The large blue butterfly Maculinea arion is probably extinct in Great Britain. Many other of Britain’s 56 butterfly species have declined since 1945, but no other species has become extinct. By contrast, no fewer than four of Britain’s 41 resident dragonfly species have almost certainly become extinct since that date, What are the causes and what lessons can be learnt from these losses?

The author, who is a scientist at the Zoological Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, describes the serious plight of China's endemic alligator. This last summer he was joined by an American research scientist, Dr Myrna E. Watanabe, in a further study of the alligator, and we hope to carry their report in a later issue.

In California’s Death Valley burros, the introduced wild donkeys, are driving out the native desert bighorn sheep, as well as destroying the vegetation. A sentimental public has so far ensured their protection and prevented the Park Service solving the problem. Now the Service is proposing to remove the burros completely by giving away those they can trap and shooting the rest.

Overfishing, wasteful fishing and destructive fishing take a large toll of the fish and all other life in the sea: more than half the important commercial fish species have been overfished; every year several million tonnes offish and other animals are caught incidentally and discarded, and modern equipment such as bottom trawls and indestructible nylon nets which, lost overboard, become permanent fish traps, spread devastation. Coral reef exploitation, oil exploration, land erosion, dams on major rivers all affect the seas, while much of the agricultural pesticides and the industrial toxic wastes end up there too. Fish provide much-needed animal protein for humans. As more than half the marine productivity is within 200 miles of the shore, which is where 98 per cent of the world’s fish catches are made, the need for good management is clearly urgent.

The slaughter and capture of hundreds of millions of migrating north European birds in the Mediterranean region have long been a major conservation problem. The worst havoc is in Malta, which subscribes to none of the bird protection conventions, and where the main recreation is to shoot anything large enough to stuff, and to catch anything smaller and put it in a cage.

Until recently Liberia has lagged far behind the rest of Africa in conservation, with no national parks, no hunting regulations, and widespread forest destruction. But the creation in 1976 of a Forest Development Authority with a dynamic staff offers real hope for the future. The author, widely known for his conservation work, especially in Zaire, spent four months on a WWF/IUCN survey in 1978–79; he describes what he found and the proposals he made to the Liberian authorities.

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.

After a canoe journey down the Omo River in southern Ethiopia, the author concludes that the river canyon is ‘a viable ecosystem with a rich natural assemblage of large mammals’. But it is only the canyon's inaccessibility that protects the animals, and he wonders how long it will do so.

Hopes that a viable population of orang-utans can be conserved in Malaysian Borneo have been given a big boost by the discovery that they are more widespread than had been expected. In August-November last year a research team, consisting of officers from the National Parks and Wildlife Office of the Sarawak Forest Department and five scientists sponsored by WWF Malaysia, surveyed the proposed Lanjak-Entimau Orang-Utan Sanctuary adjacent to the Indonesian frontier. Previous reports had led them to expect to find orangs in the southern part of the proposed sanctuary, where the terrain is mostrugged and there has been least human activity, but the development of anovel survey technique showed that the apes in habit the northern part as well.

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 1979 Japanese fishing vessels began using monofilament mesh driftnets to catch squid in international waters north-west of the Hawaiian Islands, between 35° and 45° N. This new fishery threatens the survival of leatherback turtles Dermochelys coriacea in their North Pacific feeding grounds and migration routes. It is only recently that the existence of leatherbacks in this remote oceanic area has been discovered and made known.

Large body size is dangerous. The Pleistocene megafauna disappeared, it is now believed, at the hands of man. Large body size may help elephants and giant tortoises to avoid predators and to cover large areas in search of food. But this size also means that, because they must feed continuously, they need a large area of land to sustain them, and that the long gestation time and dependence of the young on their parents reduce population turnover. Only a very low harvest can be taken of such animals. The African elephant, if it is left to the mercies of poachers with automatic weapons, must become extinct.

Old ‘unimproved’ meadowland is increasingly scarce in Britain’s intensively farmed land. Dr Jennifer Rees, an Open University tutor married to a farmer who breeds pedigree cattle on 100 acres in the Wye Valley, recently won the Sunday Times Kenneth Allsop Memorial Essay Competition with an essay that pinpoints the value of a ‘great natural re-usable resource that can be replenished year after year at minimal cost’.