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The optimum population for Britain
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Conferences & Meetings Conservation.* Thus there were twelve papers in all, some of the best of which will it is hoped find places in this Journal. They ranged very widely in the subject and involved the environments and plant resources of Veracruz, the vanishing native flora of southern Ohio, vegetation control and wildlife in Great Britain, dissolved organic matter in lake metabolism, growth of plants in fertilized ponds, air pollution in Germany from a botanical viewpoint, the effect of air pollution on starch hydrolysis in leaves, and aspects of botanical conservation. This event came to be referred to as 'the conservation symposium', and after delivery and discussion of the eight scheduled papers followed by a break there was the proposal and discussion of, and voting on, each of several draft or prototype resolutions which were all approved heroine contradicente by the very considerable audience (there can hardly have been fewer than three hundred delegates present at the time). Thereafter followed the invited papers which made this quite one of the longest and most complex sessions of the entire Congress. These were by Professor John W. Marr and Dr Beatrice E. Willard on 'Visitor Impress on High-alpine Tundra Ecosystems of the Rocky Mountains', Dr F. R. Fosberg on 'Preservation of Island Ecosystems', Professor Olav Gjaerevoll on 'Conservation in Norway', and Professor V. J. Chapman on 'Conservation in New Zealand'. Thus we ended on a happy note of conservational advances being made in two smallish but enlightened countries at opposite ends of the earth--including Professor Gjaerevoll's account, fresh from the Norwegian Parliament of which he was a member at the time, of a new act just passed to prohibit the building of summer homes and huts within 100 metres of the shore of sea or fjords (hopefully to be extended later to lakes). It seems that in both these countries and some others, forthcoming elections will be fought at least in part on environmental issues, which indicates widespread public awakening and a major advance in the right direction. Again at the all-congress dinner of about 2,000 on the last night in the vast central hall of the Seattle Science Centre, where at the Mayor's Reception a few nights before we had been shown actual spacecraft which had returned from the immediate vicinity of the moon, conservation and pollution and their basis in human over-population were a major and probably the leading theme of discussion. Thus they loomed especially large in the after-dinner address of The Honorable Henry M. Jackson, senior United States Senator from the State of Washington, and Chairman of the powerful Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. As such he had just introduced into the United States Senate a bill for Environmental Improvement and Monitoring. And at the final entertainment the most popular and lustily-rendered song, written and conducted by Professor G. Ledyard Stebbins and sung to the universallyknown tune of 'John Brown's Body', was A BALLAD OF POLLUTION Mary Ann McCarthy was a young and bright co-ed. She asked if she could study Algae brown and green and red. Her botany professor said 'Yes, Mary, go ahead' But pollution had done them in. * The scientific papers presented at the Congress will, we were informed, not be published by the Congress--apart from the Abstracts submitted earlier, which were published verbatim in a book of which a copy was presented to each member of the Congress on registration.
CHORUS: All that she could find was oil slicks All that she could find was oil slicks All that she could find was oil slicks 'Cause pollution had done them in. She put on rubber booties and went down to Skagit Bay. She climbed on rocks and dug in mud throughout the livelong day. But Algae brown and green and red, they all had gone away 'Cause pollution had done them in. CHORUS: All that she could find, etc. So Mary Ann decided she had something big to do. She called on her Professor and on all her boy friends too. She raised a mighty army and she shouts to me and you 'Let's do pollution in !' CHORUS: Let's all put an end to oil slicks Let's all put an end to oil slicks Let's all put an end to oil slicks And do pollution in. At the final plenary session the next morning the invitation of Academician N. V. Tsitsin, leader of the Soviet delegation of about 40, and conveyed on behalf of the Praesidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, to hold the Twelfth International Botanical Congress in Leningrad in 1975, was accepted with acclamation--the longer interval of time than the usual four or five years being allowed to enable international specialist organizations within the botanical family to hold their own congresses in the meantime.* In welcoming acceptance of this invitation, Academician Tsitsin stressed the vital importance of the study of ecosystems [sic] and the conservation of Nature, and indicated that such aspects would receive due consideration at the Leningrad Congress. Even the resolutions passed at this final plenary session, often consisting of boilings-down of the many that had been submitted (particularly by participants of the symposium on conservation) to the Resolutions Committee, dealt largely with conservation, pollution, or the underlying problem of human population--see the Editorial in this issue. NICHOLAS POLUNIN
* This invitation was officially dealt with by that 'umbrella' of international biological congresses, the International Union of Biological Sciences, to which the final plenary session was turned over temporarily under the chairmanship of Sir George Taylor, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England.
'THE OPTIMUM POPULATION FOR BRITAIN': A SYMPOSIUM CONVENED BY DR L. R. TAYLOR ON BEHALF OF THE INSTITUTE OF BIOLOGY, AND HELD IN LONDON, ENGLAND, 25-26 SEPTEMBER, 1969
Nearly 150 biologists and social scientists, as well as several members of Parliament, attended this symposium, the first of its kind in the British Isles. The opening speaker, Miss Jean Thompson of the Registrar General's Office, gave an excellent and straightforward summary of the demographic events leading to Great Britain's present population of 54 millions, and explained her projection of 66 million by the year 2000. Dr G. W. Cooke of the Rothamsted Experimental Station followed with a discussion of
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Biological Conservation
Britain's agricultural potential, concluding that, without imports, the nation would have difficulty in feeding even the present population of 54 million people by the end of the century. The first session closed with an assessment of the pollution situation by D r Kenneth Mellanby, Director of Monks W o o d Experimental Station. It was his opinion that, within the British microcosm, pollution could be controlled. The second session dealt with social and economic aspects of population growth. Professor Sir Alan Parkes of the Galton Foundation severely criticized the medical profession for its neglect of the problems of fertility control - - p r o b l e m s which have been made so pressing by medicines' success at death control. G. P. Hawthorn, of Essex University, expressed doubt that crowding in itself was leading to social pathology or to natural population control. A. J. Boreham, of the Ministry of Technology, expressed the view that the expected amount of population growth within the British Isles in the next 30 years would have little effect on England's economy. The third session contrasted the views of ecologist T. R. E. Southwood (Imperial College) and economist D. E. C. Eversley (Sussex University) concerning the seriousness of the British population situation. Professor Southwood outlined the ways in which animal populations are controlled in Nature and warned of the unpleasant consequences of waiting for natural controls to halt the population explosion. Dr Eversley was not apprehensive about the present or projected absolute size of the British population, but was concerned about its distribution and the possible consequences for the age structure of a rapid reversal of the growth rate. The Rt. Honourable Douglas Houghton, M.P., was the final speaker of the third session. He discussed the very difficult problems of getting population control legislation through Parliament. Lady Medawar of the Family Planning Association opened the final session with a summary of progress made by family planning and abortion law reform, and expressed the hope that voluntary methods would be adequate for the successful control of Britain's population. She was followed by anthropologist Milton M. R. Freeman (Memorial University of Newfoundland), who aligned himself with the biologists in expressing his extreme concern about the environmental problems associated with the population explosion. D r Freeman suggested that it would be most practical to aim at Britain's present population size as an 'optimum,' even though he personally thought the optimum had already been passed. In the final paper the undersigned, of Stanford University, viewed the British situation in a world context and contended that Britain, as well as much of the rest of the world, was already grossly overpopulated. A recurrent theme of the conference was concern for environmental deterioration and the quality of life, but these topics were not dealt with in detail. At the end of the meeting a vote was taken and the participants voted 131 to 15 that Britain had already exceeded its optimum population. As population control is absolutely essential if we are
to conserve anything of value, this expression of opinion, if noted by the press, public, and government, might prove to be the most significant feature of the symposium. PAUL R. EHRLICH,
Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
'THE SCIENTIFICMANAGEMENTOF ANIMALAND PLANT COMMUNITIESFOR CONSERVATION'
In recent years there has been a rapid increase in public concern for wildlife conservation, and an increasing awareness of the value of applying ecological studies to a wide range of environmental problems. However, the ecological basis for conserving or controlling communities of plants and animals is still largely unknown, so that the management of Nature Reserves, National Parks, and other areas of conservation interest, is still done by empirical methods. The British Ecological Society has decided to devote its 1970 Symposium to an examination of this problem under the above title. Although some progress has been made in recent research, for no single community do we yet have the necessary information on how to control the component species and numbers of individuals. One of our first aims must be to understand the pattern and process of change and the effects of different factors which influence the status of plants and animals. To achieve this aim, the methods used by agriculturists, ecologists, and foresters, in their studies of communities, will have to be more closely integrated with those used by conservationists in their investigations of the effects of different management treatments. The purpose of this Symposium is to examine each point of view and to review current research in order to develop further ideas on the scientific basis of management of wildlife areas. The Symposium will be held at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk, England, from 7-9 July 1970. After the meeting participants will have the choice of a number of tours--including day-trips in East Anglia or longer tours of 4-6 days to various parts of England, Wales, and Scotland. The tours are to be jointly organized by the Nature Conservancy and the British Ecological Society and, as far as possible, they will include places where research work, wildlife management, or conservation planning problems, can be demonstrated. Further details can be obtained from the undersigned. ERIC DUFFEY,
Secretary of Council, British Ecological Society; Head, Conservation Research Section, Monks Wood Experimental Station, Abbots Ripton, Huntingdon, England.
Conferences & Meetings Conservation.* Thus there were twelve papers in all, some of the best of which will it is hoped find places in this Journal. They ranged very widely in the subject and involved the environments and plant resources of Veracruz, the vanishing native flora of southern Ohio, vegetation control and wildlife in Great Britain, dissolved organic matter in lake metabolism, growth of plants in fertilized ponds, air pollution in Germany from a botanical viewpoint, the effect of air pollution on starch hydrolysis in leaves, and aspects of botanical conservation. This event came to be referred to as 'the conservation symposium', and after delivery and discussion of the eight scheduled papers followed by a break there was the proposal and discussion of, and voting on, each of several draft or prototype resolutions which were all approved heroine contradicente by the very considerable audience (there can hardly have been fewer than three hundred delegates present at the time). Thereafter followed the invited papers which made this quite one of the longest and most complex sessions of the entire Congress. These were by Professor John W. Marr and Dr Beatrice E. Willard on 'Visitor Impress on High-alpine Tundra Ecosystems of the Rocky Mountains', Dr F. R. Fosberg on 'Preservation of Island Ecosystems', Professor Olav Gjaerevoll on 'Conservation in Norway', and Professor V. J. Chapman on 'Conservation in New Zealand'. Thus we ended on a happy note of conservational advances being made in two smallish but enlightened countries at opposite ends of the earth--including Professor Gjaerevoll's account, fresh from the Norwegian Parliament of which he was a member at the time, of a new act just passed to prohibit the building of summer homes and huts within 100 metres of the shore of sea or fjords (hopefully to be extended later to lakes). It seems that in both these countries and some others, forthcoming elections will be fought at least in part on environmental issues, which indicates widespread public awakening and a major advance in the right direction. Again at the all-congress dinner of about 2,000 on the last night in the vast central hall of the Seattle Science Centre, where at the Mayor's Reception a few nights before we had been shown actual spacecraft which had returned from the immediate vicinity of the moon, conservation and pollution and their basis in human over-population were a major and probably the leading theme of discussion. Thus they loomed especially large in the after-dinner address of The Honorable Henry M. Jackson, senior United States Senator from the State of Washington, and Chairman of the powerful Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. As such he had just introduced into the United States Senate a bill for Environmental Improvement and Monitoring. And at the final entertainment the most popular and lustily-rendered song, written and conducted by Professor G. Ledyard Stebbins and sung to the universallyknown tune of 'John Brown's Body', was A BALLAD OF POLLUTION Mary Ann McCarthy was a young and bright co-ed. She asked if she could study Algae brown and green and red. Her botany professor said 'Yes, Mary, go ahead' But pollution had done them in. * The scientific papers presented at the Congress will, we were informed, not be published by the Congress--apart from the Abstracts submitted earlier, which were published verbatim in a book of which a copy was presented to each member of the Congress on registration.
CHORUS: All that she could find was oil slicks All that she could find was oil slicks All that she could find was oil slicks 'Cause pollution had done them in. She put on rubber booties and went down to Skagit Bay. She climbed on rocks and dug in mud throughout the livelong day. But Algae brown and green and red, they all had gone away 'Cause pollution had done them in. CHORUS: All that she could find, etc. So Mary Ann decided she had something big to do. She called on her Professor and on all her boy friends too. She raised a mighty army and she shouts to me and you 'Let's do pollution in !' CHORUS: Let's all put an end to oil slicks Let's all put an end to oil slicks Let's all put an end to oil slicks And do pollution in. At the final plenary session the next morning the invitation of Academician N. V. Tsitsin, leader of the Soviet delegation of about 40, and conveyed on behalf of the Praesidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, to hold the Twelfth International Botanical Congress in Leningrad in 1975, was accepted with acclamation--the longer interval of time than the usual four or five years being allowed to enable international specialist organizations within the botanical family to hold their own congresses in the meantime.* In welcoming acceptance of this invitation, Academician Tsitsin stressed the vital importance of the study of ecosystems [sic] and the conservation of Nature, and indicated that such aspects would receive due consideration at the Leningrad Congress. Even the resolutions passed at this final plenary session, often consisting of boilings-down of the many that had been submitted (particularly by participants of the symposium on conservation) to the Resolutions Committee, dealt largely with conservation, pollution, or the underlying problem of human population--see the Editorial in this issue. NICHOLAS POLUNIN
* This invitation was officially dealt with by that 'umbrella' of international biological congresses, the International Union of Biological Sciences, to which the final plenary session was turned over temporarily under the chairmanship of Sir George Taylor, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England.
'THE OPTIMUM POPULATION FOR BRITAIN': A SYMPOSIUM CONVENED BY DR L. R. TAYLOR ON BEHALF OF THE INSTITUTE OF BIOLOGY, AND HELD IN LONDON, ENGLAND, 25-26 SEPTEMBER, 1969
Nearly 150 biologists and social scientists, as well as several members of Parliament, attended this symposium, the first of its kind in the British Isles. The opening speaker, Miss Jean Thompson of the Registrar General's Office, gave an excellent and straightforward summary of the demographic events leading to Great Britain's present population of 54 millions, and explained her projection of 66 million by the year 2000. Dr G. W. Cooke of the Rothamsted Experimental Station followed with a discussion of
156
Biological Conservation
Britain's agricultural potential, concluding that, without imports, the nation would have difficulty in feeding even the present population of 54 million people by the end of the century. The first session closed with an assessment of the pollution situation by D r Kenneth Mellanby, Director of Monks W o o d Experimental Station. It was his opinion that, within the British microcosm, pollution could be controlled. The second session dealt with social and economic aspects of population growth. Professor Sir Alan Parkes of the Galton Foundation severely criticized the medical profession for its neglect of the problems of fertility control - - p r o b l e m s which have been made so pressing by medicines' success at death control. G. P. Hawthorn, of Essex University, expressed doubt that crowding in itself was leading to social pathology or to natural population control. A. J. Boreham, of the Ministry of Technology, expressed the view that the expected amount of population growth within the British Isles in the next 30 years would have little effect on England's economy. The third session contrasted the views of ecologist T. R. E. Southwood (Imperial College) and economist D. E. C. Eversley (Sussex University) concerning the seriousness of the British population situation. Professor Southwood outlined the ways in which animal populations are controlled in Nature and warned of the unpleasant consequences of waiting for natural controls to halt the population explosion. Dr Eversley was not apprehensive about the present or projected absolute size of the British population, but was concerned about its distribution and the possible consequences for the age structure of a rapid reversal of the growth rate. The Rt. Honourable Douglas Houghton, M.P., was the final speaker of the third session. He discussed the very difficult problems of getting population control legislation through Parliament. Lady Medawar of the Family Planning Association opened the final session with a summary of progress made by family planning and abortion law reform, and expressed the hope that voluntary methods would be adequate for the successful control of Britain's population. She was followed by anthropologist Milton M. R. Freeman (Memorial University of Newfoundland), who aligned himself with the biologists in expressing his extreme concern about the environmental problems associated with the population explosion. D r Freeman suggested that it would be most practical to aim at Britain's present population size as an 'optimum,' even though he personally thought the optimum had already been passed. In the final paper the undersigned, of Stanford University, viewed the British situation in a world context and contended that Britain, as well as much of the rest of the world, was already grossly overpopulated. A recurrent theme of the conference was concern for environmental deterioration and the quality of life, but these topics were not dealt with in detail. At the end of the meeting a vote was taken and the participants voted 131 to 15 that Britain had already exceeded its optimum population. As population control is absolutely essential if we are
to conserve anything of value, this expression of opinion, if noted by the press, public, and government, might prove to be the most significant feature of the symposium. PAUL R. EHRLICH,
Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
'THE SCIENTIFICMANAGEMENTOF ANIMALAND PLANT COMMUNITIESFOR CONSERVATION'
In recent years there has been a rapid increase in public concern for wildlife conservation, and an increasing awareness of the value of applying ecological studies to a wide range of environmental problems. However, the ecological basis for conserving or controlling communities of plants and animals is still largely unknown, so that the management of Nature Reserves, National Parks, and other areas of conservation interest, is still done by empirical methods. The British Ecological Society has decided to devote its 1970 Symposium to an examination of this problem under the above title. Although some progress has been made in recent research, for no single community do we yet have the necessary information on how to control the component species and numbers of individuals. One of our first aims must be to understand the pattern and process of change and the effects of different factors which influence the status of plants and animals. To achieve this aim, the methods used by agriculturists, ecologists, and foresters, in their studies of communities, will have to be more closely integrated with those used by conservationists in their investigations of the effects of different management treatments. The purpose of this Symposium is to examine each point of view and to review current research in order to develop further ideas on the scientific basis of management of wildlife areas. The Symposium will be held at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk, England, from 7-9 July 1970. After the meeting participants will have the choice of a number of tours--including day-trips in East Anglia or longer tours of 4-6 days to various parts of England, Wales, and Scotland. The tours are to be jointly organized by the Nature Conservancy and the British Ecological Society and, as far as possible, they will include places where research work, wildlife management, or conservation planning problems, can be demonstrated. Further details can be obtained from the undersigned. ERIC DUFFEY,
Secretary of Council, British Ecological Society; Head, Conservation Research Section, Monks Wood Experimental Station, Abbots Ripton, Huntingdon, England.