1. The populations of the endemic avifauna of Seychelles have declined in numbers, some very seriously, during the last hundred years. Only those in danger of extinction are discussed here.

2. The magpie robin population is reduced to a score of birds; the population will soon be extinct unless drastic action is taken.

3. The population of the paradise flycatcher is reduced to about 30 birds; conservation must take the form of propaganda, especially since the population is in danger of being reduced still further by the economic development of La Digue.

For eight years the Nature Conservancy has been studying the grey seals on the island reserve of North Rona to get the necessary facts for a grey seal conservation policy. The programme involves an annual visit to this most remote British island each October to count and mark the pups. The author, who is in charge of the programme, describes the methods used and the results so far, but it is still not known, for instance, whether seals born on North Rona return there to breed, and if not, where they do go.

Although first noted by E. O. Shebbeare in 1907, the golden langur monkey Presbytis geei was only named and described after E. P. Gee had found and photographed it in 1953 on the east bank of the Manas River on the Bhutan–Assam border. Both India and Bhutan have declared a Manas sanctuary, one on each bank of the Manas River. The author and his wife, who went to the Bhutan sanctuary to photograph and study this rare langur in the spring of 1967, describe the area as still wonderfully unspoiled, a verdict fully endorsed by the members of the FPS tour to India in February this year who visited both sanctuaries.

Still relatively rich in the larger African mammals despite the destruction of recent years, Ethiopia is tackling wildlife conservation problems in earnest. In 1965 the Imperial Government set up a Wildlife Conservation Department, and appointed John Blower as Senior Game Warden and adviser on wildlife conservation. Several national parks are now scheduled, and it is hoped that the first, the Awash National Park, will soon be officially opened by the Emperor. This is in the very rich Awash Valley to the east of Addis Ababa, where a wide range of animals includes greater and lesser kudu, beisa oryx, gerenuk, klipspringer, leopard, lion, cheetah, a few Swayne's hartebeest, now on the verge of extinction, and many birds. Two other proposed national parks, in the Siinien Mountains and the Bale Mountains, will protect Ethiopia's four endemic mammals, the rare walia ibex, the Simien fox, gelada baboon and the mountain nyala. A map of Ethiopia is on pages 284–5

Elephant management in East African reserves and national parks has become one of the urgent conservation problems of today. In this study of the African savanna elephant, Dr Sikes shows that two diseases of the heart and arteries, found only in lowland elephants, were directly associated with the degeneration of the habitat when elephant numbers began to build up in the Tsavo National Park in Kenya and the Queen Elizabeth and Murchison Falls National Parks in Uganda. The two diseases thus appear to be natural factors tending to limit the elephant populations in these reserves, and she suggests four lessons to be drawn from this discovery by those concerned with elephant management in national parks.

Before 1939 the Lengwe game reserve in Nyasaland sheltered a wide range of large animals, including the rare nyala antelope for whose protection it was originally declared. By the end of the war, with invasions and settlement and large-scale poaching, it hardly qualified as a reserve at all, says the author, who is honorary secretary of the Fauna Preservation Society of Malawi; and the situation was not much better in 1964 when the country achieved independence as Malawi. Then, thanks to the personal interest of Dr. Banda, a decision to abolish the reserve was reversed and a new water supply installed which has transformed the situation.

In 1961 the Arabian oryx was in such danger that the only hope for its survival seemed to lie in capturing sufficient animals to start a breeding herd in captivity from which eventually some could be returned to the wild. The Fauna Preservation Society, aided by the World Wildlife Fund, organised Operation Oryx, and under the leadership of Major Grimwood, then Chief Game Warden in Kenya, three animals were captured. These, together with some from the very few in captivity, were sent to Phoenix Zoo in Arizona for stage two of the operation, the breeding of a stock, which is now going on successfully. Stage three, the return to the wild, still lies ahead. Describing the capture expedition, Major Grimwood emphasises the immense interest it aroused, which brought help from six governments, five zoos, scores of societies and clubs, hundreds of individuals, and several oil and other companies, including an electricity company in Kenya which emptied its showroom of ovens in order to heat the oryx's quarantine quarters to save them from the cold.

On several flights and safaris in the lower Omo River valley the authors and others recorded the numbers of larger mammals they saw. The results showed no regular general migration pattern, although certain species showed trends, notably eland, zebra, elephant and Lelwel–s hartebeest which moved into the area after the rains and out again when the grass died. Dr Urban is working in the Department of Biology in the Haile Sellassie I University in Addis Ababa. Leslie Brown, well known Kenya naturalist, is a UNESCO wildlife consultant.

The Curator of Reptiles at the San Diego Zoo describes a successful captive breeding programme—after a difficult start—with a highly endangered species. By the beginning of this century the huge daughter of Galapagos tortoises, mostly by sailors in need of fresh meat on board ship, had dangerously reduced their numbers, and the destruction has been continued since by the predators introduced by settlers and visitors—rats, cats, dogs and pigs which preyed on the eggs and young, and goats which competed with the tortoises for food. The first successful hatching of tortoises at San Diego Zoo took place in October, 1958, but fertility is very low, and the author concludes that the tortoises have never reproduced in substantial numbers because, for various reasons, they do not need to do so, and that they are probably incapable of doing so.

The author spent two years, 1963–65, as schoolmaster on Tristan da Cunha, during which he spent four weeks on Nightingale Island. On the main island he found that bird stocks were being depleted and the islanders taking too many eggs and young; on Nightingale, however, where there are over two million pairs of great shearwaters, the harvest of these birds could be greater. Inaccessible Island, which like Nightingale, is without cats, dogs or rats, should be declared a wildlife sanctuary.

The West Indian manatee Trichechus manatus manatus has declined rapidly in many parts of its range and appears on the IUCN's list of endangered species. But in British Honduras last summer the author found an abundance of manatees all along the coast. Moreover, predation is at a minimum: the people who formerly ate manatee meat now show little interest in it, and the alligator, its only other predator, has been persecuted almost to extinction.