During the Zoological Society of Southern Africa’s 1994 Symposium in Pietermaritzburg, a theme session was convened to evaluate the protection status of selected groups of South African vertebrates (viz. freshwater fish, frogs, tortoises and terrapins, snakes, birds, and various mammal orders). The research papers presented during that session are reported in this number of the South African Journal of Zoology. The rationale behind the research, and the data and methods used, are described in this introductory paper. South Africa’s national and international contractual obligations to conserve its biodiversity, and the urgent need for a national conservation strategy and national conservation information networks and databases, are also discussed.
