Even by silly-season standards, the mink frenzy was notable. For days it has hardly been possible to switch on a news bulletin without seeing furry killers swarming around a Hampshire farm, while cameras and reporters swarmed after them.

THE QUAGGA, an extinct animal which looks like a half-painted zebra, was described in QED (BBC1) as "one of Africa's most graceful animals" and a "gentle" creature. But how reliable are these descriptions? It didn't look notably graceful in the only surviving photograph of the animal, taken by one of England's 19th-century aristocratic animal collectors. And, while it is hard to be certain about the behavioural characteristics of any extinct animal, if it was anything like a zebra at all then it won't have been very gentle either. Approaching one of the animals involved in an experiment to resurrect the quagga, the project leader was wary: "If I knew you wouldn't bite me, I'd give you my whole arm, but I can't trust you any more," he said, which wasn't a very convincing affidavit for its amiable nature. In truth, both phrases are posthumous honorifics, the sort of attributes we sentimentally ascribe to the beasts we have extinguished in order to make ourselves feel even wickeder than we are. It's bad enough killing off stolid, undistinguished organisms, but to do away with a gentle, graceful animal is really beyond the pale.

Sir: Surely the whole conservation world is shocked at the news that Wilfred Bull who, while still in jail for murdering his wife, imported into the UK pounds 3m worth of rhino horn, is now to have his haul returned to him as a result of the decision of the Court of Appeal. He must be a very happy man to know that he may make a quick buck from selling the proceeds of his nefarious activities, to bolster up the sickening and illegal Chinese medicine trade in the Far East. There must be something seriously wrong.

THE illegal trafficking of exotic and endangered species is now the biggest international criminal activity after the drugs trade, according to Interpol.

Michael Arditti basks in the Florida sunshine of a charming satire on human-hating Greens

Matthew Brace investigates the lucrative traffic in stolen animals

GEOFFREY Lean ignores evidence that commercial whaling is out of control and uncontrollable ("Plenty more whales in the sea", 17 May). This year the Nor- wegians awarded themselves a quota of 671 minke whales, over double the number for 1993, when they restarted commercial whaling in defiance of the International Whaling Commission. They now want to turn back the clock to the days when they killed 2,000 whales annually - exactly the levels that led the IWC to declare it a protected stock.

As Wasps' Gareth Rees prepares for tomorrow's Tetley's Bitter Cup final Chris Hewett finds him hankering after bygone days

FIRST it was called the Daily Worker, then the Morning Star and now it has re-emerged, if briefly, as The Workers' Morning Star. Yesterday striking journalists at the paper made an uncomradely two-fingered gesture at their management by publishing a samizdat version.

HEAD bowed, he approaches the shop assistant with a tell-tale nervous smirk. Then he stabs at the palest colour on the sample card and waits for his pot of emulsion.

Male primary teachers are becoming an endangered species. Only nine per cent of sixth-form boys put teaching as their top career choice compared with 40 per cent of girls, according to a new survey published today.

INVESTMENT TRUSTS are hardly yet an endangered species. At The Independent, and in most other national newspapers, more listings of investment trusts are carried than for any other sector. Even so, these usually inoffensive creatures are being hunted as never before. Nor are we talking here about the relatively harmless antics of the countryside alliance. The hunters in this case are arbitrageurs, generally of the overseas variety, and they come armed not with horse and hound but with kalashnikovs and magnums.

THE SMOG which blighted large areas of South-East Asia last year is returning to parts of Malaysia as forest fires burn out of control on Indonesian territory in the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, writes Richard Lloyd Parry.

UNDERCOVER animal welfare investigators posed as buyers to sting a gang trying to sell pounds 2.8m worth of rhinoceros horn, a court heard yesterday.