Latest Wildlife Conservation Society Stories
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online As the forces of climate change continue to shape the planet, conservationist groups are focusing on how these trends may affect the viability of different animal species. According to a new report from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), many of the breeding bird species in Alaska will experience a marked change to their populations by 2050. Based on their assessment, the WCS estimates that two species will become "highly"...
CITES plenary today accepted Committee recommendations to list five species of highly traded sharks under the CITES Appendices, along with those for the listing of both manta rays and one species of sawfish. Japan, backed by Gambia and India, unsuccessfully challenged the Committee decision to list the oceanic whitetip shark, while Grenada and China failed in an attempt to reopen debate on listing three hammerhead species. Colombia, Senegal, Mexico and others took the floor to defend...
Wildlife Conservation Society Grizzly bear, wolverine, and bull trout among species ranked as 'highly' vulnerable to climate change and road use A new report from the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada (WCS Canada) creates a conservation strategy that will promote wildlife resiliency in the Southern Canadian Rockies to the future impacts of climate change and road use. The report's "safe passages and safe havens" were informed in part by an assessment of six iconic species—bull...
Wildlife Conservation Society A team of scientists led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the National University of Singapore (NUS), revealed in a new study, for the first time, the presence of the pathogenic chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) in amphibians sampled in Singapore. And the American bullfrog may be a central player in the spread of the disease. The study appears in the current issue of the journal EcoHealth, and is the first to consider the role...
NEW YORK, March 5, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, The Rockefeller Foundation announced a $2 million grant to the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society in support of the Health & Ecosystems: Analysis of Linkages (HEAL) initiative. This grant will support two of HEAL's five core modules enabling the Wildlife Conservation Society and its partners to conduct work in Southeast Asia and Madagascar that examines the relationships between conserved ecosystems and several...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online New statistics show that the elephant population in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has declined by 37 percent in the last five years. According to wildlife surveys by the Wildlife Conservation Society and DRC officials, only 1,700 elephants now remain in the DRC, which holds the largest remaining forest elephant population. Scientists at WCS warn that if people continue to poach forest elephants in DRC, then the species...
Wildlife Conservation Society Some species keeping their distance, while others cozy up to human neighbors As part of the study, scientists sampled the presence of 20 species of birds both near and far from 30 rural residences in the Adirondack Park. Calculating their occurrence at increasing distances from the residences, they determined that "human-adapted" species are 36 percent more likely to occur near the homes than in the surrounding mixed hardwood-conifer forests, and that...
Wildlife Conservation Society Fishing communities living on the islands of Indonesia's Karimunjawa National Park have found an important balance, improving their social well-being while reducing their reliance on marine biodiversity, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society and the University of Western Australia. Over the past 5 years, the Government of Indonesia has turned Karimunjawa National Park—a marine paradise of turquoise seas and mangrove-ringed islands in the Java Sea...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Gabon's Minkebe Park, once home to Africa's largest forest elephant population, has lost a staggering 11,100 individuals to poaching for the ivory trade, according to a new study led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). Recent surveys of regions of the park, conducted by WCS, WWF and Gabon's Agence Nationale des parcs Nationaux (ANPN), reveal that two thirds of the park's elephant population has vanished since 2004, with the...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Lowland tapirs are strange forest and grassland-dwelling herbivores with trunk-like snouts. A group of scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has documented a thriving population living in a network of remote national parks spanning the Peru-Bolivia border. WCS used a combination of camera traps and interviews with park guards and subsistence hunters to estimate the size of the population at around 14,500 tapirs in...
