A team of scientists exposes inherent shortcomings in a technique to count tigers. Among recent studies thought to be based on this method is India’s national tiger survey (January 2015) which claimed a surprising but welcome 30 percent rise in tiger numbers in just four years.
Carbon credits from WCS’s Makira Natural Park Project in Madagascar are now available through the Stand for Trees campaign, an online carbon sales platform recently launched by USAID and Code REDD.
Conservationists in Guatemala and around the world celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, a successful safe haven for jaguars, peccaries, macaws and other species that have disappeared from much of Mesoamerica, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine and its Feline Health Center, and the University of Glasgow's Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine have just co-convened the first "Vaccines for Conservation" international meeting at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo in New York City. Experts from around the world focused on the threat that canine distemper virus poses to the conservation of increasingly fragmented populations of threatened carnivores. While canine distemper has been known for many years as a problem affecting domestic dogs, the virus has been appearing in new areas and causing disease and mortality in a wide range of wildlife species, including tigers and lions. In fact, many experts agree that the virus should not be called “canine distemper” virus at all, given the diversity of species it infects.
The South Sumatra Military Police, South Sumatra Provincial Natural Resource Conservation Office (BKSDA), and the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Wildlife Crimes Unit (WCU) announced today the recent arrest of a major wildlife trafficker illegally trading in tiger parts and other protected wildlife in Indonesia. The suspect has allegedly sold more than 100 stuffed tigers over a ten-year period.
WCS submitted testimony to the Hawaii House Committee on Water and Land in support of HB 837, which would help shut down the illegal trade in ivory currently decimating elephants across Africa.
The Idaho Transportation Department (ITD), Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) today announced the completion of a four-year collaborative study in Idaho’s Island Park area that will better inform decision-making with regard to wildlife-related hazards and improved safety on U.S. Highway 20 and Idaho Highway 87.
The Government of Madagascar has created the country’s first marine sanctuary for sharks as part of a new law to safeguard the country’s marine resources and the communities that rely on them, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Researchers from Africa, North America and Europe have published a road map on how future evolutionary research and education efforts in Central African forests can guide conservation strategies and actions.
Human beings are not the only great ape species likely to be severely impacted by climate change in the future. According to a new study by the Drexel University, Wildlife Conservation Society, and other groups, the Nigerian-Cameroon chimpanzee—the most endangered of all chimpanzee subspecies—may lose much of its habitat within the next five years and fully half of it in the next century.
The Russian Far East is the setting for a Cinderella story. In this case, Cinderella is a tiger. An orphaned, starved, frost-bitten cub was rescued in the winter of 2012, rehabilitated, released, and now is possibly mating and re-colonizing former tiger territory, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society.
WCS and partners in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru have published four significant contributions towards the conservation of the real Paddington Bear – the Andean bear (Tremarctos ornatus).
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Governments of Tanzania and the United States, including USAID, announced the launch of a new joint program to save East Africa’s largest elephant population in the Ruaha-Katavi Landscape.
Guanacos are back – and getting into trouble – says a team of scientists from WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) tracking these iconic hoofed mammals across a variety of landscapes on the Chilean side of the island of Tierra del Fuego.
A new study from the Wildlife Conservation Society shows that habitat alteration may be less important than other factors– such as human behavior– in driving the effects of “exurban” development on bird communities. These unexpected results are fueling more questions that may ultimately lead to informed landowners lessening their impacts on local wildlife.
A member of a cooperative of small-scale farmers, many of whom are former poachers, played a key role in the recent arrests by the Zambia Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) of two wildlife traffickers attempting to trade ivory as part of a major syndicate involved in the illegal wildlife trade.
The Board of Directors of the Mitsubishi Corporation Foundation for the Americas (MCFA) has approved $1 million in support to be granted over the next 5 years to WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) for its Amazon Waters initiative.
A WCS team in Nicaragua reported today a dramatic increase in nesting of critically endangered hawksbill sea turtles including the highest nest counts since a conservation project began there in 2000.
Science for Nature and People (SNAP) — a new science initiative producing solutions on issues from hydraulic fracturing to sustainable agriculture intensification to protecting coastlines in the face of sea-level rise — has named the renowned conservation innovator Craig Groves as its first full-time executive director.
Scientists from WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society), the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), the Environment Society of Oman, and other organizations have made a fascinating discovery in the northern Indian Ocean: humpback whales inhabiting the Arabian Sea are the most genetically distinct humpback whales in the world and may be the most isolated whale population on earth. The results suggest they have remained separate from other humpback whale populations for perhaps 70,000 years, extremely unusual in a species famed for long distance migrations.
In the first-ever GPS-based study of leopards in India, led by WCS and partners has delved into the secret lives of these big cats, and recorded their strategies to thrive in human-dominated areas.
Participation of non-scientists as volunteers in conservation can play a significant role in saving wildlife, finds a new scientific research led by Duke University, USA, in collaboration with Wildlife Conservation Society and Centre for Wildlife Studies, Bengaluru.
Researchers with WCS and other partners in India are using high-tech solutions to zero in on individual tigers in conflict and relocate them out of harm’s way for the benefit of both tigers and people.
Ten years after Goldman Sachs and the Wildlife Conservation Society announced one of the largest gifts of private lands ever given for conservation, Chile’s Karukinka Natural Park is celebrating a decade of accomplishments, from top-notch conservation science, to wildlife and habitat protection, to public education and engagement.
Scientists from WCS, NASA, and other organizations have partnered to focus global attention on the contribution of satellites to biodiversity conservation in a recently released study entitled “Ten Ways Remote Sensing Can Contribute to Conservation,” in the latest edition of the scientific journal Conservation Biology.
For the first time, scientists working in the waters of Patagonia are using satellite tags to remotely track southern right whales from their breeding/calving grounds in the sheltered bays of Península Valdés, Argentina, to unknown feeding grounds somewhere in the western South Atlantic.
The Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries of the Republic of Indonesia and the WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society’s) Wildlife Crimes Unit announced the largest confiscation of illegal manta ray parts as part of a major enforcement action against illegal trade of sharks and rays in Indonesia
The Government of Gabon has announced the decision to create a new marine protected area network of ten marine parks covering more than 18,000 square miles (over 46,000 square kilometres) that will safeguard whales, sea turtles, and other marine species inhabiting the country’s coastal and offshore ecosystems -- a network of marine parks covering about 23% of Gabon's territorial waters and EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone).
WCS scientists in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have discovered a new species of plant living in a remote rift valley escarpment that’s supposed to be inside of a protected area. But an administrative mapping error puts the reserve’s borders some 50 kilometers west of the actual location.
Stopping Wildlife Crime? There’s an APP for that. According to a new article from the Wildlife Conservation Society that appears in Biological Conservation, innovative mobile and web-based applications can provide authorities with speedy access to information on hundreds of protected species, convenient outreach to experts, and other resources used to identify and prosecute wildlife crime.
Conservationists are rejoicing at the listing of 21 species of sharks and rays under the Appendices of the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), made official today in the final plenary session of the Conference of Parties (CoP).
The Parties to the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), at their 11th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) in Quito, Ecuador, agreed today to adopt a Central Asia Migratory Mammal Initiative to protect wildlife in the region from increasing development threats, WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) reports.
WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) announced that the Nam Nern Night Safari, an ecotour based in Laos’ Nam Et-Phou Louey National Protected Area in Houaphan Province, won the prestigious World Responsible Tourism People's Choice Award at the World Travel Mart in London, England.
Along with the pressures of habitat loss, poaching and depletion of prey species, a new threat to tiger populations in the wild has surfaced in the form of disease, specifically, canine distemper virus (CDV). According to a new study from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and its partners, CDV has the potential to be a significant driver in pushing the animals toward extinction.
A fundamental step-change involving an increase in funding and political commitment is urgently needed to ensure that protected areas deliver their full conservation, social and economic potential, according to an article published today in Nature by experts from Wildlife Conservation Society, the University of Queensland, and the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA).
The Government of Bangladesh has created the country’s first marine protected area that will now safeguard whales, dolphins, sea turtles, sharks, and other oceanic species, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society.
A new multi-sensory e-book based on the real-life experiences of author, explorer, and filmmaker Carol J. Amore’s as she documented tigers Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve will benefit the Wildlife Conservation Society’s tiger work in India.
The Vote Bison Coalition is joining bison-friendly businesses, groups and individuals around the country today to celebrate the third annual National Bison Day on Saturday, November 1. More than 19 events are occurring in at least 15 states to celebrate National Bison Day, with many more people weighing in on social media, to commemorate the historical, economic, ecological and cultural contributions of bison across the American landscape.
More than 60 years after its last confirmed sighting, a strange deer with vampire-like fangs still persists in the rugged forested slopes of northeast Afghanistan according to a research team led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which confirmed the species presence during recent surveys.
The West Java Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) of the Ministry of Forestry, the Indonesian Police (Lampung office), and the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Wildlife Crimes Unit announced today enforcement action against two wildlife traffickers trading tiger parts online.
A new study has found that implementing stricter fisheries management overcame the expected detrimental effects of climate change disturbances in coral reef fisheries badly impacted by the 1997/98 El Niño, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society.
A new paper from the Wildlife Conservation Society, Montana State University, Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and the U.S. Geological Survey looks at the feasibility of electrofishing to selectively remove invasive trout species from Montana streams as an alternative to using fish toxicants known as piscicides that effect all gill-breathing organisms.
The Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (MMAF), Government of Indonesia, and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)’s Wildlife Crimes Unit announced today the first-ever series of enforcement actions against a trader of sharks and rays in Indonesia.
Two known ivory poachers were arrested and five illegal firearms seized on Monday, September 22nd near Niassa National Reserve by a joint force including Niassa Reserve scouts from WCS and the Ministry of Tourism, supported by the new branch of the Mozambican police in charge of environmental crimes, and other scouts from the Luwire tourism concession.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has presented Dr. Cristián Samper, president and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society, with the prestigious Order of San Carlos.