The Wildlife Conservation Society will execute a $12.84 million USD grant from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to maintain the high conservation status of the Putumayo-Içá river basin in the Amazon, home to some of the richest ecosystems in the world.

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are working together to prevent environmental crime in the Amazon of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

Conservationists have conducted the first comprehensive review of national laws across the range of the jaguar (Panthera onca) to show opportunities for strengthening legal protections of the largest cat species found in the Americas.

WCS scientists working in the vast Amazon Basin have contributed more than 57,000 camera trap images for a new study published in the journal Ecology by an international team of 120 research institutions.

WCS Ecuador, in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment and Water of Ecuador (MAAE), published the "Manual for the implementation of a tool to strengthen the control and surveillance in Protected Areas," which will be distributed among the National System of Protected Areas (SNAP) personnel.

By analyzing records in countries of the Amazon and Orinoco basins—which include Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador—a paper published today in Oryx—The International Journal of Conservation, categorized 85 past and present initiatives or projects that work to preserve the South American River Turtle, or charapa (Podocnemis expansa), a critically endangered species. These projects are protecting more than 147,000 female turtles across the basin, an unprecedented figure.