WCS Wild Audio Wildlife Conservation Society

It’s been over 50 years since the first Earth Day in 1970. As we commemorate this year’s edition, says WCS’s John Calvelli, there is a great deal of concern about our future. But there is also reason for optimism. One example comes from the Miombo Woodlands in Southern Africa. 

Reporting: Dan Rosen
Guest: John Calvelli

April 22 is Earth Day, which could not be a more fitting occasion for conservationists, ministers, and development experts to gather in Bhutan hosted by the Royal Govt of Bhutan, under the Patronage of Her Majesty The Queen, Jetsun Pema Wangchuck. The goal: to develop a long-term plan for sustainable funding to protect tigers across their range.  

To understand the stakes and the opportunity, we turned to several representatives of the global Tiger Conservation Coalition, which includes: the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), Fauna & Flora, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Natural State, Panthera, TRAFFIC, the United Nations Development Programme (UNPD), the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF), and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).  

Reporting: Nat Moss  
Guests: Stuart Chapman (WWF), John Goodrich (Panthera), Joob Jornburom (WCS), Phurba Lhendup (IUCN), Maxim Vergeichik (UNDP)  

You can follow all the action in Bhutan on Monday, April 22 and Tuesday, April 23 at these streaming links (Bhutan time is GMT +6):  

YouTube
Day 1 (April 22): https://youtube.com/live/UWHhgF0JttA
Day 2 (April 23): https://youtube.com/live/_3dQIcaW6DU   

Facebook: 
https://www.facebook.com/events/1069989520755200/   

The waters off New York City are some of the busiest in the world with both ships and marine life. In fact, new research co-authored by WCS shows that fin whales can be found in these waters all 12 months. And that has important conservation implications.

Reporting: Dan Rosen
Guests: Carissa King-Nolan, Dr. Melinda Rekdahl

Winner of the Conservation Prize at this year’s New York Wild Film Festival, Hamid Sardar’s documentary film Mongolia: Valley of the Bears highlights a clash between the traditions of a nomadic community in northern Mongolia and one dedicated ranger’s mission to conserve wildlife in the boreal “taiga.”

Reporting: Nat Moss
Guest: Hamid Sardar

In the second episode of our two-part series on the current avian influenza crisis, WCS Wild Audio’s Hannah Kaplan looks at the rise of this new, more deadly strain in domestic poultry farming. 

In places like Cambodia, such farms have become a breeding ground for the virus, and the last five years have seen a dramatic increase in rates of infection of wild birds that share the same habitats.  

Meanwhile, scientists continue to track the growing threat to mammals, with the recent transmission to dairy cows in the US causing new concerns of potential new spillover to wildlife and people.

Reporting: Hannah Kaplan
Guests: Dr Emily Denstedt and Robert Tizard

 WCS’s Global Health team has been closely watching the spread of avian influenza—first as it decimated populations of bird species around the world, and more recently when it jumped to mammals. In this two-part series, we look at the potentially devastating impacts of this growing wildlife pandemic and what is being done to slow its spread.

Reporter: Hannah Kaplan
Guests: Dr Christian Walzer, Dr Paulo Colchao