Plant conservation has got off to a late start. Many undescribed species are certainly already extinct, their value unknown. Professor Heywood argues that, because both the losses and the potential are greatest in the tropics, attention must focus there first. Less than one per cent of tropical lowland forest is in national parks or reserves, and there are many areas where little of it may be left even by 1990. This article is the substance of Professor Heywood's talk to the ffPS at last year's Annual General Meeting.

Krill fishing in the Southern Ocean has raised in acute form the question of wildlife conservation in Antarctica: what will be the effect on the ecosystem? how much krill can be taken? who can take part? what regulations are needed? The author, a scientist of the British Antarctic Survey, considers the answers in the light of the Antarctic Treaty of 1959 and the Canberra Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources of 1980, and looks at some criticisms of the latter put forward in a recently published book. He suggests that the Convention, while not ideal, is to be welcomed because it provides a framework for conservation and rational exploitation that can be made to work – if the nations that signed it are determined to make it do so.

In the last thirty years at least three million crocodiles have been killed in Africa for their skins – and the figure may be much higher. As a result the Nile crocodile has declined seriously almost everywhere, and hunters are now turning to other species, none of which are anywhere abundant, to supply the trade. Only Zimbabwe has established viable crocodile farms, but even these were able to cull only 2253 animals for hides in the three years 1978–80.

In the eight years of Idi Amin's rule, law enforcement in the national parks and reserves completely collapsed, and poaching and human encroachment increased. Last year, Robert Malpas, working for the New York Zoological Society and World Wildlife Fund/IUCN, and with some help from ffPS, spent nine months on a survey of Uganda's national parks and reserves to determine just how bad the situation really was. He found the elephant situation so desperate in both the Rwenzori and Kabalega Falls National Parks, except in one area, that there is no certainty of their survival in either even if the poaching can be controlled.

After a somewhat perilous landing on Gough Island, south of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic, the author was able to confirm the remarkable comeback of the fur seals there, once heavily exploited but now numbering over a hundred thousand.

Land nationalisation, starting in 1963, brought settlers and cultivation into mountain areas of Peru where hitherto spectacled bears had been disturbed only by occasional hunting. This greatly reduced the numbers of bears, and also habituated those that survived to eating the farm crops and farm animals that replaced their natural foods, thus incurring the wrath of the farmers who replied with guns. Moreover, bears are becoming isolated from each other, in some cases confined to high ridges surrounded by cultivated land. The author, who spent two years studying the spectacled bear in Peru, believes that as a result, fewer bears will be able to breed and that genetic variation will be reduced.

Freddie is a three-year-old chimpanzee born wild in the forests of Guinea. Some time in 1980 his mother was murdered so that Freddie could be sold on the black market. His captor shut him in a plywood box and firmly nailed down the lid. Barely able to move in this confined space, Freddie endured endless dusty hours of travel on the rough bush roads. He was fed any leftovers that could be pushed through the small opening in the side of his prison. Unable to move very much he was forced to sit in his own excrement and as a result his anus became badly infected. He also developed gingivitis, a painful condition which causes the gums to recede and become soft and tender.

The black rhino will be exterminated soon in northern Tanzania if poaching is not stopped, says the author, after surveying eight national parks and game reserves, either from the air or on the ground, or both. Tanzania is making great efforts to stop the poaching, but essential equipment is desperately short, and much more outside help is needed.

The people of Brunei know that they need to conserve the resources of their very small country. Proboscis monkey, clouded leopard, dugong, three sea turtles, eight hornbills and the earless monitor lizard are among the fully protected species; and there is little hunting. The people are Muslims, so many animals cannot be eaten. The Government controls timber extraction; no timber is exported and clear-felling is prohibited. So far there are no wildlife reserves, but, after investigating the potentialities of several uninhabited areas, including some mangrove islands, the author has made recommendations.

The authors found a small number of yellow-tailed woolly monkeys in a part of Peru 200 kilometres from where in 1974 the species was ‘rediscovered’ (having been believed extinct). As the area is also the home of a number of endemic Peruvian birds, they suggest it may have been a refugium in the late Pleistocene and should be both protected and explored for other possible undescribed species.

Barbary macaques have been on Gibraltar continuously for 240 years, maybe longer. Today they are a major tourist attraction – 1000 people may visit them in a day. But they have caused much trouble in the past, raiding gardens, damaging houses, biting people. Since 1913, with few breaks, they have been fed regularly on the top of the Rock by the British Army. Numbers have fluctuated – in 1900 there were 130, in 1943 only four, which on Mr Churchill's instructions were increased by imports to 24. Today they are kept at between 30 and 40, and controlled by exports to zoos and culling, which the author, who is studying their adaptation to living with man, considers unacceptably wasteful.

Two ffPS African tours have been arranged for August and September this year. The first comprises two weeks in Zambia, including six days at Norman Carr's Chibembe Camp, and an optional week in Zimbabwe: August 11–29. The second also spends two weeks in Zambia (Luangwa Valley and Kafue National Park), preceded by an optional week in Botswana on the Okavango Delta: September 3–24. Full details from the ffPS.