Systematics, Natural History, and Conservation: Field biologists must fight a public-image problem

* The leader of a well-known environmental group visited a research station in Costa Rica and asked pointedly, "When are you scientists going to start doing something for conservation?" 9 Animal rights advocates in the San Francisco Bay Area demanded that the University of California prohibit all animal research not directly related to human welfare, and they objected specifically to studies aimed at clarifying the biological species status of certain songbirds. * An employee of a major zoological park congratulated one of us (H. W. G.) on working with animals in the wild, "unlike most herpetologists, who just kill them and count scales."