54 eH bye ACU DSU B*O Nias sl yi ee be 
indirect. Pollution control devices 
and safety standards (as for coal 
strip mines and nuclear power 
plants) are temporarily cutting into 
progress. Law suits filed by en- 
vironmental organizations have 
stopped the Trans-Alaska Pipeline 
and have slowed exploration for 
offshore oil. Airports and canals de- 
signed to stimulate economic 
growth lie uncompleted. Channeli- 
zation is now a dirty word to the 
environmentalist and both the Soil 
Conservation Service and the Corps 
of Engineers show signs of fatigue 
from the onslaught of objections to 
their plans. 
Unfortunately the general public 
and those in public office seem 
more interested in accumulating 
material wealth at the lowest pos- 
sible cost than in saving the world 
system, so in all probability, growth 
will continue more or less un- 
abated. When the system does fall 
it ‘will fall hard because the world 
population will be reduced sub- 
stantially below its present level. 
It is simply a matter of applying 
the concept of carrying capacity to 
a different animal, Homo sapiens. 
Most books on the environment 
describe that which has been done 
to the ecosystem. “The Limits to 
Growth” describes that which will 
be. Buy the book! It is not very 
expensive. Read the book! It will 
help prepare you and your children 
or grandchildren for the impending 
disaster. 
—James S. Fralish 
OPERATION RHINO 
by John Gordon Davis 
Doubleday, 1973 
233 pp, $6.95 
Though I have never hunted, I can 
well understand the motivation of 
the true hunter and sportsman as 
he stalks his wild game in the 
field and forest. Indeed, most 
sportsmen, like the members of 
Ducks Unlimited, have contributed 
far more to the survival of wild 
ducks than the average  bird- 
watcher, who for all his (or her) 
emotional concern, does not match 
the financial commitment of the 
hunter. 
However, I have only contempt 
and deep resentment for the poach- 
er and the ravager, who would kill 
the last Bald Eagle, Tiger, Rhino, 
Alligator, Grizzly Bear, or Cheetah 
for an ill-gotten gain. Davis puts 
it down for most of us when he 
writes in his Preface: 
“The real villains, the real bad 
bastards, are the professional poa- 
chers ... To them the meat is only 
a by-product, often only waste 
matter to be left to rot under the 
African sun. They are really after 
the hides, horns, tusks, for sale to 
the middlemen who sell them to 
the exporters down on the coast, 
who ship them around the world 
for trophies, mats, shoes, coats, bil- 
liard balls, piano keys, and aphro- 
disiacs. They are the wholesale bas- 
tards, the dealers in the long, slow, 
crippling, thirst-crazed death by 
the snares and the pits and the 
poison and the festering gun shot 
wounds. It is a very big, bad busi- 
ness indeed.” 
To slow down that business, 
some men are making an effort to 
transplant the big game of Africa 
to more protected surroundings. In 
this book, Davis tells of the effort 
to save the African Black Rhino- 
ceros, transferring them to the 
relative safety of the Gona-re-Zhou 
Wildlife Preserve in Rhodesia. It 
is not an easy operation to move a 
beast as huge and as dangerous as 
the rhinoceros. 
The operation, of course, is con- 
ducted thru the use of the tran- 
quilizer gun. In the year 1971, of 
which Davis writes, more than 35 
rhinos were moved. Up to ten feet 
