ESGBERT/base_data · Datasets at Hugging Face

sentence stringlengths 1 23.5k ⌀
But today, people are becoming more disconnected from the natural world, and children risk being cut off from nature during a formative time in their development.
WCS helps bridge that divide in a unique way.
Our four zoos and aquarium in New York City make science and conservation accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds, reaching some people each year through our immersive exhibits and rich interpretive materials that draw content from our field-based work in 60 countries.
Our urban wildlife parks and staff are also critical resources for schools: we help educators teach young people why it’s important to protect wildlife and wild places— and how WCS does it.
Throughout the COVID-during the five-month closure of our parks—WCS stayed on mission and continued to provide children, families, and schools with a unique gateway to nature, pivoting to provide rich science and conservation content virtually.
Once we re-opened in July where people could get out and experience nature and wildlife—sorely needed in a difficult time.
We learned a lot from reimagining how to connect people to nature during the pandemic—and in doing so, expanded and strengthened our reach.
Educating through Multiple Channels Whether visiting with animals at our parks or logging on to WCS’s social media channels, WCS inspires people to learn.
Visitors at our parks saw a range of behaviors from iconic species like apes and big cats, and learned how scientists protect these animals in the wild.
Bringing Nature to You: WCS Virtual Zoo The live cams at our parks brought an array of wildlife right into people’s homes, offices, and schools.
People delighted in watching ring-tailed lemurs scampering at the Bronx Zoo’s Madagascar! exhibit, and sharks gliding in the Canyon’s Edge exhibit at the New York Aquarium.
Bringing wildlife and people still closer together were our Wild Encounters, through which people visited with cheetahs, giraffes, penguins, and more—all either online or in person.
Launching Wildlife School Online With many students struggling to adapt to online learning, WCS provided much-needed virtual education resources for use in the classroom or at home.
Children from around the world “met” animals and virtually explored our parks and global field programs.
Virtual science fairs showcased student research projects, and immersive visits to our exhibits and activities kept children pre-K through 12th grade engaged in science.
We worked with schools and after-schools in underserved communities to tailor programs at no cost, and provided open-source modules for families.
Imagining Yourself as a Conservation Hero Our Conservation Heroes website showcased the diverse role models at WCS—from New York Citybased Zoo Veterinarian Susie Bartlett to Marysa Sibarani, a Forest Animal Researcher in Indonesia— with the goal of inspiring more young people to envision themselves as future leaders.
Through our Conservation Careers curriculum, young people explored various jobs in conservation through role play and quizzes.
As our natural world faces increasing threats such as climate change and habitat loss, it is more urgent than ever before to inspire people to protect wildlife.
To reach more people and engage them in conservation, we will innovate, expand, and strengthen our conservation science programming, building forward-looking, hybrid models that incorporate both inperson and digital experiences.
“I learned so much and can’t wait to come back again.
I truly appreciated all the people who took the time to answer all our questions and share their love of these animals and the conservation of these amazing creatures.” — BRONX ZOO VISITOR Wildlife Camp Online—A National Model for Digital Learning Our from 30 states and 6 countries, and became a national model for innovative digital learning.
From visits with animal keepers in our city parks to conversations with staff experts as far away as Mongolia, the team created a one-of-a-kind summer enrichment experience.
To sustain our wider reach, in a hybrid model combining in-person and virtual experiences at our parks.
At the New York Aquarium, WCS connects visitors with the diverse ocean ecosystem in their own backyard, highlighting the types of field research our scientists are doing right offshore in the waters of New York.
Connecting People to Nature at WCS’s Zoos and Aquarium Telling Stories of Recovery on The Zoo Our flagship Bronx Zoo and four other parks welcome 4 million guests each year.
But millions more across the US and around the world—who might not otherwise get a chance to visit our parks—gain a window into WCS’s work through Animal Planet’s award-winning docuseries THE ZOO.
With the fifth season premiering in October staff provide care for the 17,000 animals at our parks, while helping advance the conservation of species in the wild.
Below are just a few examples of the inspiring stories that will be featured in this new season.
In its newest season, THE ZOO follows several stories of animals receiving innovative and life-changing veterinary care they could not have received in the wild.
Wild animals do their best to hide injuries to avoid showing vulnerabilities that predators or competitors might key in on.
Yet our watchful Bronx Zoo keepers noticed a subtle change in male gorilla Babatunde’s behavior when he was eating, and found the problem to be a cracked tooth.
Our zoological health experts determined he needed a root canal to alleviate his discomfort.
Babatunde is now back with his troop, eating and behaving normally.
Baby bison, big surgery A bison calf at the Bronx Zoo was born with a bowed leg—which would have been problematic when the calf grew into a pound adult.
Following a complex surgery to straighten out her leg, she was immediately able to rejoin her mother.
Soon after, they were reunited with their close-knit herd.
Helping Aurora the tiger find a mate Amur tigers are classified as Endangered.
Only about individuals remain in their native habitat in the Russian Far East and northern China.
In female Amur tiger named Aurora from the Minnesota Zoo as part of the Association of Zoos and Aquarium’s Species Survival Plan program.
This season shows how Aurora and her new companions at the zoo all have different personalities and paces at which they acclimate to change.
We are hopeful that Aurora and her potential mate Aldan will breed and produce a litter of healthy cubs.
A “pig happy family” The Bronx Zoo has a long history of breeding babirusas, a charismatic and somewhat unusual-looking species of wild pig native to Indonesia.
Five-year-old Ivy recently joined the zoo’s babirusa group, and she and eight-year-old Ken have bred and produced a healthy piglet named Sprout.
We begin at and weighing the restaurant quality fish we feed our animals.
We then do three or four rounds of training, with cleaning and project work in between.
I care for the California sea lions and otters, harbor seals, and African penguins.
The training mostly replicates their behaviors in the wild, but we also include a few human behaviors, like waving, and show our close bonds with the animals to maximize the connection our visitors feel.
More people visit zoos and aquariums in the US than all professional sports combined, so the potential to help wildlife is endless.
I want to give visitors the kind of clarifying moment I had as a kid, when I first held a big green iguana named Marv.
I felt such a gut connection that I knew protecting animals would be my life.
Well, I love every moment with our 800-pound sea lion Clyde.
No one would ever describe me as chill, so it’s a nice yin and yang.
We worried about how he’d do with our little six-month pup Marco, who was a tenth his size, but they played together all the time.
And he’s always engaged; it’s cool to see the gears turning in that big head of his.
I’ll also never forget this Memorial Day, when with about visitors I got to watch our sea lion Arianna give birth.
I hope to be the role model I never had, growing up as a gay kid interested in wildlife.
I want to open doors for others left outside.
The usual career path—beginning as I did with unpaid internships— closes out anyone that can’t afford that.
Paid entrylevel jobs like those at our Children’s Zoo at the Bronx Zoo help grow the diverse groups of leaders the world needs.
Burning fossil fuels harms our animals through climate change but also causes high rates of asthma in my Queens neighborhood.
Our work at WCS is all about legacy, what we leave for the future.
I want ours to be the generation that stopped species extinctions and climate change.
Vast wilderness areas may seem far removed from our daily lives, yet the survival of life on Earth depends on preserving the Congo basin’s tropical forests, the Arctic and boreal forests, the coral-studded reefs of Melanesia, and many other intact places around the world on land and sea.
But today, less than a quarter of our planet remains wild.
Strongholds are the planet’s remaining areas of protected wilderness, and WCS’s core mission is to fully conserve, restore, and rewild these places and the countless species that depend on them, including our own.
Our goal is to safeguard half of life on Earth by winning strong national and international commitments to secure these strongholds, which span over the size of the United States.
In this section, we spotlight three strongholds where we have achieved progress, thanks to our scienceled approach and longstanding trusted relationships with Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and government partners.
We now aim to scale up our successes for still greater impact.
rally the global community around the ambitious goal of protecting 2030—prioritizing intact places with the greatest biodiversity and climate change resilience, and turning commitments into action.
Albatrosses on the vast, remote, and rugged Patagonian Steppe.
In WCS’s four decades of leadership across coastal Patagonia, we have helped the governments of Argentina and Chile create numerous protected areas to conserve this stronghold for seabirds, elephant seals, whales, dolphins, and sharks.
Strongholds are our planet’s remaining intact forests, coral reefs, savannas, mangroves, peatlands, and other wilderness areas with the greatest ecological integrity, size and diversity of species populations, and resilience to climate change.
We aim to conserve more than extraordinary strongholds for wildlife—to sustain life-giving ecosystems and conserve half of the planet’s biodiversity.
In more than eradicated 116 illegal hunting camps, and seized 1,492 snares within the park and its periphery.
WCS established aerial surveillance operations and introduced real-time communications technology.
In the late canoed hundreds of miles through the Republic of Congo’s Ndoki-Likouala Stronghold to survey its wildlife and forest habitat.
In Congolese government establish Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park to protect one of the most biologically intact forest ecosystems on the African continent: more than 4,000 square kilometers of contiguous lowland rainforest, a vital stronghold for forest elephants, gorillas, and chimpanzees.
Since then, we have collaborated with the Congolese government to conserve this land, and in public-private partnership that delegated WCS full management authority.
Today, Ndoki is one of the rare places in Africa where elephant and ape populations have stabilized or increased over the past to population crashes seen across much of the two species’ African range.
How we have achieved our results illuminate WCS’s pioneering approach, and has made Ndoki a paragon of the stronghold model.
Below are just a few highlights from the last year.
As of March poached in the park for the past six months.
WCS’s Wildlife Crimes Unit played a critical role in identifying and dismantling criminal trafficking networks.
From a conviction rate of zero for regional wildlife crime in are now supporting prosecutors to achieve a 75 percent conviction rate.
In the last two years, the rate of maximum-penalty convictions has doubled.
Last summer, the most prolific elephant poacher and ivory trafficker in the area was the first to be convicted in Congo’s criminal court and sentenced to that we are gaining traction in stopping Congo’s dangerous wildlife criminals.
We aim to further strengthen Ndoki’s management and infrastructure, to keep wildlife populations stable and recovering over time.
WCS will also apply the lessons learned in Ndoki and scale up our impact in other strongholds, such as DRC’s Okapi Wildlife Reserve and Mozambique’s Niassa Special Reserve.
Our overarching strategy is to continue protecting intact ecosystems within, and beyond, protected areas.
Supporting and Empowering Local Communities During the Pandemic The rise of COVID-people and wildlife living at the periphery of the park.
When the government declared a full lockdown at the start of the pandemic, the Nouabale-Ndoki National Park was declared an “essential service” to enable operations to continue.
Because of this, WCS Nouabalé-Ndoki community teams were able to conduct an ongoing COVID awareness campaign and provide hand-washing stations to the villages of Bomassa, Kabo, and Makao.
WCS also supported the provision of food and transport of community members to local markets in the absence of any other transportation, providing an alternative to bushmeat consumption, which saw a fourfold increase during lockdown.
And we donated facemasks, and infrared thermometers to two health centers in the region.
Activating Responsible Ecotourism Opportunities WCS has launched a four-year program with the Congolese Government, in partnership with the Congo Conservation Company and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), to create the first professionally managed ecotourism operation, which could contribute an estimated operating budget over the next 10 years.
Advancing Science-led Conservation Using conservation criminology, WCS and partners released a study in the journal Conservation Science and Practice about the wild meat trade, finding that restaurants in urban areas in Central Africa play a key role in whether protected wildlife winds up on the menu.
Working with restaurants can help build a community of informal wildlife guardians, complementing law enforcement and legislative action.
Indonesia is home to an astounding of the world’s species, including the longest list of endangered species: 126 birds, 63 mammals, and 21 reptiles.
In Sumatra, the Gunung Leuser National Park and its surrounding forests represent one of the last great intact wilderness areas on Earth, so the significance of this difficult to overstate.

But today, people are becoming more disconnected from the natural world, and children risk being cut off from nature during a formative time in their development.

WCS helps bridge that divide in a unique way.

Our four zoos and aquarium in New York City make science and conservation accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds, reaching some people each year through our immersive exhibits and rich interpretive materials that draw content from our field-based work in 60 countries.

Our urban wildlife parks and staff are also critical resources for schools: we help educators teach young people why it’s important to protect wildlife and wild places— and how WCS does it.

Throughout the COVID-during the five-month closure of our parks—WCS stayed on mission and continued to provide children, families, and schools with a unique gateway to nature, pivoting to provide rich science and conservation content virtually.

Once we re-opened in July where people could get out and experience nature and wildlife—sorely needed in a difficult time.

We learned a lot from reimagining how to connect people to nature during the pandemic—and in doing so, expanded and strengthened our reach.

Educating through Multiple Channels Whether visiting with animals at our parks or logging on to WCS’s social media channels, WCS inspires people to learn.

Visitors at our parks saw a range of behaviors from iconic species like apes and big cats, and learned how scientists protect these animals in the wild.

Bringing Nature to You: WCS Virtual Zoo The live cams at our parks brought an array of wildlife right into people’s homes, offices, and schools.

People delighted in watching ring-tailed lemurs scampering at the Bronx Zoo’s Madagascar! exhibit, and sharks gliding in the Canyon’s Edge exhibit at the New York Aquarium.

Bringing wildlife and people still closer together were our Wild Encounters, through which people visited with cheetahs, giraffes, penguins, and more—all either online or in person.

Launching Wildlife School Online With many students struggling to adapt to online learning, WCS provided much-needed virtual education resources for use in the classroom or at home.

Children from around the world “met” animals and virtually explored our parks and global field programs.

Virtual science fairs showcased student research projects, and immersive visits to our exhibits and activities kept children pre-K through 12th grade engaged in science.

We worked with schools and after-schools in underserved communities to tailor programs at no cost, and provided open-source modules for families.

Imagining Yourself as a Conservation Hero Our Conservation Heroes website showcased the diverse role models at WCS—from New York Citybased Zoo Veterinarian Susie Bartlett to Marysa Sibarani, a Forest Animal Researcher in Indonesia— with the goal of inspiring more young people to envision themselves as future leaders.

Through our Conservation Careers curriculum, young people explored various jobs in conservation through role play and quizzes.

As our natural world faces increasing threats such as climate change and habitat loss, it is more urgent than ever before to inspire people to protect wildlife.

To reach more people and engage them in conservation, we will innovate, expand, and strengthen our conservation science programming, building forward-looking, hybrid models that incorporate both inperson and digital experiences.

“I learned so much and can’t wait to come back again.

I truly appreciated all the people who took the time to answer all our questions and share their love of these animals and the conservation of these amazing creatures.” — BRONX ZOO VISITOR Wildlife Camp Online—A National Model for Digital Learning Our from 30 states and 6 countries, and became a national model for innovative digital learning.

From visits with animal keepers in our city parks to conversations with staff experts as far away as Mongolia, the team created a one-of-a-kind summer enrichment experience.

To sustain our wider reach, in a hybrid model combining in-person and virtual experiences at our parks.

At the New York Aquarium, WCS connects visitors with the diverse ocean ecosystem in their own backyard, highlighting the types of field research our scientists are doing right offshore in the waters of New York.

Connecting People to Nature at WCS’s Zoos and Aquarium Telling Stories of Recovery on The Zoo Our flagship Bronx Zoo and four other parks welcome 4 million guests each year.

But millions more across the US and around the world—who might not otherwise get a chance to visit our parks—gain a window into WCS’s work through Animal Planet’s award-winning docuseries THE ZOO.

With the fifth season premiering in October staff provide care for the 17,000 animals at our parks, while helping advance the conservation of species in the wild.

Below are just a few examples of the inspiring stories that will be featured in this new season.

In its newest season, THE ZOO follows several stories of animals receiving innovative and life-changing veterinary care they could not have received in the wild.

Wild animals do their best to hide injuries to avoid showing vulnerabilities that predators or competitors might key in on.

Yet our watchful Bronx Zoo keepers noticed a subtle change in male gorilla Babatunde’s behavior when he was eating, and found the problem to be a cracked tooth.

Our zoological health experts determined he needed a root canal to alleviate his discomfort.

Babatunde is now back with his troop, eating and behaving normally.

Baby bison, big surgery A bison calf at the Bronx Zoo was born with a bowed leg—which would have been problematic when the calf grew into a pound adult.

Following a complex surgery to straighten out her leg, she was immediately able to rejoin her mother.

Soon after, they were reunited with their close-knit herd.

Helping Aurora the tiger find a mate Amur tigers are classified as Endangered.

Only about individuals remain in their native habitat in the Russian Far East and northern China.

In female Amur tiger named Aurora from the Minnesota Zoo as part of the Association of Zoos and Aquarium’s Species Survival Plan program.

This season shows how Aurora and her new companions at the zoo all have different personalities and paces at which they acclimate to change.

We are hopeful that Aurora and her potential mate Aldan will breed and produce a litter of healthy cubs.

A “pig happy family” The Bronx Zoo has a long history of breeding babirusas, a charismatic and somewhat unusual-looking species of wild pig native to Indonesia.

Five-year-old Ivy recently joined the zoo’s babirusa group, and she and eight-year-old Ken have bred and produced a healthy piglet named Sprout.

We begin at and weighing the restaurant quality fish we feed our animals.

We then do three or four rounds of training, with cleaning and project work in between.

I care for the California sea lions and otters, harbor seals, and African penguins.

The training mostly replicates their behaviors in the wild, but we also include a few human behaviors, like waving, and show our close bonds with the animals to maximize the connection our visitors feel.

More people visit zoos and aquariums in the US than all professional sports combined, so the potential to help wildlife is endless.

I want to give visitors the kind of clarifying moment I had as a kid, when I first held a big green iguana named Marv.

I felt such a gut connection that I knew protecting animals would be my life.

Well, I love every moment with our 800-pound sea lion Clyde.

No one would ever describe me as chill, so it’s a nice yin and yang.

We worried about how he’d do with our little six-month pup Marco, who was a tenth his size, but they played together all the time.

And he’s always engaged; it’s cool to see the gears turning in that big head of his.

I’ll also never forget this Memorial Day, when with about visitors I got to watch our sea lion Arianna give birth.

I hope to be the role model I never had, growing up as a gay kid interested in wildlife.

I want to open doors for others left outside.

The usual career path—beginning as I did with unpaid internships— closes out anyone that can’t afford that.

Paid entrylevel jobs like those at our Children’s Zoo at the Bronx Zoo help grow the diverse groups of leaders the world needs.

Burning fossil fuels harms our animals through climate change but also causes high rates of asthma in my Queens neighborhood.

Our work at WCS is all about legacy, what we leave for the future.

I want ours to be the generation that stopped species extinctions and climate change.

Vast wilderness areas may seem far removed from our daily lives, yet the survival of life on Earth depends on preserving the Congo basin’s tropical forests, the Arctic and boreal forests, the coral-studded reefs of Melanesia, and many other intact places around the world on land and sea.

But today, less than a quarter of our planet remains wild.

Strongholds are the planet’s remaining areas of protected wilderness, and WCS’s core mission is to fully conserve, restore, and rewild these places and the countless species that depend on them, including our own.

Our goal is to safeguard half of life on Earth by winning strong national and international commitments to secure these strongholds, which span over the size of the United States.

In this section, we spotlight three strongholds where we have achieved progress, thanks to our scienceled approach and longstanding trusted relationships with Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and government partners.

We now aim to scale up our successes for still greater impact.

rally the global community around the ambitious goal of protecting 2030—prioritizing intact places with the greatest biodiversity and climate change resilience, and turning commitments into action.

Albatrosses on the vast, remote, and rugged Patagonian Steppe.

In WCS’s four decades of leadership across coastal Patagonia, we have helped the governments of Argentina and Chile create numerous protected areas to conserve this stronghold for seabirds, elephant seals, whales, dolphins, and sharks.

Strongholds are our planet’s remaining intact forests, coral reefs, savannas, mangroves, peatlands, and other wilderness areas with the greatest ecological integrity, size and diversity of species populations, and resilience to climate change.

We aim to conserve more than extraordinary strongholds for wildlife—to sustain life-giving ecosystems and conserve half of the planet’s biodiversity.

In more than eradicated 116 illegal hunting camps, and seized 1,492 snares within the park and its periphery.

WCS established aerial surveillance operations and introduced real-time communications technology.

In the late canoed hundreds of miles through the Republic of Congo’s Ndoki-Likouala Stronghold to survey its wildlife and forest habitat.

In Congolese government establish Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park to protect one of the most biologically intact forest ecosystems on the African continent: more than 4,000 square kilometers of contiguous lowland rainforest, a vital stronghold for forest elephants, gorillas, and chimpanzees.

Since then, we have collaborated with the Congolese government to conserve this land, and in public-private partnership that delegated WCS full management authority.

Today, Ndoki is one of the rare places in Africa where elephant and ape populations have stabilized or increased over the past to population crashes seen across much of the two species’ African range.

How we have achieved our results illuminate WCS’s pioneering approach, and has made Ndoki a paragon of the stronghold model.

Below are just a few highlights from the last year.

As of March poached in the park for the past six months.

WCS’s Wildlife Crimes Unit played a critical role in identifying and dismantling criminal trafficking networks.

From a conviction rate of zero for regional wildlife crime in are now supporting prosecutors to achieve a 75 percent conviction rate.

In the last two years, the rate of maximum-penalty convictions has doubled.

Last summer, the most prolific elephant poacher and ivory trafficker in the area was the first to be convicted in Congo’s criminal court and sentenced to that we are gaining traction in stopping Congo’s dangerous wildlife criminals.

We aim to further strengthen Ndoki’s management and infrastructure, to keep wildlife populations stable and recovering over time.

WCS will also apply the lessons learned in Ndoki and scale up our impact in other strongholds, such as DRC’s Okapi Wildlife Reserve and Mozambique’s Niassa Special Reserve.

Our overarching strategy is to continue protecting intact ecosystems within, and beyond, protected areas.

Supporting and Empowering Local Communities During the Pandemic The rise of COVID-people and wildlife living at the periphery of the park.

When the government declared a full lockdown at the start of the pandemic, the Nouabale-Ndoki National Park was declared an “essential service” to enable operations to continue.

Because of this, WCS Nouabalé-Ndoki community teams were able to conduct an ongoing COVID awareness campaign and provide hand-washing stations to the villages of Bomassa, Kabo, and Makao.

WCS also supported the provision of food and transport of community members to local markets in the absence of any other transportation, providing an alternative to bushmeat consumption, which saw a fourfold increase during lockdown.

And we donated facemasks, and infrared thermometers to two health centers in the region.

Activating Responsible Ecotourism Opportunities WCS has launched a four-year program with the Congolese Government, in partnership with the Congo Conservation Company and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), to create the first professionally managed ecotourism operation, which could contribute an estimated operating budget over the next 10 years.

Advancing Science-led Conservation Using conservation criminology, WCS and partners released a study in the journal Conservation Science and Practice about the wild meat trade, finding that restaurants in urban areas in Central Africa play a key role in whether protected wildlife winds up on the menu.

Working with restaurants can help build a community of informal wildlife guardians, complementing law enforcement and legislative action.

Indonesia is home to an astounding of the world’s species, including the longest list of endangered species: 126 birds, 63 mammals, and 21 reptiles.

In Sumatra, the Gunung Leuser National Park and its surrounding forests represent one of the last great intact wilderness areas on Earth, so the significance of this difficult to overstate.