WCS Wild Audio

Thanks for joining us for Season Two of WCS Wild Audio. We'll be back soon with new stories from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s field sites, zoos and aquarium, and conservation partners. In the meantime, check out some of the highlights of our conversations with WCS staff from across the world working to protect wildlife and wild places.

You may have heard about the large scale of the current species extinction crisis. It’s unprecedented and dangerous according to experts. For Endangered Species Day on May 19, Wild Audio's Dan Rosen talks to WCS’s Elizabeth Bennett about why it matters and what we can all do to stop it.

Thanks for joining us for Season Two of WCS Wild Audio. We'll be back soon with new stories from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s field sites, zoos and aquarium, and conservation partners. In the meantime, check out some of the highlights of our conversations with WCS staff from across the world working to protect wildlife and wild places.

Thanks for joining us for Season Two of WCS Wild Audio. We'll be back soon with new stories from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s field sites, zoos and aquarium, and conservation partners. In the meantime, check out some of the highlights of our conversations with WCS staff from across the world working to protect wildlife and wild places.


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In November 2021, the Wildlife Conservation Society launched a new campaign to address the crisis of climate change called Framing Our Future. The effort was premised on partnerships with a wide range of civic, cultural, and academic institutions across the United States. One of those partners, the Bronx’s Fordham University, has embraced the campaign as part of its own Green Plan to live out the inspirational call to protect nature found in Pope Francis’s 2015 Laudato si’ encyclical.

Subsistence fishing has long been a staple of Malagasy culture. The rich biodiversity that makes Madagascar so famous also underpins local economies, providing not only food, but income through for-profit fishing and tourism.

However, a host of threats are not only putting pressure on ecosystems, but the very communities who are so intrinsically tied to them. Ravaka Ranaivoson, Marine Conservation Director for WCS Madagascar, believes that the solution lies in supporting “natural capital” – training communities to identify and manage natural resources for healthy, sustainable economies.

Wild Audio’s Hannah Kaplan spoke with Ravaka about the challenges, and opportunities, in working to protect the country’s rich ecosystems.

Read the transcript of this epsiode here.

Any discussion of climate change must consider the role of peatlands. These water-soaked ecosystems comprised of decaying mosses and other plant matter cover a mere 3 percent of the earth’s surface yet store more carbon than all of the world’s forests. But a debate in Canada now pits the mining of minerals essential to renewable energy against protection of critical peatlands. To learn more, WCS Wild Audio checked in with Lorna Harris, a scientist and the program lead for WCS Canada’s national program for Forests, Peatlands, and Climate Change.

For over 125 years, the Wildlife Conservation Society has been protecting species and their habitats across the globe—all the while inspiring visitors to care about conservation at the Bronx Zoo and WCS’s other wildlife parks in New York City. Recording those efforts is the focus of the WCS Library and Archives. WCS Wild Audio’s Nat Moss recently spoke to archive director Madeleine Thompson to learn how she and her team are working to preserve a rich and dynamic history.

Learn more about the WCS Library and Archives at library.wcs.org. You can purchase mugs, t-shirts, hats, pillows, shower curtains and other items with illustrations from the WCS Department of Tropical Research at the WCS Archive Red Bubble online shop: www.redbubble.com/people/wcs-archives/shop.

At the heart of the University of Cambridge sits a collaborative center which is changing the way that organizations and academic institutions work together to address immediate environmental challenges. The Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) is an innovative approach, bringing together 11 leading NGOs and world-class researchers in one creative hub. It’s mission? To change how we approach science-based conservation models.

Hannah Kaplan spoke to Executive Director of CCI, Dr Mike Maunder, to learn more.

To learn more about CCI, visit www.cambridgeconservation.org

Big cats today face multiple threats—from poaching and habitat loss to snares and human conflict. But also key to their survival is the presence of preferred prey. The WCS Laos program’s Akchousanh Rasphone knows which species are prized on the menu of the country’s clouded leopards and, one day, might help sustain a return of “the big guy,” as she refers to the tiger—now functionally extinct in Laos.