North America
In 1897, WCS carried out the first survey of Alaskan wildlife, which led to the passage of laws to regulate hunting. Eight years later, the society helped save bison from extinction, by restocking the Western Plains with animals bred at the Bronx Zoo. Since these beginnings, we have dedicated more than a century of North American conservation initiatives. From the fertile tundras of Arctic Alaska, which draw millions of migratory birds each year; to the greater Yellowstone Rockies, home to herds of bison, pronghorn, and elk; to Adirondack State Park, the largest intact temperate forest in the world, we work across North America’s key landscapes to ensure the future of our precious natural heritage.
Featured Landscapes
The Adirondack Landscape spans six million miles, shelters moose and bear, and is an important breeding ground for birds. The Adirondack Park also provides millions of Americans and Canadians with access to wilderness.
Millions of shorebirds and waterbirds migrate to Arctic Alaska each year to breed, along with four immense herds of caribou. Unfortunately, climate change is transforming the region.
This temperate forest of California-Oregon has the largest network of roadless wilderness in the Pacific Northwest.
This magnificent coastal chain encompasses glaciers, wetlands, tundra, boreal, subarctic taiga, and humid subalpine forests.
These pristine forests cover an area the size of France and sustain populations of caribou, wolverines, and Canada lynx.
Stretching from Wyoming up to the Canadian border, this rugged region is home to wolves, grizzlies, lynx, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, and wolverines.
From the Newsroom
Fisher numbers in northwestern California are falling. A new WCS study finds the
population of these elusive forest predators dropped 73 percent in less
than a decade.