Global Conservation

"WCS has a long-term commitment to the conservation of wild animals and wild places around the world."

Our mission at the Wildlife Conservation Society is to save wildlife and wild places. We strive to inspire other people to save them, too, through science and education.

Science might seem a strange place for conservation to begin, but in today’s turbulent times, most people do not have the time to know nature. It is mainly scientists who follow nature’s daily progress and report back about how nature is faring. What happens to these scientists, though, soon surpasses the science; for what arises is a love, a joy, a passion for the natural world that goes beyond facts, figures, and assessments to become a lifelong commitment to educate, to inspire, to conserve—in short, to help others fulfill our keenly human role as stewards of the planet.

Being stewards of Earth at this point in history is no small task. A report released last year by a team of WCS conservationists and Columbia University researchers demonstrated that, if you add up all the places in which people live, work, turn on their lights, and drive their cars and trucks, the human footprint touches more than three-quarters—83 percent—of Earth’s land surface. People influence almost all—98 percent—of the places where we can grow wheat, rice, and corn.

The Wildlife Conservation Society believes that it is not too late to save wildlife and wild places... that some of the greatest work in field conservation is yet to come. ~DR. JOHN G. ROBINSON Executive Vice President for Conservation and Science

Of course, the human footprint is not evenly spread across the planet. In some places, such as in cities and metropolitan regions, it is intense; in other places, human influence is relatively light, perhaps only the occasional hunter straying from the road. But generally speaking, everywhere wildlife is, human beings are, and too often, the more people, the less wildlife. The exceptions to this rule are the hope for the future.

The Wildlife Conservation Society believes that it is not too late to save wildlife and wild places... that some of the greatest work in field conservation is yet to come.