News Releases

The European Union will support WCS’s Five Great Forests initiative, a successful collaboration to protect Mesoamerica’s five largest forests—the last remaining intact forests from Mexico to Colombia critical to the region’s people, culture, biodiversity, economic health, and resilience to climate change.

WCS EU welcomes today’s announcement of President von der Leyen that the European Union will double its external funding for biodiversity, in particular for the most vulnerable countries.

ON THE EVE OF THE 20th ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11, we have issued a message remembering those we lost and all who responded on that day and through the years at home and abroad.

Bronx, NY – Sept. 9, 2021 – Boo at the Zoo is a fall tradition at the Bronx Zoo and the seasonal celebration it is returning for 2021. The Halloween-themed event is a family favorite for New Yorkers that marks the beginning of fall with activities for all ages. Boo at the Zoo begins Saturday October 2 and will run on Saturdays and Sundays through October 31 (including Monday, October 11). Outdoor activities will include traditional favorites such as the popular professional pumpkin c...

A team of conservationists is launching a major upgrade to SMART - the world’s leading protected area management tool helping conservation practitioners in 70 countries to collect, interpret and use information to make decisions and inform strategies over time with reliable, quantitative data.

Conservationists meeting in person and virtually at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress have elected two WCS scientists to IUCN’s 2021-2025 Council.

The following is a statement delivered by WCS President and CEO Cristián Samper at the Biodiversity PreCOP event hosted by the Government of Colombia here on August 30. The virtual event was held under the leadership of President Iván Duque Márquez. This event is a part of the Third Session of the Open-Ended Working Group on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (WG2020-3) negotiating sessions, from 23 August to 3 September 2021. Those participating...

Bronx, NY – Sept. 1, 2021 – The Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS’s) Bronx Zoo is working with partners on a multi-year program to save the eastern hellbender, an aquatic amphibian species and one of the world’s largest salamanders. As part of this conservation effort, 124 eastern hellbenders raised at the Bronx Zoo were released into streams in the Upper Susquehanna River Watershed on Saturday, August 28. For this story, the headlines write themselves – Ra...

NEW YORK CITY – Aug. 30, 2021 – The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC), New York City Police Department (NYPD) and the Bronx Zoo collaborated last week to remove an 11-month-old, approximately 80-pound, female cougar from a New York City home on Thursday night. The HSUS was on scene with the owner who surrendered the cougar. The NYSDEC and NYPD worked to coordinate the safe removal of the big cat from the home ...

A team of conservationists in Brazil funded by the Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP), of which WCS is a partner, has assisted in the creation and recent publication of a new government-executed management plan to conserve threatened coral reefs in Brazil’s largest federal coastal marine conservation unit, the Costa dos Corais.