IUCN International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources

The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) - or The World Conservation Union - is an organization whose objective is to promote and encourage the protection and sustainable use of living resources by all concerned. Founded in 1948, IUCN has more than 600 members representing 120 countries. IUCN has developed to support the World Conservation Strategy in four ways. IUCN monitors what is happening to the world's environment and collects and publishes scientifically-based data about species and ecosystems. It investigates the causes of environmental change and degradation in different places, assesses the seriousness of different problems, and determines options for solutions. Drawing on information and analyses, specialists consider how to reverse destructive trends and set development on a path to sustainability which is appropriate to the local setting. IUCN has six regional offices in Africa, Central America, Caribbean, Pacific and Asia, that work closely with governments, aid agencies, NGOs and local communities to put IUCN conservation principles into action. Maintaining biological diversity remains the backbone of IUCN's activities and the focus of several publications. It has helped more than 30 governments prepare National Conservation Strategies, and is still pressing for action on many issues. These include providing incentives for natural resource management, putting an economic value on irreplaceable resources, saving individual species like the elephant and the rhino and preventing pesticide 'dumping' and ending the conflict between commercial logging and the rights and lives of village people. IUCN publishes the 'Red Data Books' on the status and urgent conservation needs of key mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, invertebrates and plants; the United Nations List of National Parks and Protected Areas; handbooks on conservation and development and on 'Managing Protected Areas in the Tropics', 'Economics and Biological Diversity' and on 'Managing Marine and Coastal Protected Areas'; reports on the conservation of a wide range of species and guidelines for managing buffer zones around protected areas. Various Commissions of IUCN - The Species Survival Commission, on National Parks and Protected Areas, Tropical Forest Programme, The Commission on Sustainable Development - all publish their own bulletins. For more information on IUCN: Communications Divison - IUCN Avenue du Mont-Blanc - CH 1196 Gland SWITZERLAND For lUCN publications: IUCN Publications Unit - 219c Huntingdon Road - Cambridge CB3 ODL - UKThe International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) - or The World Conservation Union - is an organization whose objective is to promote and encourage the protection and sustainable use of living resources by all..