The Atlantic Grey Seal, Halichoerus grypus, is one of the world's rarer mammals. In 1954 R. M. Lockley estimated its total population as 33,500 and there is no reason to suppose there has since been an increase. About 20,000 of these seals live in colonies around the coasts of the British Isles, all on the north and west, except for one colony which inhabits the Fame Islands, a National Trust nature reserve off the Northumberland coast.

This is an old topic and a battle in which our Society has been fighting for the past thirty-five years on behalf of wild life. Here is some new scientific light upon it.

On 3rd December, 1958, the two ports in the Kariba Dam, through which the whole volume of the great Zambesi River was then flowing were closed. This heralded not only a major step in this vast engineering project but also the commencement of the greatest environmental upset ever to befall a population of animals and birds within the African continent, in the memory of man.

In any country the basic need for wild life preservation the education of the masses; and this is perhaps especially true of Africa, which has a shorter history of civilization than other continents. Vast sums are spent annually in West Africa on furthering general education, in building new schools and in improving and extending old ones. New universities spring up on all sides, which, like the schools, are full to overflowing with young students eager for knowledge; but though there are lessons in Nature Study, Zoology and Botany, these matters are all too often treated as mere exercises in learning with view to examination, and tend to concern themselves with the more obscure anatomical features of animals rather than their mode of life. Little emphasis is laid upon bringing home to the boys and girls, the young men and young women, the beauty and cultural value of the living scene around them: the animals, the birds, the trees, the flowers, and the importance of ensuring that the brave new world they are creating is not established in a dull and lifeless countryside. These boys and girls are the teachers and legislators of the not very distant future; ten years at the most will see them persons of considerable influence. It is they who in the States now coming into being will set the tune and engender the spirit which will colour the life of many generations to come. They should be made well-informed and interested in the natural world around them.

The Game Policy Committee of Kenya was given the following terms of reference:—

1. To consider and make recommendations as to the policy to be adopted for the long-term preservation of game, having regard to the interests of human population in game areas and to the economic development of the country;

2. In view of the urgency of a solution of the conflict in the Amboseli National Reserve between game and human interests which is rapidly reducing the value of this area as a game reserve, to make interim recommendations for the preservation of the game interest, having due regard to the considerations in (1) above;

In August, 1949, the International Union for the Protection of Nature held a conference at Lake Success, U.S.A., under the good offices of UNESCO. The conference was attended by representatives from thirty-two countries and from all the continents. The first subject to be studied was education in nature protection. The second was ecology and this was divided into sections of which Section f, under the chairmanship of Mr. Harold J. Coolidge, was devoted to “Emergency Action for preserving vanishing species of flora and fauna”. The deliberations of this section resulted in Resolution No. 15 of the main conference which reads: “That the International Union for the Protection of Nature should establish a ‘Survival Service’ for the assembling, evaluation, and dissemination of information on and the study of, all species of fauna and flora that appear to be threatened with extinction, in order to assist governments and appropriate agencies in assuring their survival.”