WCS's Mark Rayan talks to the Earth Matters podcast about the work of WCS Malaysia to implement conservation strategies that protect habitats and species for the benefit of nature and humanity.

Small Scale fisheries are the cornerstone of livelihoods and economies across the world, providing essential micronutrients to more than 4 billion people. What's more, they also employ over 150 million people in the industry, the majority of whom live in the Global South, and are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Wild Audio's Hannah Kaplan sat down with WCS's Hoyt Peckham, who manages a team supporting 30 Country programs as they work to achieve a more sustainable and equitable approach to managing our marine resources.

Last year, direct public subsidies that promote fossil fuel production and consumption jumped to $1.4 trillion in the G-20 countries alone. "Is it any wonder," write WCS President and CEO Monica Medina and WCS Executive Director for Forests and Climate, Dan Zarin, in an op-ed for the New York Daily News, "that the oil majors are backing away from their prior commitments to accelerate the phase-out of fossil fuels in response to the climate crises? It’s fair to ask why these oil companies continue to benefit from public subsidies at all — especially when they are not held accountable or financially responsible for the impacts of the worsening climate crisis they are fueling."

In a new episode of the Voices of Wilderness podcast, WCS's Rob Wallace discusses his work in Bolivia over 30 years with a large number of partners, including more than 70 colleagues and Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples, to conserve natural areas and safeguard their biodiversity. They dig in to what motivates him to work for the conservation of the Bolivian landscape, including what difficulties he has encountered in his day-to-day work.

During New York's Climate Week, WCS is exploring bold approaches to the growing climate crisis in a three-part series. In our final episode, we look at REDD+ and market-driven approaches to forest conservation with WCS's Todd Stevens. Todd and the climate team want to find sustainable, financially viable incentives for protecting nature. Linking field-based conservation to private sector funding under the REDD+ framework, their goal is to use capital to ensure positive, environmentally friendly economic development in and around conservation sites.

In a new commentary for Undark, WCS's Sue Lieberman and her Cornell University colleague Steve Osofsky argue that because bats harbor many viruses that can spill over to humans, it's time to leave them and their habitats undisturbed to avoid a future pandemic.

The most important thing we can do to address climate change is reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Protecting intact nature can also be a big part of the solution. But let’s say we do those things and we manage to constrain climate change. What type of world will be left for us to live in, if we don't intentionally change our conservation strategies now? WCS's Liz Tully and Paul Elsen explain how that’s where climate adaptation has a part to play.

While reforestation is crucial to deliver on international climate and biodiversity commitments, this focus overlooks more than half of the world’s existing forests that haven’t been cleared, but have been modified by logging or other human activities. In a new essay for PBS Nature, WCS's Kemen Austin, Tim Rayden, and Kendall Jones argue that because these degraded areas still retain many essential characteristics of healthy forests, they should be considered the first priority for restoration, since they can recover quickly and provide benefits much sooner than cleared areas that need time to regrow.

In anticipation of New York Climate Week taking place later this month during the 78th Session of the UN General Assembly, WCS Wild Audio presents the first in a 3-part series exploring bold approaches to the growing climate crisis. For Part 1, we look at why maintaining the ecological integrity of forests is so important and what can be done both to avoid further degradation and restore what’s been lost.

For a new episode of The Naked Scientists podcast, WCS's Liz Bennett describes a new study detailing that hunting and poaching are not just bad news for the animals themselves, but also the climate. The removal of large organisms is causing more carbon that is normally stored in these forests to be released in several different ways.

"A beautiful stronghold for wildlife," WCS's Morgane Cournarie writes of Lac Télé Community Reserve in Congo in a new essay, "this landscape serves as a vital and enormously powerful living engine — pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and storing it safely."

At a time when 80 percent of the world’s forests have been degraded for agriculture and other human activities, a new approach is taking shape in Cambodia’s Northern Plains. There, an initiative to support sustainable rice production is reducing deforestation and helping to protect endangered bird species like the giant and white-shouldered ibis. The WCS-managed Ibis Rice links jasmine rice farmers to international consumer markets to achieve environmental protection and fair trade prices for local communities. WCS Wild Audio spoke to Ibis Rice CEO Nick Spencer to learn more.

While shark incidents with people are statistically very rare, each event understandably creates fear among beachgoers contemplating a swim in the ocean. Nothing has influenced the public’s attitude toward sharks more than the 1975 film "Jaws." WCS Life Trustee Allison Maher Stern was the model for the swimmer in the film’s famously provocative marketing campaign. WCS Wild Audio recently caught up with her to ask about that historic modeling job half a century ago, and how it has affected her life since then.

The 5 Great Forests from Mexico to Colombia contain 7.5 percent of the world’s biodiversity and support five million people. One of the iconic species there is the scarlet macaw. In Guatemala, protecting these bright red birds from habitat destruction and poaching for the pet trade is a major challenge. The WCS team there has taken an interesting approach.

August 10 is World Lion Day. To learn more about how these majestic felines are doing across their range in Africa, and how WCS is working to conserve them, we turned to WCS’s Luke Hunter, along with Joshua Mabonga and Caroline Twahebwa of the WCS Uganda Program, whose anti-poaching efforts and community-based conservation work to reduce human-wildlife conflict are part of a larger strategy to recover lion populations across east and central Africa.

Bárbara Saavedra has dedicated her life to caring for the environment and ecology as Director for Chile of the Wildlife Conservation Society. In this chapter she talks with Alejandra Sepúlveda from Comunidad Mujer. Bárbara Saavedra ha dedicado su vida al cuidado del medio ambiente y a la ecología como Directora para Chile de la Wildlife Conservation Society. En este capítulo conversa con Alejandra Sepúlveda de ComunidadMujer.