A Planet in Trouble: Humankind’s fractured relationship with nature is on the face of this Guatemalan black howler monkey. 

WCS announced that Fabricio Díaz Santos, Coordinator of WCS's Jaguar Conservation Program in Nicaragua, has been honored with a 2019 Disney Conservation Hero Award. The award recognizes local citizens for their commitment to save wildlife, protect habitats and inspire their communities to take part in conservation efforts. Recipients from around the world were nominated by nonprofit environmental organizations, and each honoree and his nominating organization will share a $1,500...

White-lipped peccaries have declined by as much as 87 percent to 90 percent from their historical range in Central America, signaling a population collapse of a key species in the region, according to a study published recently in the journal Biological Conservation. 

WCS’s Bolivia Program and the Institute of Ecology have won an Urban Intervention Program Award, a prestigious honor with national recognition for their online efforts to connect the country’s urban population with nature, specifically by enlisting residents of La Paz in research and conservation actions important for urban wildlife habitats and diversity.

At COP25, for the first time, the eight countries of Central America presented their regional climate action plan, which commits to protect Mesoamerica’s five great forests as part of the natural solution to the climate crisis. This ambitious initiative aims to bring together the agricultural and environmental sectors to restore and conserve 10 million hectares of forests and degraded land by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality in the agricultural and forest sector by 2040.

On October 15, 2019, on World Food Day, Peru’s Minister of Environment, Fabiola Muñoz, and the Deputy Minister of Agricultural Policies of the Ministry of Agriculture, Paula Rosas, declared the country’s first ever “agrobiodiversity zone”: the “Andenes de Cuyocuyo.”  

WCS’s Dr. Rob Wallace, based in La Paz, Bolivia, has been honored by the IUCN for his more than 20 years of innovative conservation and science to protect Latin America’s biodiversity.

WCS released a statement by Padu Franco, WCS Regional Director, Andes, Amazon, Orinoco on the First High-Level Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade in the Americas, which concluded on October 4th the with the adoption of the Lima Declaration signed by 20 countries.

 

On October 3-4, a High Level International Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade in the Americas will take place in Lima, Peru.

Wilderness areas, long known for intrinsic conservation value, are far more valuable for biodiversity than previously believed, and if conserved, will cut the world’s extinction risk in half, according to a new study published in the journal Nature.