Progress and Priorities in African Conservation History

To broaden the scope of this special issue of FCH on Africa, we solicited the following comments about work in progress and future priorities from a random sample of researchers. Although many of these letters deal with current controversies in conservation or development, they all identify ways in which historical information and thinking can help to improve public policies. All of the contributors to this issue are interested in balances and imbalances between use and preservation in Africa's forests, in the past and in the future. More historical investigation of the long relationships between nonEuropean peoples and their forests (or between the forests and their people) may eventually help us to replace our current compromises with a single, coherent policy. In the meantime, the editors will be happy to receive more letters similar to those reproduced here, for future "letters to the editor" sections. We would especially like to hear from anyone interested in contributing material on Africa to future issues of FCH or in attending the conference on African forest history discussed in the introduction to this issue.