage exists for the favoured ‘Gordon-below-Franklin’ project. However, the opportunity-cost differential of this project relative to several less-damaging alternatives is slight, at least when the growth in wilderness and electricity demands are considered. The opportunity-cost tradeoff appears quite trivial when current tourist and recreational impacts are accounted for.

A study of the 1978 application for permission to undertake exploratory drilling in South Davis Strait, northeastern Canada, resulted in the identification of problems with the federal Environmental Assessment and Review Process (EARP). These problems have recurred in other environmental impact assessments since 1978 in other parts of northern Canada, and some improvements have been made in approaches to them. However, further progress is needed if the EARP process is to become a more widely accepted method than at present of conducting evaluations of development impacts and the means of managing them in northern Canada.

This paper focuses on the procedural rather than the scientific aspects of EARP in northeastern Canada. Recommendations include: 1) applying environmental impact assessment to policies as well as development activities; 2) strengthening socio-economic expertise and approaches; 3) financing of interveners and support for a more balanced range of interests than was displayed in this case; 4) provision of sufficient notification and adequate information; 5) documentation of rationale for decisions; and 6) monitoring and evaluation by the Canadian Federal Environmental Assessment and Review Office (FEARO) to ensure compliance with set conditions and to facilitate the tackling of unforeseen problems.

The Bitterbrush-Sagebrush/Cheatgrass vegetation-type occupies about 300 km2 on the US Department of Energy's Hanford Site in the shrub-steppe region of southeastern Washington State. Prior to 1943, part of the land was used for irrigated agriculture and the remainder as grazing land for domestic livestock. In 1943, farming and livestock grazing were terminated and the resident human population was relocated. Use of the land since 1943 has been industrial, mostly for nuclear energy development. The land is not available for public use and shooting of wildlife is prohibited.

Nuclear energy development on the Hanford Site consists of a few large buildings that are widely separated, with undeveloped land in between which supports native plants and animals. This undeveloped land provides habitats for native species that are not adapted to intensive irrigated agriculture—a potential use of almost all of the land in the Bitterbrush-Sagebrush vegetation type. The primary disturbance to vegetation is wildfire. Fire destroys Bitterbrush and Sagebrush and these plants are slow to recolonize the burns. Other species are less affected by burning and are capable of quick recovery. The industrial use of the land provides a potential for the ecological study of self-revegetation of abandoned ploughed ground and the response of biota to wildfire.

The Great Lakes region of the interior of North America supports a large human population, a major industrial base, and recreational and scenic amenities of unusual contrast and quality. To protect portions of this landscape and meet national recreational needs, the US Federal Government has established 10 National Parks, Monuments, and Lakeshores, in the region, extending from northern Minnesota to the southern shore of Lake Erie. However, air pollutant sources from the industrial Midwest, and large-scale coal combustion for electricity along the Ohio Valley, show evidence of significantly threatening the resource qualities protected in these parks.

A review of the natural resources and amenities in each of the National Parks, Monuments, and Lakeshores, in the region shows that scenic vistas are of primary significance, with unique biota (largely northern coniferous species and associated bird-life) and clear water also prominent. Pollutant concentrations in the southern sites, however, are above the thresholds that are known to produce stress, foliage damage, and altered growth-rates on many sensitive species, including the coniferous trees. These pollutants include gases such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides (NOX) that are primary emissions of relatively local origin, as well as pollutants such as sulphate particulates, ozone, and acidic deposition, produced by chemical transformations during long-distance atmospheric transport. The particulates, in combination with the high average summer humidity, produce a reduction of visibility at the southern sites, and hence the partial loss of an important amenity.

Birds are a serious threat to aircraft, particularly near airports. For civil aircraft about 75% of all bird-strikes occur near airports. Gulls and small flocking-birds provide the greatest threat to aircraft near airports. Birds are attracted to airports because they become habituated to the noise and traffic, and are attracted by the presence of areas for roosting, loafing, and feeding. Serious bird-strikes can be reduced around airports by reducing the number of birds, by making the birds get out of the way of airplanes, by having planes avoid birds, by adding physical protection to the airplanes, and by switching to new types of aircraft which are safer with respect to bird-strikes. The first two solutions involve bird control, while the last three involve modification of aircraft or aircraft routes. Airport personnel are usually involved only in controlling bird numbers or in dispersing them from the airport.

Marine genetic variability has been studied at all levels within the hierarchy of biological systems, and some major findings to date are briefly reviewed in this paper. Important conclusions are that many marine populations may be quite variable genetically, and that this variability is particularly high in species-rich communities such as those of coral reefs. It is generally thought that variability does change in relation to ecological variables, and thus must contribute to adaptation to environment. At the community level there are marked geographical differences not only in the composition of marine biota, but also in their richness. While the importance of threats to genetic resources cannot be quantified in relation either to one another and to other areas of environmental concern, it is clear that long-term measures such as the establishment of protected areas must be planned with genetic considerations in mind, as these resources are related to the survival of valuable species, and to the important theme of biotic diversity.