About WCS In 1979, Weyrich, Cronin & Sorra was founded under the leadership of Carroll Weyrich, William Cronin, and Manny Sorra. At that time, their goal was to establish an accounting practice built around proactive client service delivered through “close personal attention.”. About WCS We founded Whole Child Sports and wrote Beyond Winning: Smart Parenting in a Toxic Sports Environment to raise awareness about the many problems in youth sports today and to provide advice and offer solutions to help improve our children’s sports experiences. We all want our kids to play sports long into adulthood. WCS, the “W” logo, WE STAND FOR WILDLIFE, I STAND FOR WILDLIFE, and STAND FOR WILDLIFE are service marks of Wildlife Conservation Society.

Wildlife Conservation Society
Founders
Abbreviation	WCS
Formation	April 26, 1895; 125 years ago (as New York Zoological Society)
Type	non-governmental organization
Purpose
Headquarters	Bronx Zoo Bronx, New York, United States
Region	Worldwide
Website	www.wcs.org
New York Zoological Society (1895–1993)

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is a non-governmental organization headquartered at the Bronx Zoo in New York City, that aims to conserve the world's largest wild places in 14 priority regions. Founded in 1895 as the New York Zoological Society (NYZS), the organization is led by President and CEO Cristián Samper. WCS manages four New York City wildlife parks in addition to the Bronx Zoo: the Central Park Zoo, New York Aquarium, Prospect Park Zoo and Queens Zoo. Together these parks receive 4 million visitors per year.^[1] All of the New York City facilities are accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA).^[2]

History[edit]

Founding[edit]

Tour through Bronx Zoo, 1950

The Wildlife Conservation Society was originally chartered by the state of New York on April 26, 1895. Then known as the New York Zoological Society, the organization embraced a mandate to advance wildlife conservation, promote the study of zoology, and create a first-class zoological park. Its name was changed to the Wildlife Conservation Society in 1993. Among the founders of WCS were Andrew H. Green, best known as the father of greater New York City, Henry Fairfield Osborn, Columbia University professor and curator of the American Museum of Natural History, and George Bird Grinnell, founder of the Audubon Society and editor of Forest and Stream Magazine. Theodore Roosevelt, Madison Grant, members of the Boone and Crockett Club, and other notable New Yorkers were also involved in the Society's creation.

The Bronx Zoo (formerly the New York Zoological Park) was designed along the lines of other cultural institutions in New York City, such as the American Museum of Natural History. The city provided the land for the new zoo and some funding for buildings and annual operating costs. WCS raised most of the funds for construction and operations from a private donor, and selected the scientific and administrative personnel.

Work[edit]

In the late nineteenth century William Temple Hornaday, then director of the New York Zoological Park (now the Bronx Zoo), carried out a direct-mail survey of wildlife conditions through the United States, and publicized the decline of birds and mammals in the organization's annual reports. In 1897 Hornaday also hired field researcher Andrew J. Stone to survey the condition of wildlife in the territory of Alaska. On the basis of these studies, Hornaday led the campaign for new laws to protect the wildlife there and the United States as a whole. In 1901, a small herd of American Bison were gathered in a 20-acre meadow just off what is now the Pelham Parkway roadway. Starting in 1905, Hornaday led a national campaign to reintroduce the almost extinct bison to government sponsored refuges.^[3]^[4] Hornaday, Theodore Roosevelt and others formed the American Bison Society in 1905. The Bronx Zoo sent 15 bison to Wichita Reserve in 1907 and additional bison in later years. The saving of this uniquely American symbol is one of the great success stories in the history of wildlife conservation. Hornaday campaigned for wildlife protection throughout his thirty years as director of the Bronx Zoo. Beginning in 1906, Hornaday featured Ota Benga, a member of the Mbuti from the Congo, in a zoo exhibit. In July 2020, the Wildlife Conservation Society apologized.^[5]

William Beebe, the first curator of birds at the Bronx Zoo, began a program of field research soon after the Bronx Zoo opened. His research on wild pheasants took him to Asia from 1908 to 1911 and resulted in a series of books on pheasants. Beebe's field work also resulted in the creation of the Society’s Department of Tropical Research, which Beebe directed from 1922 until his retirement in 1948. Beebe’s research in an undersea vessel called the bathysphere took him half a mile under the ocean floor off Bermuda in 1934 to record for the first time human observations of the bottom of the deep sea. The bathysphere is currently displayed at the New York Aquarium.

The war years marked the arrival of Henry Fairfield Osborn, Jr as NYZS president and Laurance Rockefeller as executive committee chairman. A best selling writer on conservation and son of WCS founder Henry Fairfield Osborn, Osborn soon embraced changes that signaled new thinking in the organization. Guests were allowed to bring their own cameras into the Bronx Zoo, while animals were grouped by continents and ecosystems rather than genetic orders and families, beginning with the African Plains exhibit in 1941.^[6]

After World War II, under the leadership of Osborn, the organization extended its programs in field biology and conservation. In 1946 WCS helped found the Jackson Hole Wildlife Park, which became part of Grand Teton National Park in 1962. In the late 1950s WCS began a series of wildlife surveys and projects in Kenya, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Burma, and the Malay peninsula. In 1959 it sponsored George Schaller’s seminal study of mountain gorillas in Congo. Since that expedition, Schaller has gone on to become the world's preeminent field biologist, studying wildlife throughout Africa, Asia and South America. Conservation activities continued to expand under the leadership of William G. Conway, who became director of the Bronx Zoo in 1962 and President of WCS in 1992. Active as a field biologist in Patagonia, Conway promoted a new vision of zoos as conservation organizations, which cooperated in breeding endangered species. He also designed new types of zoo exhibits aimed at teaching visitors about habitats that support wildlife, and encouraged the expansion of WCS's field programs.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the WCS took a leadership role in pioneering zoological exhibitions by seeking to recreate natural environments for the animals on display. Under the leadership of WCS director William G. Conway, the Bronx Zoo opened its World of Darkness for nocturnal species in 1969 and its World of Birds for avian displays in 1974.^[7] Eventually New York City turned to WCS to renew and manage three city-run facilities in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. The redesigned Central Park Zoo opened in 1988, followed by the Queens Zoo in 1992 and the Prospect Park Zoo in 1993.^[8] From 1994 through 1996 Archie Carr III of WCS helped establish the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary in Belize, a reserve for endangered jaguar.

Today WCS is at work on some 500 projects in more than 60 nations around the world that are intended to help protect both wildlife and the wild places in which they live.^[1] The organization endeavors to protect 25 percent of the world's biodiversity—from the gorillas of Africa and the tigers of Asia to macaws in South America and the sharks, whales and turtles traveling through the planet's seas. In recent years WCS has actively worked in conflict areas like Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar, where agreements on wildlife resource have contributed to peace and stability. More than 4 million people visit WCS's wildlife parks in New York City each year.^[9]

The Welikia Project[edit]

The Welikia Project^[10] is a project by the WCS to reconstruct and map how New York City looked in 1609 at the time of

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