Black bears are making a comeback in Nevada. WCS’s Jon Beckmann, conservation Scientist for the North America Program, urges that hunters and ranchers, the agricultural community, and environmentalists must determine together how we manage and live with these and other recovering populations of large carnivores.
Every year, millions of birds migrate to the coastal wetlands of Arctic Alaska to breed. Joe Liebezeit, WCS’s Arctic birds project leader, explains how rising temperatures are dramatically transforming this landscape and the lives of its seasonal residents.
WCS celebrates newly minted highway crossing structures that help keep Wyoming’s roads safe for drivers and ensure a healthy future for migrating pronghorn and other wildlife.
Wolverines are known for their ferocity: these powerful carnivores are able to kill prey many times their size and are built to live in inhospitable environments. Despite these advantages, wolverine numbers steadily declined throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Determined to conserve these land-dwelling weasels, WCS established long-term research and conservation programs in Canada and the U.S. See how we study these reclusive animals in the following episode of This American Land, a weekly news program that focuses on issues impacting our country's landscapes, waters and wildlife.
Size often matters in the animal kingdom, with larger animals faring better than their compact counterparts. But a recent WCS study suggests that for a juvenile moose, mother’s presence—not body mass—is key to survival.
Mayor Bloomberg and WCS President and CEO Cristián Samper announced new funding and designs for the New York Aquarium’s “Ocean Wonders: Sharks!” exhibit. The 57,000-square-foot building slated to open in 2015 will house 115 species of marine animals, including 25 shark species, along with 500,000 gallons of water.
In his first blog celebrating bison, WCS Executive Vice President for Public Affairs John Calvelli discusses ongoing efforts to protect this iconic species. WCS has been protecting buffalo since the turn of the 20th century and is currently working with conservationists, sportsmen, Native American tribes, and lawmakers to advance the National Bison Legacy Act.
WCS has been leading bison conservation efforts since 1905, when William Hornaday co-founded the American Bison Society with Theodore Roosevelt. In addition to supporting bison and the landscapes they roam, WCS has joined efforts to craft the National Bison Legacy Act--Congressional legislation that would designate bison as our country's national mammal.
Fishers hunt rodents and are the only predators tenacious enough to regularly prey upon porcupines. Unfortunately, these hardy carnivores are now threatened by toxic rodenticides used by illegal growers of marijuana.
Mountain lion is one of many species inhabiting the southern border of the United States. In an article for UT-San Diego, WCS conservationist Jon Beckmann discusses the importance of maintaining opportunities for animals to cross between borders.
In concert with the introduction of the National Bison Legacy Act in the U.S. Senate, WCS and its partners have launched a campaign to make the American bison our national mammal.
A five-year behavioral study shows that pronghorn in Wyoming are losing their wintering grounds to large-scale industrialization.
WCS and partners will work to increase habitat in Montana, North Dakota, and Southern Saskatchewan for the Sprague’s pipit, one of the most endangered grassland birds in North America.
As their sea ice habitat diminishes in the Arctic, Pacific walruses increasingly use coastal lands to haul out, and feed in the surrounding shallow waters. Because this phenomenon poses new threats to walrus populations, conservationists are adopting new strategies to monitor and protect them.
Marine mammals contend with new industrial developments in the Arctic as local waters become increasingly ice-free during the summer and fall.
WCS senior scientist Joel Berger reflects on how Alaska’s recent decision to cull an Arctic predator in order to protect its prey may redefine the ecosystem’s hierarchy in unforeseen ways.
Fragmentation of habitat potentially threatens black bears and other species at the U.S.-Mexico border.
From mighty caribou to tiny hummingbirds, by air and by land, many of the great American wildlife migrations are at risk.
WCS Ecologist Jerry Jenkins, who has spent more than four decades studying the environment of the Adirondacks, documents the impacts of climate change on the region’s wildlife, habitats, and communities.
As pronghorn set out on their long fall journey, new protections are underway to help them reach their destination. WCS conservationists Renee Seidler and Jon Beckmann describe the impressive migration, its formidable obstructions, and a few new ways around them.
Arctic Alaska, famous for playing host to tens of thousands of migratory birds that come from around the world to breed and nest each summer, has also become a playground for predator species like Arctic foxes, ravens, gulls, and owls. WCS conservation biologist Joe Liebezeit researches and photographs the effects of a changing landscape on area wildlife.
Dr. Steve Zack blogs on his migratory bird studies from Alaska’s Teshekpuk Lake, the largest Arctic wetland complex in the world.
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.
A WCS conservationist maps out a climate change survival plan for species living
within Montana’s Crown of the Continent ecosystem.
Why are North America’s smallest turtles getting sick? By giving full health check-ups to the rare reptiles, WCS and partners aim to clear the fog hanging over bog turtles. It's a much-needed rescue mission for a species now considered endangered in New York and Massachusetts.
A
four-year WCS study finds the Teshekpuk Lake region within the National
Petroleum Reserve to hold the highest breeding bird density in Arctic
Alaska—one solid reason for its permanent protection from energy development.
The WCS Bronx Zoo, Buffalo Zoo, and New York State DEC team up to save one of the largest salamanders in the world—the eastern hellbender, AKA “devil dog,” “Allegheny alligator,” or “snot otter.”
Two injured bald eagles find a new home at the WCS Bronx Zoo. These young birds
from Wyoming add to the growing ranks of this once-endangered species now making
a comeback in New York.
At a recent symposium held at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s National
Conservation Training Center facility in Shepherdstown, West Virginia,
Dr. George Schaller called for increased protection of the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska.
WCS researchers working on a New York Seascape study discover a female sand tiger shark, missing all its fins, swimming through Delaware Bay. The conservationists call the discovery a disturbing reminder about the ongoing threats to vulnerable shark populations around the world.
Despite its low profile, the musk ox has persisted through the Pleistocene exinctions, outlasting the woolly mammoth and other prehistoric mammals. WCS Senior Scientist Joel Berger studies America’s least known large mammal and its unusual survival tactics.
Come
2015, Coney Island beachgoers will come ashore to connect with sharks, skates,
rays and other fish. The New York Aquarium’s newest exhibit will bring people
to the sea, and the sea life to the people.
As the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge celebrates its 50th anniversary,
WCS calls for the coastal plain’s permanent protection from energy development.
WCS researchers are radio-tracking moose and elk traveling along U.S. Route 20 in Idaho in an effort to reduce auto accidents and preserve wildlife corridors.
WCS
asks the government to fully protect “Special Areas” in Alaska’s National
Petroleum Reserve for caribou and migratory birds.
WCS embarks on a huge study to ensure safer journeys for pronghorn through their migratory corridor in the American West.
WCS launches the New York Seascape Initiative to conserve the Atlantic's marine life and habitats from Montauk, Long Island to Cape May, New Jersey.
The new book Safe Passages:
Highways, Wildlife and Habitat Connectivity, edited by WCS-North America Program conservationists Jon Beckmann and Jodi Hilty, provides a roadmap for making wildlife-friendly thoroughfares to connect islands of habitat.
Volunteers who participated in the 2010 annual loon census on Saturday, July 17 surveyed more than 300 lakes and ponds in in and around the Adirondack Park and across New York State.
WCS is extremely encouraged by the Department of Interior’s decision to protect 170,000 acres south and northeast of Teshekpuk Lake in the National Petroleum Reserve from leasing. The area provides critical habitat for breeding birds and caribou populations.
WCS ecologist Jerry Jenkins shows the global problem of climate change hitting home in the Adirondacks and how the region can fight back.
This week, WCS scientists are trekking across the vast and remote Alaskan Arctic and deep into the National Petroleum Reserve to explore how best to conserve Arctic wildlife
in the midst of expanding energy development.
WCS conservationist Steve Zack is chronicling the trip for
the New York Times' Scientists at Work blog.
Our
favorite wolverine-on-the-go, M56, gives researchers the slip, but not for long.
At our country's doorstep, WCS health experts are helping authorities investigate the smuggling of wildlife and its stowaway diseases.
A new publication by IUCN, written with WCS collaboration, reports on the current status of wild American bison, and makes recommendations on how to ensure the species is conserved for the future.
The WCS conservation biologist won the Wilburforce Foundation’s Conservation Leadership Award for his efforts to expand Nahanni National Park, a World Heritage Site.
WCS receives $100,000 for Arctic wildlife conservation and climate change research from Disney’s Friends for Change: Project Green.
Scientists from WCS and the Lava Lake Institute have found a new long-distance migration route for a population of pronghorn antelope in Idaho, hailed as the “true marathoners of the American West.”
A WCS-led study says some nesting bird species are declining near oil development in the Arctic. Infrastructure from oil drilling, coupled with edible garbage, creates “subsidized housing” for as opportunistic predators like foxes and gulls.
Millions of miles of streams, and the songbirds that depend on them, could benefit from new federal guidelines to help safeguard waterways.
Three Wildlife Conservation Society scientists were honored during the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology, in Beijing, China, held in July.
WCS scientists working in northern Alaska spot a shorebird originally tagged 8,000 miles away, in Victoria, Australia. The bar-tailed godwit flew the length of the Pacific in an epic journey that underscores the importance of this northern breeding ground.
After a 90-year absence, a reclusive carnivore reappears in Colorado. WCS scientists have tracked the animal on a 500-mile odyssey.
A national survey says that the American public respect and love bison, but most are unaware that the animals are in trouble. The survey is part of an effort to spark public support for ecological restoration of the species.
A WCS study finds that the busy beaver’s signature dams provide critical habitat for a variety of migratory songbirds, particularly in the semi-arid interior of the West.
A WCS study conducted around Lake Tahoe, Nevada shows that a life of garbage-eating, early pregnancies, and violent deaths plague black bears in the big city.
During Annual Safety Day at Fort Drum, WCS teaches soldiers about illegal wildlife trade products to help protect endangered species in countries where they are stationed.
The U.S. Forest Service designates the nation’s first wildlife migration corridor to protect the movement of North America’s fastest land animal, the pronghorn. These swift creatures number nearly half a million in Wyoming alone, but the proliferation of gas fields and housing development has sliced up much of their territory.
Birds and other wildlife score protection from energy exploration in Alaska’s Teshekpuk Lake region. At 23 million acres, Teshekpuk is the largest single piece of public land in the U.S.
It will likely take a century, but conservationists believe they can restore the American bison to a surprising amount of its former range. Particularly important are the grassland ecosystems, both public and private, that might benefit from bison grazing, and local communities that might benefit from having herds flourish nearby.
A long-term study by the Wildlife Conservation Society, the BioDiversity Research Institute, and other organizations has found and confirmed that environmental mercury—much of which comes from human-generated emissions—is impacting the health and reproductive success of common loons in the northeastern U.S.
As western states debate removing the gray wolf from the Endangered Species
List, WCS researcher Dr. Kim Berger speaks out on behalf of an unsuspecting wolf ally: the pronghorn antelope.
What will it take to conserve the Path of the Pronghorn, a trail that our continent’s fastest land animal has used since the end of the last Ice Age? In a landscape as famous for its mountains as for its oil fields, WCS scientist Dr. Joel Berger is determined to find out.
To help save a species in the wild, zookeepers
make a romantic mix tape for the Bronx Zoo’s endangered Waldrapp ibises.