In their 1965 survey of dugongs on the north-east Australian coast, Dr. Colin and Dr. Kate Bertram made the welcome discovery that these aquatic mammals, whose numbers were seriously reduced throughout their range in the last century and the early decades of this, are now holding their own here and may even in a few places be increasing. Dugong meat and oil are highly valued by some Australian native people, and the animals fill an important ecological niche as consumers of aquatic plants in shallow water.

For successful game management and research, immobilising drugs, which make it possible to handle even rhinos and elephants, are essential. The latest drugs, in the discovery and use of which Dr. Harthoorn, of the University College in Nairobi, has played a leading part, make it possible to drug an animal sufficiently for it to be docile but at the same time able to get to its feet and walk unaided. Simple and safe, they have proved their value, for example, in the removal of over 100 square-lipped rhino from Natal without a single casualty due to drug effects.

Since 1939 Norwegian hunters of minke whales have been required by the government to keep detailed records of their catches. Arthur Bourne has recently studied these records for the FPS and has found a significant decline in the number of calves taken, which, together with other evidence, suggests a decrease in stocks. As a preliminary step to a study of the minke population the Norwegians started marking experiments in 1964 which are being continued. The minke whale has several names: Slijper calls it the lesser piked or minke; the Handbook of British Mammals the lesser rorqual or pike.

The Ford Foundation has made a grant of £70,000 for research into the elephant problem in the Tsavo National Park in Kenya, which has become acute. In recent years the number of elephants has increased rapidly to some 15,000, and the widespread destruction of trees in the park is generally attributed to them. Are they destroying the habitat? If so, what should be done? One suggestion is to cull up to 5,000 of them. In this article, based on an interview with “Africana” and reprinted by kind permission, Dr Harthoorn of the University College, Nairobi, suggests that some of the tree destruction could be the result of excessive burning, and that until the effects of keeping fire out of the Tsavo have been studied, massive killings of elephants should not be attempted.

In 1964 twelve nations made conservation history when they produced the Agreed Measures for conserving the Antarctic fauna and lora, the first time such an international agreement had been achieved. The movement towards Antarctic conservation stems from the International Geophysical Year, in 1957–58, when the twelve nations, all in the Antarctic, and including the USA and the USSR, achieved an informal political truce and started collaboration in scientific research. After the end of the IGY this collaboration continued, under the aegis of the International Council of Scientific Unions and with the secretariat at the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, of which Dr. Roberts is a member. One result was the Antarctic Treaty, which came into force in 1961, and this in turn led to the Agreed Measures.

Dr Glover is a zoologist who has devoted the greater part of his scientific life to work on tsetse problems throughout Africa. He has been particularly concerned with the study and application of fly-control methods in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda and his knowledge of the tsetse situation in these parts is probably unrivalled. This scholarly, well-balanced review, presented at the First International Congress of Parasitology held in Rome in 1964, and now published by the FPS for IUCN, is the work of a scientist of wide experience, and fairly presents all the known facts. It leads one to the inevitable conclusion that there is no valid justification for using game-destruction as a practical or lasting means of tsetse control.