1973 iucn yearbook

qualified ecologists who would give special attention to the relationship
between scientific knowledge and land-use programmes. It was envisaged
that this might be achieved by exchange of information, encouragement
of fundamental ecological research and other activities including the
planning of the Union's major Technical Meetings, aimed at the application
of ecology to practical programmes of land management and nature
protection. In the course of time the setting up of Specialist subcommittees
was found to be a useful development and four were formed,
of which those devoted to the study of ecological aspects of landscape
planning and the ecological effects of chemical controls became the most
active. The former was raised to the status of a Temporary Commission
by the Executive Board in November 1966, with R. J. Benthem remaining
its Chairman, as he had been for many years, and was made a full Commission
at New Delhi in 1969. It was renamed as the Commission on
Environmental Planning in 1971, the better to reflect its terms of
reference.
As mentioned earlier, the Survival Service came into being as a Union
activity following the Lake Success meeting. Within this group its
Chairman, Harold J. Coolidge, named a panel of expert advisers which
was called a "Commission", although it was not a Commission in the
sense in which that term is now used. The Survival Service's responsibility
was to deal with the acquisition, analysis and dissemination of information
on endangered species*, and to take actions required for their survival.
This became a major part of the Union's programme and has, of
course, remained so to the present day. The Survival Service was made
a full Commission in 1956 at the General Assembly in Edinburgh.
In the early days at Brussels, the association with IUCN of the International
Office for the Protection of Nature was particularly reflected
in the amount of help given to the Survival Service, in the accumulation
and handling of data on endangered species, and in matters pertaining
to the legal bases for their protection. Much of the documentation
assembled by IOPN was later transferred to Bonn following establishment
of the Commission on Legislation.
Accurate, up-to-date information has always been considered by the
SSC to be essential and, unfortunately, species over which the threat of
extinction has loomed largest have often been those which have ipso
facto been exceptionally difficult to study. There have been many instances
where the collection of fundamental background information
* At the Third Assembly the Survival Service formally referred its interest in endangered
species of birds to the International Council for Bird Preservation.
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