Wildlife Conservation Society
MISSION
Saves wildlife and wild places worldwide through science, global conservation, education, and the management of the world's largest system of urban wildlife parks, led by the flagship Bronx Zoo.
WHERE YOUR SUPPORT GOES
On Oct. 7, 2015, WCS unveiled its WCS: 2020 strategic plan, supported by a new WCS.org website and brand identity. The strategy takes as its goal the conservation of the world's largest wild places in 15 priority regions that hold more than 50 percent of the world's biodiversity. In addition to conserving these remaining ecologically intact areas, the strategy seeks to reverse the decline of six priority species groups across their range. It further calls for maintaining viable populations of critically endangered species in WCS’s five wildlife parks in New York City, including the Bronx Zoo and New York Aquarium.
THE RESULTS
Today WCS is at work on some 500 projects in more than 60 nations around the world that are intended to help protect both wildlife and the wild places in which they live.[9] The organization endeavors to protect 25 percent of the world's biodiversity—from the gorillas of Africa and the tigers of Asia to macaws in South America and the sharks, whales and turtles traveling through the planet's seas. In recent years WCS has actively worked in conflict areas like Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar, where agreements on wildlife resource have contributed to peace and stability. More than 4 million people visit WCS's wildlife parks in New York City each year. WCS's zoos and aquarium inform visitors from across the globe with state-of-the-art exhibits with naturalistic settings. Guests encounter a variety of species threatened in the wild and learn how they can help secure the future of these animals. With the award-winning Congo Gorilla Forest, which presents several troops of western lowland gorillas as one might see them in the wild, the Bronx Zoo became the first zoo to directly contribute exhibit admission fees to field-based conservation, with more than $11 million raised for work in central Africa.