A study of East African coral reefs has uncovered an unfolding calamity for the region: plummeting fish populations due to overfishing, which in turn could produce widespread food insecurity.

While many conservation plans focus on only environmental indicators for success, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)’s coral reef program is trying a relatively new approach: focusing on both social and ecological processes and outcomes to ensure a long-term future for coral reef systems, according to a newly published study.

As conservationists grapple with unprecedented levels of coral reef bleaching in the world’s warming oceans, scientists in the Indian and Pacific Oceans used the most recent El Nino of 2016 (the warmest year on record) to evaluate the role of excess heat as the leading driver of coral bleaching.

he largest study ever conducted of its kind has identified where and how to save coral reef communities in the Indo-Pacific, according to an international group of scientists from WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) and other conservation NGOs, government agencies, and universities. The study outlines three viable strategies that can be quickly enacted to help save coral reefs that are threatened by climate change and human impacts.  

Marine scientists from WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) and other groups examining the ecological status of coral reefs across the Indian and Pacific oceans have uncovered an unsettling fact: even the best coral reef marine parks contain less than half of the fish biomass found in the most remote reefs that lie far from human settlements.

Singing humpback whales from different ocean basins seem to be picking up musical ideas from afar, and incorporating these new phrases and themes into the latest song, according to a newly published study in Royal Society Open Science that’s helping scientists better understand how whales learn and change their musical compositions.

As groups gather for the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco from Sept 12-14, WCS has released a video showcasing how communities in Madagascar are doing their part to fight climate change.  Watch the video here. Local indigenous communities in the Makira landscape have limited access to economic opportunities and relied on traditional forms of natural resource extraction such as illegal logging and land-intensive rice farming for their survival. These livelihoods not only ca...

Scientists have identified a portfolio of the world’s reefs most likely to survive the coming decades, using principles from the financial investment world.

An age-old challenge of determining the right amount of fish to harvest from the sea has finally been overcome with the creation of a new biomass-yield model that captures all the necessary factors for accuracy, according to a new WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) study.  The study titled “Multicriteria estimate of coral reef fishery sustainability” appears online in the journal Fish and Fisheries. Knowing the highest volume of fish that can be taken from coral reefs without ...

May 1, 2018 – Marine scientists from WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society), University of Warwick, and University of Queensland have identified two key factors that create the ideal conditions needed for high species diversity in coral reefs: thermal energy in the form of warm water and low climate stress.