June 2, 2016 – WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society), founder of the 96 Elephants campaign, applauded the Obama Administration’s announcement of a near-total ban on the interstate trade in ivory. The final revision for of the 4(d) rule of the Endangered Species Act for African elephants allows for exceptions for items containing de minimis amounts of ivory and documented antiques.

May 3, 2016 – The legislature passed out Senate Bill 2647 today and will now transmit the bill to the governor.

MAY 3, 2016 -- The world will gather for the first time since March 2013 for the CITES Conference of the Parties. The 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES (CoP17) will take place Sept. 24-Oct. 5, 2016 in Johannesburg, South Africa.  The agenda was released on May 2nd.

The following statement was issued by Cristián Samper, President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) on April 29, 2016:

April 7, 2016 – Frontline enforcement officers from key provinces, ports and border posts in Laos, China and Viet Nam completed an inter-agency field mission this week to share experiences, approaches and update the situation on wildlife smuggling networks along the major Indo-Burma trade route. 

WCS took part in a Public Forum of the U.S. Wildlife Trafficking Alliance, which brings private sector companies together to fight wildlife trafficking. 

April 4, 2016 – A shocking new report by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Fauna & Flora International documents a catastrophic collapse of the world’s largest great ape– the Grauer’s gorilla – due to a combination of illegal hunting around mining sites and settlements, prior civil unrest, and habitat loss.

March 23, 2016 – WCS’s Andrea Turkalo, one of the world’s foremost experts on forest elephants, recently released information about two animals from her study site killed in 2013 when poachers from the Seleka rebel group infiltrated the Dzanga Bai forest clearing and slaughtered some 26 animals.

15 March, 2016 – WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) was a signatory of the United for Wildlife Transport Taskforce Buckingham Palace Declaration today, which brings private sector transportation companies and international organizations together to fight wildlife trafficking.

March 3, 2016 – The online trade in ivory and related wildlife products is rampant in Hawaii, which remains one of the United States’ major markets for ivory, according to a new report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Humane Society International (HSI), The Humane Society of the United States(HSUS), the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).