NEW YORK (June 5, 2018)—The lowly sea cucumber strikes observers as a simple sausage-like creature, one that is far less interesting than brightly colored reef fish or color-changing octopi that share its coastal habitat. The sea cucumber’s unimpressive appearance belies the outsized role these creatures play in converting decomposing organic matter into recyclable nutrients and keeping coastal ecosystems healthy and clean, and overfishing them can have negative impacts on coastal marine environments, according to a new study focusing on a species of sea cucumber called a sandfish in the journal PeerJ.

NEW YORK (May 23, 2018) – The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) kicked off its Give a Sip campaign today to support a bill introduced by Councilman Rafael Espinal that will eliminate the use of most single-use plastic straws in New York City.

WASHINGTON (May 22, 2018) – WCS VP of Species Conservation Liz Bennett addressed the House Foreign Affairs Committee to stress the need for dedicated U.S. government investment to combat wildlife trafficking.

WASHINGTON (May 22, 2018) – Today, the Senate Commerce Committee voted to advance S.2764, the Sustainable Shark Fisheries and Trade Act, to the full Senate for consideration.

LA PAZ, BOLIVIA (May 22, 2018) — After a two-and-a-half-year expedition through the world’s most biodiverse protected area, the Identidad Madidi explorers have concluded their epic quest of completing a massive biological survey of Madidi National Park, uncovering more than 120 potentially new species of plants, butterflies and vertebrates in the process, according to WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society).

WASHINGTON (May 18, 2018) – Congressmen Alan Lowenthal (D-CA) and Don Young (R-AK) introduced the Wildlife Innovation and Longevity Driver (WILD) Act, a bipartisan bill which contains several measures that are imperative to conserving wildlife and wild places.

A shocking study in the journal Science by the University of Queensland, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and University of Northern British Columbia confirms that one third of the world’s protected areas – an astonishing 2.3 million square miles or twice the size of the state of Alaska – are now under intense human pressure including road building, grazing, and urbanization.

May 1, 2018 – Marine scientists from WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society), University of Warwick, and University of Queensland have identified two key factors that create the ideal conditions needed for high species diversity in coral reefs: thermal energy in the form of warm water and low climate stress. 

A massive decade-long study of Western Equatorial Africa’s gorillas and chimpanzees has uncovered both good news and bad about our nearest relatives. The good news: there are one third more western lowland gorillas and one tenth more central chimpanzees than previously thought. The bad news: the vast majority of these great apes (80 percent) exist outside of protected areas, and gorilla populations are declining by 2.7 percent annually.

A new WCS paper published in the journal BioScience finds that the enormous trends toward population stabilization, poverty alleviation, and urbanization are rewriting the future of biodiversity conservation in the 21st century, offering new hope for the world’s wildlife and wild places.