The following statement was issued by WCS Vice President of International Policy Dr. Susan Lieberman in response to the European Union’s new ivory trade rules announced today.

Two WCS-supported Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) – Cuba’s Parque Nacional Jardines de la Reina (Gardens of the Queen) and Kisite Mpunguti Marine National Park in Kenya – have been designated as Blue Parks, a prestigious recognition for their global importance, as well as the exceptional quality of the science-based conservation and management standards in place to protect them. 

Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Soils for the Future, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and the Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN) announces the publication of the scientific paper Savanna fire management can generate enough carbon revenue to help restore Africa’s rangelands and fill Protected Area funding gaps in the December issue of the journal One Earth.

The most comprehensive survey conducted of elephant numbers in the Central African nation of Gabon since the late 1980s has found elephants occurring in higher numbers than previously thought.

The Supervisory Board of the Legacy Landscapes Fund (LLF) has decided on funding for the first two LLF sites in a unanimous vote: Madidi National Park in Bolivia und North Luangwa National Park in Zambia were approved as legacy landscapes of the LLF.

A new study in the journal Biological Conservation has documented Nigeria’s staggering role in trafficking of wild pangolins, the anteater-like mammal whose scales are used in traditional Chinese medicines; all international commercial trade in pangolins and their parts is illegal.

The first-ever Africa-wide assessment of great apes – gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees – finds that human factors, including roads, population density and GDP, determine abundance more than ecological factors such as forest cover.