White-fronted Amazon living in the Wildlife Conservation Society’s World of Birds after being rescued by US Fish & Wildlife Service and rehabilitated at the zoo. Credit: Terria Clay/Wildlife Conservation Society

CONEY ISLAND, N.Y. — November 9, 2026 — This December, a new wave of winter wonder will arrive at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium. Holiday Tides, the Aquarium’s inaugural winter celebration, will bring seasonal magic to the city’s only oceanfront destination with more than 4,500 aquatic animals. The limited-time holiday experience invites guests to discover the wonders of New York’s marine wildlife while enjoying hands-on activities, a...

[Above photo: At the final plenary of CBD CoP17, Astrid Schomaker, CBD Executive Secretary, consults with H.E. Hambardzum Matevosyan, President of CBD CoP17. Credit: ©️WCS.]   YEREVAN, ARMENIA, October 31, 2026 — The UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP17), with nearly 200 governments participating, put forth a clearer picture of the global biodiversity crisis and the gaps that must be closed to meet the world’s 2030 targets. But the Yerevan Pathway and th...

NEW YORK, NY Oct. 29, 2026 — The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Board of Trustees has awarded the WCS Gold Medal to Dr. John G. Robinson, recognizing a career that has helped shape modern conservation and create the largest field-based conservation program in the world. Robinson retired from WCS at the end of 2024 following more than three decades with the organization. During his tenure, he transformed WCS’s Global Conservation Program from a small group of fewer than 1...

YEREVAN, ARMENIA (October 29, 2026) — The Women Ocean Guardians Initiative announced that two more governments, Belize and Madagascar, have pledged to integrate women's leadership into national marine conservation strategies and blue economies. These countries, which made this pledge at the UN Biodiversity Conference (CoP17), have joined 14 other governments which have made the same commitment.   The CoP17 Women Ocean Guardians event marks a milestone for the global initiative:...

Yerevan, Armenia, Oct. 27, 2026 — The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) delegation is deeply concerned governments at the UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD CoP17) will resort to more process and not progress on integrating the world's climate and biodiversity agendas and actions.  The following statement was issued today from Wildlife Conservation Society's Carlos Rittl: "COP16 in Cali, 2024, adopted a landmark decision recognizing that climate and biodiversity must...

YEREVAN, ARMENIA (October 27, 2026) — In a decisive move to address the critical ecological connectivity gap in global ocean conservation, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Caribbean Biological Corridor (CBC) today launched the "CBC 30x30 Plus Marine Action Plan," an ambitious multi-country framework to protect marine biodiversity and critical ecosystems across the Greater Antilles region of the Caribbean. The plan was launched at the UN Biodiversity Confere...

Yerevan, Armenia, Oct. 25, 2026 – Governments are meeting today on 30x30 Action Day at an inflection point. The first week of the UN Biodiversity Conference in Armenia is an opportunity to review the sobering findings of the Convention on Biodiversity’s State of Biodiversity Action report: Slower progress on marine protections globally. Weak reporting on Indigenous leadership in area-based conservation. The following statement was released today by Alfred DeGemmis, director o...

COBIJA, BOLIVIA, October 24, 2026—Three records of the Amazon river dolphin (Inia geoffrensis) obtained between 2025 and 2026 provide the first documented evidence of the species in Bolivia, in the Acre River basin in the department of Pando. The discovery, reported in the journal Neotropical Hydrobiology and Aquatic Conservation, expands our knowledge of the distribution of river dolphins in the country and highlights the contributions of citizen science and the knowledge of local fishers...

VIENNA (23 October 2026) – The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) welcomes the landmark adoption of Resolution L.4 at the 13th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), a major step toward strengthening the international response to environmental crime.  Environments crimes, including trafficking of wild fauna and flora, illegal fishing, and illegal mining, are ravaging nature across the globe and harming local c...