Dr. Michael Goulding, senior aquatic scientist for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), has received the 2020 Parker/Gentry Award, from The Field Museum based in Chicago, honoring his 40 years-plus of transformative work in the Amazon basin.

An endangered bird, previously found only in an isolated region of Bolivia, has just expanded its range after it was discovered on an organic coffee plantation in the north of the Department of La Paz, says a team of WCS conservationists.

WCS’s Dr. Rob Wallace, based in La Paz, Bolivia, has been honored by the IUCN for his more than 20 years of innovative conservation and science to protect Latin America’s biodiversity.

By analyzing records in countries of the Amazon and Orinoco basins—which include Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador—a paper published today in Oryx—The International Journal of Conservation, categorized 85 past and present initiatives or projects that work to preserve the South American River Turtle, or charapa (Podocnemis expansa), a critically endangered species. These projects are protecting more than 147,000 female turtles across the basin, an unprecedented figure.

In an unprecedented global commitment to saving the jaguar, leading international conservation organizations and key jaguar range states have joined together to launch the Jaguar 2030 Conservation Roadmap for the Americas, presented today/this week at the Conference of Parties (COP) 14 of the Convention on Biological Diversity.