The problem of managing habitat successfully for wildlife is familiar to all conservationists. Many wardens will also have encountered severe, and sometimes irresolvable, difficulties in perpetuating rare species. That the answer to these problems may lay in genetics and not land management might never have been realised, although the phenomenon has been well documented in cases such as the Cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus (O’Brien et al. 1983), and the Florida Panther, Puma concolor coryi (Hendrick 1995), while Avise & hamrick (1996) have supplied a range of reviews on the subject.