3 
forest and national parks, and in rare instances in 
state and provincial parks. Buffer areas may serve 
as recreation areas, game reserves, etc.  They are 
areas of partial protection not always available on 
all sides of natural areas. Reserve areas in the 
national parks and national forests are probably too 
small to serve as true nature sanctuaries. They have 
not been selected with reference to animals, and no 
buffer area of protection within which animals will 
not be disturbed is ordinarily set aside. 
  Nature sanctuaries are essential if any of the 
original nature in North America is to be saved for 
future  generations   for scientific  observation  of, 
among other things, the important phenomena of 
fluctuation in abundance of plants and animals, their 
social life, etc. Due to lack of knowledge of these 
fluctuations custodians view each change in abundance 
with alarm and desire to apply remedies immediately; 
hence, constant pressure must be exerted on govern- 
ment agencies to prevent the current popular idea of 
"control" and "improvement" from entering into the 
management of national parks, provincial and state 
parks and other reserves containing natural areas suit- 
able as nature sanctuaries with buffer territories. 
The experiment of leaving areas essentially alone, 
which was so successful in a few of our parks, is 
worthy of repetition. In general much control ac- 
tivity is useless because it is applied to animals at 
their maximum abundance and barely hasten the 
natural decline. 
  The Ecological Society of America urges a sub- 
division of all but the small reserves into sanctuaries, 
buffer areas of partial protection and areas of devel- 
opment for human use where this is one of the aims 
of the reserves. A further aim of the society is to 
promote adequate scientific- observation bearing on 
the fluctuations in abundance, to stimulate coopera-