Small Scale fisheries are the cornerstone of livelihoods and economies across the world, providing essential micronutrients to more than 4 billion people. What's more, they also employ over 150 million people in the industry, the majority of whom live in the Global South, and are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Wild Audio's Hannah Kaplan sat down with WCS's Hoyt Peckham, Director of Community fisheries, who manages a team supporting 30 Country programs as they work to achieve a more sustainable and equitable approach to managing our marine resources. Keep an eye out for additional WCS Wild Audio stories about sustainable fisheries, with insights and solutions from the communities who manage them, in Season 4.Reporting: Hannah KaplanGuest: Hoyt Peckham

During New York's Climate Week, WCS is exploring bold approaches to the growing climate crisis in a three-part series. In our final episode, we look at REDD+ and market-driven approaches to forest conservation.WCS Executive Director of Markets, Todd Stevens, wants to find sustainable, financially viable incentives for protecting nature. Linking field-based conservation to private sector funding under the REDD+ framework, his goal is to use capital to ensure positive, environmentally friendly economic development in and around conservation sites.This model rewards restoration and protection of the environment, ultimately linking healthy ecosystems to healthy economies. At the heart of this markets-based approach, says Todd, lie at-risk forests, which absorb harmful Co2 emissions. Hannah Kaplan has the story.Reporting: Hannah KaplanGuests: Todd Stevens

During New York's Climate Week, WCS is exploring bold approaches to the growing climate crisis in a three-part series. In Part 2, we look at the need for anticipating, and adapting to, a changing climate.The most important thing we can do to address climate change is reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Protecting intact nature can also be a big part of the solution. But let’s say we do those things and we manage to constrain climate change. What type of world will be left for us to live in, if we don't intentionally change our conservation strategies now? That’s where climate adaptation has a part to play. Reporting: Dan RosenGuests: Liz Tully, Paul Elsen

During New York's Climate Week, WCS is exploring bold approaches to the growing climate crisis in a three-part series. In our final episode, we look at REDD+ and market-driven approaches to forest conservation.WCS Executive Director of Markets, Todd Stevens, wants to find sustainable, financially viable incentives for protecting nature. Linking field-based conservation to private sector funding under the REDD+ framework, his goal is to use capital to ensure positive, environmentally friendly economic development in and around conservation sites. This model rewards restoration and protection of the environment, ultimately linking healthy ecosystems to healthy economies. At the heart of this markets-based approach, says Todd, lie at-risk forests, which absorb harmful Co2 emissions. Hannah Kaplan has the story. Reporting: Nat MossGuests: Tom Evans, Kemen Austin

At a time when 80 percent of the world’s forests have been degraded for agriculture and other human activities, a new approach is taking shape in Cambodia’s Northern Plains.There, an initiative to support sustainable rice production is reducing deforestation and helping to protect endangered bird species like the giant and white-shouldered ibis. The WCS-managed Ibis Rice links jasmine rice farmers to international consumer markets to achieve environmental protection and fairtrade prices to local communities.For more information on Ibis Rice and its products, visit: https://ibisrice.com/Reporting: Hannah KaplanGuest: Nicholas Spencer and Keo Socheat

While shark incidents with people are statistically very rare, each event understandably creates fear among beachgoers contemplating a swim in the ocean. Nothing has influenced the public’s attitude toward sharks more than the 1975 film Jaws. WCS Life Trustee Allison Maher Stern was the model for the swimmer in the film’s famously provocative marketing campaign. WCS Wild Audio recently caught up with her to ask about that historic modeling job half a century ago, and how it has affected her life since then. Reporting: Nat MossGuest: Allison Maher Stern

The 5 Great Forests from Mexico to Colombia contain 7.5 percent of the world’s biodiversity and support five million people. One of the iconic species there is the scarlet macaw. In Guatemala, protecting these bright red birds from habitat destruction and poaching for the pet trade is a major challenge. The WCS team there has taken an interesting approach.Reporting: Dan RosenGuests: Rony Garcia, Gabriela Ponce Santizo, Jeremy Radachowsky

August 10 is World Lion Day. To learn more about how these majestic felines are doing across their range in Africa, and how WCS is working to conserve them, we turned to WCS’s chief big cat expert and his colleagues in Uganda, where anti-poaching efforts and community-based conservation to reduce human-wildlife conflict are part of a larger strategy to recover lion populations across east and central Africa. Reporting: Nat MossGuests: Luke Hunter, Joshua Mabonga, Caroline Twahebwa

The Arctic is currently warming four times faster than the rest of the planet. Drastic changes are happening. We still don’t know all the different ways this is impacting local wildlife. WCS Wild Audio spoke with Tom Glass of the University of Montana and Martin Robards from WCS about what they’ve learned about how one unheralded species—the wolverine—is adapting to a changing climate.Ui4dVd9TiUY7HklyXgf1

The 31st International Congress for Conservation Biology is happening this week. It’s a meaningful event. For only the second time in its history, ICCB is being held in Africa—in Kigali, Rwanda. WCS has a big presence there, which includes over 40 young conservationists from across the continent. WCS Wild Audio’s Dan Rosen spoke with WCS senior conservationist Tony Lynam about the significance.

As top predators, sharks help maintain healthy and productive ocean ecosystems. They also play important roles in coastal livelihoods and food security through fisheries and tourism. But time is running out to save them, says WCS’s Luke Warwick. We must turn recent international progress into concrete results. Ahead of Shark and Ray Awareness Day, WCS Wild Audio’s Dan Rosen spoke with Luke for the latest.

At its annual gala, the Wildlife Conservation Society recently honored Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, the CEO and Chair of the Global Environment Facility, or GEF. WCS Wild Audio’s Nat Moss sat down with Carlos Manuel to discuss his long career of conservation leadership, the work of the GEF, and the extraordinary example set by Rodríguez’s home country of Costa Rica for environmental stewardship, climate change mitigation, and biodiversity protection.

“With all this strangeness, there is also beauty beyond words.” That’s how the famous scientist and explorer William Beebe described an underwater marvel off the coast of New York and New Jersey in the late 1920s. Today, Hudson Canyon has been nominated as a National Marine Sanctuary. But, as WCS Wild Audio learned from Noah Chesnin and Dr. Merry Camhi, there’s still a lot we don’t know about this massive canyon.Update 6/15/23:Take action to support the designation of the Hudson Canyon as a National Marine Sanctuary by clicking here.

Thanks for joining us for Season Two of WCS Wild Audio. We'll be back soon with new stories from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s field sites, zoos and aquarium, and conservation partners. In the meantime, check out some of the highlights of our conversations with WCS staff from across the world working to protect wildlife and wild places.

This week, the Wildlife Conservation Society welcomes a new president and CEO, Monica Medina. She arrives from the US State Department, where through this April she served as Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, and was the nation’s first Special Envoy for Biodiversity and Water Resources.WCS is thrilled to have at its helm a new leader with vast experience and a passion for conservation. Wild Audio’s Nat Moss recently caught up with her as she steps into her new role.

Thanks for joining us for Season Two of WCS Wild Audio. We'll be back soon with new stories from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s field sites, zoos and aquarium, and conservation partners. In the meantime, check out some of the highlights of our conversations with WCS staff from across the world working to protect wildlife and wild places.

You may have heard about the large scale of the current species extinction crisis. It’s unprecedented and dangerous according to experts. For Endangered Species Day on May 19, Wild Audio's Dan Rosen talks to WCS’s Elizabeth Bennett about why it matters and what we can all do to stop it.

Thanks for joining us for Season Two of WCS Wild Audio. We'll be back soon with new stories from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s field sites, zoos and aquarium, and conservation partners. In the meantime, check out some of the highlights of our conversations with WCS staff from across the world working to protect wildlife and wild places.

Thanks for joining us for Season Two of WCS Wild Audio. We'll be back soon with new stories from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s field sites, zoos and aquarium, and conservation partners. In the meantime, check out some of the highlights of our conversations with WCS staff from across the world working to protect wildlife and wild places.Ui4dVd9TiUY7HklyXgf1

In November 2021, the Wildlife Conservation Society launched a new campaign to address the crisis of climate change called Framing Our Future. The effort was premised on partnerships with a wide range of civic, cultural, and academic institutions across the United States. One of those partners, the Bronx’s Fordham University, has embraced the campaign as part of its own Green Plan to live out the inspirational call to protect nature found in Pope Francis’s 2015 Laudato si’ encyclical.