When I first visited Ruaneliya Estate in the Bingiriya area, 75 miles from the heart of the city of Colombo, 200 of its 1,200 acres were under coconuts, the rest was jungle. In spite of occasional raids by elephants, the coconuts did well; but as surrounding areas were opened up, the elephants became isolated in Ruaneliya and the surrounding jungles and their visits to the coconut plantation became more and more frequent.

In the last twenty years, many careful studies of predation and predator-prey relationships have been carried on by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, by various state conservation departments, and by private individuals and universities. Many of these studies have been carefully planned to work with as many factors as possible under control. In many of them, control areas were established for comparative purposes. As a result, there is a growing mass of information on predation based on something more than opinion or conclusions drawn from isolated observations.

In the United States there are the following principal categories of nature reserves: national parks, national forests, national wildlife refuges and Taylor Grazing Act districts.

In national parks nature is left to her own devices, unless interference is essential, to control, for example, a superabundance of grazing animals which are ravaging their food supply. Trees are not cut, nor dead ones removed. Roads and buildings are made as inconspicuous as possible. Wildlife refuges are managed for the benefit of the species for which they have been established, usually upland or water birds. National forests were originally established for watershed protection and timber supply.

A former chief of the Nigeria Forest Service once told me that a boyhood fascination for R. M. Ballantyne's book The Gorilla Hunters was one important deciding factor in his choice of tropical forestry as a career. I cannot claim any such romantic incentive in the choice of a career but nonetheless when I found myself in charge of a territory containing the habitat of one of the few remaining gorilla colonies in the Commonwealth, I was more than interested at the prospect of visiting the area and possibly observing these animals in their haunts.

For a number of reasons peculiar to Ceylon it is a practical impossibility to make anything but a very approximate estimate of the total elephant population of this island. In 1950, however, the warden of the Department of Wild Life announced the total population to be not much in excess of 1,000 animals; and if we are to work on any figure in assessing the present and future population trend, we must accept this estimate. The warden states further that the annual net increase of the wild population is in the neighbourhood of 6 per cent to 7 per cent which allows for natural deaths, and according to this figure we should, at the close of 1957, have had a total wild elephant population of about 1,500 animals. This, however, takes no account of the number of deaths by gunshot injuries, illicit captures, casualties during periods of intense drought, etc., that take place annually and do not seem to diminish over the years. The result is that, instead of a gradual increase or even the maintenance of a constant population, there is an annual net decrease of approximately thirty animals.

Research.—The Fulbright organization in the U.S.A. has provided three experienced scholars to study biological problems in the Parks and they commenced work in October, 1956. Dr. Hal Buechner is working the Murchison Park studying, in particular, the Uganda kob and elephant migration. Dr. George Petrides and Dr. Wendell Swank are working the Queen Elizabeth Park on the hippopotamus population and the general effect of the grazing and browsing animals on the vegetation which is their food supply. Meanwhile Dr. Hugh Cott from Cambridge has continued his work on crocodiles.

The many people who left India at the advent of Independence, especially those who knew her rivers and forests, must surely ponder over what “things” are like now. They may have read of the deforestation, the effects of the jeep and the shot-gun (although neither of these are really new), or they may just have heard, vaguely, that “things are not what they were”.

The 1957 dry season in the Luangwa Valley was an extended one and the rains were almost a month overdue, when at the end of November a visit was paid to a salt pan in the Nsefu Game Reserve. Because the pan provided the only water, over approximately 20 square miles of arid country, there should have been as in former seasons, a constant coming and going of various species, such as impala, hartebeeste, zebra and warthog. But although there were signs of these, only the larger animals such as buffalo, elephant and rhino appeared to be visiting the pan in their usual numbers. The reason for the lack of smaller ungulates was obvious: a pack of twenty-four hunting dogs was in residence—three adult females, four adult males and seventeen young—all of which were capable of hunting.

On 21st December, 1956, while on a routine visit to the Nyamasagani area of the Park, I heard a great commotion in the bush and found that it was caused by a herd of elephants. Part of the herd was spread out, but on the left there was a closely packed mass of animals all facing outwards. In the centre of them was a small black slimy object, which turned out to be a new born calf. The birth had clearly just taken place because the mother, easy to identify by her condition, and another cow elephant were removing the membrane covering the calf. This was at 11.15 a.m. For the next four hours the elephants remained under observation.

This is a brief report on some of the birds and mammals that are, or have been, on the endangered list and which, in whole or in part, are under the jurisdiction of the United States Government. It describes the position up to June 30, 1958.

Species that apparently have been lost for ever include the ivory-billed woodpecker, Campephilus principalis, and the Eskimo curlew, Numenius borealis. It is believed that the last ivory-billed woodpecker was seen by a biologist of the Fish and Wildlife Service on what is known as the “Singer Tract” in northern Lousiana in 1944. Within recent years, reports have been received that there were a few of these birds in some remote swamps in northern Florida. Careful investigation by qualified ornithologists failed to confirm these reports and the refuge set up for their intended protection has been abandoned.* There has not been an authentic record of the Eskimo curlew since 1945, when two were rather reliably reported from Galveston Island, Texas.

In the autumn of last year my husband and I had an opportunity of exploring the park which was named after his father in 1937. Tweedsmuir Park is set in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, which so many people confuse with the Rockies. In fact, the Rockies, which form an almost continuous chain reaching southwards to Mexico, lie further to the east. Between their high jagged summits and the Pacific are a large number of mountain outcrops, each with its own name. There are three such in Tweedsmuir Park: the Quanchus, the Pattullo and the Rainbow ranges. Together they form the Coast Mountains of British Columbia.

When the current reindeer experiment in Scotland is discussed I am sometimes asked: “Why try to introduce, or reintroduce, reindeer when there are probably as many red deer as the ground can carry and certainly more than the black-faced-sheep farmers want ?”

On my first visit to Scotland, nearly ten years ago, I was very proud to catch a glimpse of red deer grazing in the Spey valley. “The monarch of the glen” on a crag is a stately sight, or a herd galloping with heads held high. After the rut, on the other hand, stags become “lean as herons”, to quote David Stephen.

Almost from the date of their discovery by Captain Cook in 1775 the seal stocks of South Georgia have formed the basis of a lucrative, though initially sporadic, industry.

South Georgia lies between 54 degrees and 55 degrees South and between 36 degrees and 38 degrees West. Despite its low latitude it has an antarctic climate, being south of the Antarctic Convergence at all seasons of the year. True sea ice is probably never formed on any of its coasts though enormous quantities of brash ice from the many glaciers may frequently obstruct access to certain beaches. Meteorological observations are made at King Edward Cove, a sheltered spot on the north-east coast, which does not perhaps represent truly the severity of the climate. In 1953 the average temperature throughout the year was 35·6 degrees F. and the extreme minimum recorded was 10 degrees F. in July. Almost certainly the exposed parts of the coast, particularly on the south-west side, frequently experience temperatures below zero. Violent winds are common. In 1953 the mean wind-speed was 8·9 knots and precipitation, mostly in the form of snow, amounted to 1,257·6 mm. The pattern of the climate of South Georgia is delineated by the relatively low temperatures, the prevailing high winds and the heavy precipitation.

Roe deer have been called the “Fairies of the Woods” and their elfish charm and graceful movements certainly bear out this name. Even when found living in the proximity of man, they never lose their shyness in the same way as would the red or fallow under the same circumstances.

In spring and summer their coats are a foxy red unrelieved by any other colour except on the lips, which arc black with a white patch near the corners of the mouth and a patch of yellowish hair on the target (the rump). Although they actually have a tail, this is not visible; yet many old prints and some modern drawings as well, show them with tails which would not shame a fallow.