Jackson, Peter F. R.

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142 Environmental ConservationTHYLEFORS, B. & ROLLAND, A. (1976). Aspects oculaires d'unvillage onchocerquien de savane africaine apres treize ansde lutte antisimulidienne. WHO/Oncho/76.129, Geneva,Switzerland: 12 pp., mimeogr.UNDEEN, A. H. & NOLAN, R. A. (1977). Ovarian infection andfungal spore oviposition in the blackfly Prosimulium mixtum.J. Invertebr. Pathol., 30, pp. 97-8, illustr.WEISER, J. (1968). Iridescent virus from the blackfly SimuUumornatum Meigen in Czechoslovakia. /. Invertebr. Pathol.,12(1), pp. 36-9.WEISER, J. (1977). An Atlas of Insect Diseases (Second RevisedEdition). Dr W. Junk, The Hague, and Academia, Prague:240 pp., illustr.WHO (1973). Onchocerciasis Control in the Volta River BasinArea. Report of the Mission for Preparatory Assistanceto the Governments of: Dahomey, Ghana, Ivory Coast,Mali, Niger, Togo, and Upper Volta. WHO/OCP, Geneva,Switzerland: v + 86 pp.WHO (1975). Ecology and control of vectors in public health.(Twenty-first Report of the WHO Expert Committee onInsecticides.) WHO Tech. Rep. Series No. 561, Geneva,Switzerland: 35 pp.WHO (1976). Epidemiology of Onchocerciasis. (Report of aWHO Expert Committee.) WHO Tech. Rep. Series, No. 597,Geneva, Switzerland: 94 pp.TechnologiesAt the Second International Conference on Environ-mental Future, held in Reykjavik in June 1977,* referencewas made to the recent ECE International Seminar on thePrinciples and Creation of Non-waste Technology. Atthat Seminar a whole series of papers showed how wastes,instead of being discharged and allowed to degrade theenvironment, could in fact be converted into useful andprofitable products, or into new sources of raw materialsand energy.Such claims naturally find a rather sceptical audience—in view of the destruction which modern technology haswrought in the past—or are even faced with open hostilityby those who believe that they are a smoke-screen put upby technologists and industrialists to use such 'technicalfixes' to divert criticism and get back to their usual businessof making money and ravaging Nature. However, nowthat the full proceedings of the Non-waste TechnologySeminar are available in printf, it can be seen that thesefears are widely unfounded and the attacks commonlyunjustified.The 77 papers cover a very wide range of industrialactivities—from paper-making to electro-plating, fromwine bottles to whey, from tyres to tin cans—in fact, thewhole alphabetical list from ammonia to zeolites. Thesepapers give practical details of many hundreds of differentprocesses which have been modified to reduce waste andincrease the quantity of useful products from a givenamount of raw materials and energy. The presentation ofso many examples proves that it is possible to clean upindustry without the crippling financial burden which manyindustrialists have feared, and which has often been anexcuse for inaction—or, worse, wrong action. If so muchhas been done without a conscious drive to avoid waste,of Hopehow much more could be done, now and in the future, withthe knowledge that an alternative is available to industry.The alternative is a radical one, however. It is not aquestion of 'business as usual', let alone of a 'smoke-screen': non-waste technology means a completely newapproach to growth, to observing natural limits, and toworking with Nature rather than against Nature. In fact itis necessary to be conscious all the time of the larger systemwhich both constrains us and supports us if we approachproduction, raw materials, and wastes, from a systemsviewpoint. As the Executive Secretary of the ECE said atthe Seminar: 'The moment of truth has come. We shouldquestion every single assumption on which we haveheretofore been building our palace of growth... I simplydo not think that we, in one generation of 25 years, havethe right to spend resources which have accumulated in theEarth's crust over millennia'.Non-waste is a philosophy of conservation, and non-waste technology is the only technology by which thisphilosophy will be transformed into conservation as anindustrial practice.MICHAEL G. ROYSTON, Faculty MemberEnvironmental ManagementCentre a" Etudes Industrielles4 chemin de Conches1231 ConchesGeneva, Switzerland.* See the account by P. & J. Stone published in our Winterissue last year (Environmental Conservation, Vol. 4, No. 4,pp. 309-10, 1977).—Ed.f Non-waste Technology and Production. Pergamon Press,Oxford, England: 678 pp., 104 illustrations, $68 or £38, 1978.Humpback Whale Sanctuary Proclaimed in HawaiiThe Maui County government in Hawaii has proclaimeda sanctuary for the critically-endangered Humpback Whale(Megaptera novaeangliae), which gathers to mate and calvein the area each year. The proposal for the sanctuary wasput forward by Dr Roger Payne, who has been carryingout a study of the Humpback that has been supported bythe World Wildlife Fund, the New York ZoologicalSociety, and the National Geographic Society.Humpback Whales have achieved fame because of theirremarkable 'songs', which have been made into commercialdiscs. Scientists have discovered that there appears to bea new song every year, and that it is common to groupsof Humpbacks.The Humpbacks which congregate off Maui are beingincreasingly harassed by tourists in boats, in defiance ofthe U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act. The newproclamation by Mayor Elmer F. Cravalho directs theMaui County Whale Reserve Committee to take appro-priate action between December and May, when theHumpbacks are present, to encourage residents andvisitors 'to comply with the laws regarding whale pre-servation, to cooperate with federal and state agencies toenforce laws preventing the Humpback whale from harass-ment and exploitation'. It also directs the Committee todevelop a Marine Research Centre and to provide thepublic with educational material on Humpbacks.The Humpback has been reduced in numbers by huntingto about 7-8,000—a tiny fraction of its original population.It has been totally protected since 1955 in the NorthAtlantic, since 1964 in the Southern hemisphere, andsince 1966 in the North Pacific; but there are no indicationsas to whether it is recovering in numbers.PETER F. R. JACKSON, Director of InformationWorld Wildlife Fund1110 MorgesSwitzerland.https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892900005622Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 11 Jul 2017 at 12:26:07, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at

Humpback Whale Sanctuary Proclaimed in Hawaii

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