Hornaday was a the first director of WCS’s Bronx Zoo

Bronx, NY – April 7, 2014 –The Wildlife Conservation Society has digitized a collection of scrapbooks kept by William T. Hornaday, the first director of WCS’s Bronx Zoo. Ten of the scrapbooks from The Hornaday Wildlife Conservation Scrapbook Collection are available for public viewing at www.hornadayscrapbooks.com.

The Hornaday Wildlife Conservation Scrapbook Collection is a digital project of the Wildlife Conservation Society Archives which documents and preserves WCS’s storied history of saving wildlife and wild places since its inception in 1895 as the New York Zoological Society.

This website makes available ten of the fourteen scrapbooks that compose William T. Hornaday’s self-titled Scrapbook Collection on the History of the Wild Life Protection and Extermination. The remaining four scrapbooks have not been made available in digital format because they contain significant amounts of copyrighted material. Like many scrapbooks of this age, these books are very fragile and show signs of deterioration. Digitizing does not preserve them, but it does allow for access to items with condition issues related to age.

The pages appear online as they were found at the project’s start in 2012. Every effort was made to protect their condition during the digitization process.

William T. Hornaday (1854-1937) was a premiere conservationist and passionate defender of wildlife. Hornaday was a pioneer in the early wildlife conservation movement in the United States. He was well known during his lifetime for his substantial roles in the worlds of zoos, natural history museums, and wildlife conservation. He chose the site for and worked on the design of the New York Zoological Park, known today as the Bronx Zoo, and served as its first director from the opening in 1899 until his retirement in 1929.

For more information about William T. Hornaday, or to browse The Hornaday Wildlife Conservation Scrapbook Collection, visit www.hornadayscrapbooks.com.

This project was made possible by the generous support of the Leon Levy Foundation.

CONTACT:Stephen Sautner – 718-220-3682; ssautner@wcs.org
About The Leon Levy Foundation
The Leon Levy Foundation, founded in 2004, is a private, not-for-profit foundation created from the estate of Leon Levy, an investor with a longstanding commitment to philanthropy. The Foundation’s overarching goal is to support scholarship at the highest level, ultimately advancing knowledge and improving the lives of individuals and society at large.

Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)
MISSION: WCS saves wildlife and wild places worldwide through science, conservation action, education, and inspiring people to value nature. VISION: WCS envisions a world where wildlife thrives in healthy lands and seas, valued by societies that embrace and benefit from the diversity and integrity of life on earth. To achieve our mission, WCS, based at the Bronx Zoo, harnesses the power of its Global Conservation Program in more than 60 nations and in all the world’s oceans and its five wildlife parks in New York City, visited by 4 million people annually. WCS combines its expertise in the field, zoos, and aquarium to achieve its conservation mission. Visit: www.wcs.org; facebook.com/TheWCS; youtube.com/user/WCSMedia; follow: @theWCS.