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These forests have an astounding ability to store carbon—nearly twice as much as all of the world’s tropical forests combined—and are also essential to the culture and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples who have lived in them for millennia.
But pressure is growing to push new mines, roads, and forestry operations into intact areas.
To counter those pressures, WCS is providing technical support to the land use planning efforts led by the Indigenous Peoples who co-govern and steward the land and resources.
This partnership has already protected Yukon, 67,000 square kilometers of wilderness that are the spiritual heartland for the four First Nations whose traditional territories overlap the area.
Promoting Peatlands as Climate-Fighting Powerhouses The peatlands of Canada’s Northern Boreal region hold major stores of carbon in their soils, formed by accumulation and decay of waterlogged plants and mosses over thousands of years.
Since has been working in the Hudson Bay Lowlands, the second largest peatland in the world—equivalent to the size of Spain.
We are urging the Canadian government to invest in Indigenous Guardians to help monitor and protect the Lowlands; and to ensure that peatlands are no longer overlooked in climate policy decisions.
ABOVE Intact forests provide vital climate benefits as well as critical habitat for wildlife, such as this jaguar in the Maya Forest.
Canada’s boreal forests (left) and northern peatlands (below) are some of the richest carbon sinks and strongholds for wildlife on the planet.
WCS is protecting them in partnership with Canada’s government and Indigenous Peoples, for whom these ecosystems hold great cultural and spiritual significance.
As the impacts of climate change degrade ecosystems, disturb economies, and threaten human life at a greater rate than ever before, there is heightened urgency to help animals, habitats, and people adapt and build resilience to these impacts over the long term.
WCS is advancing on-the-ground adaptation projects globally in close partnership with Indigenous Peoples and governments—from ensuring that species have the space and ecosystem integrity they need to thrive, to making forests more resistant to wildfires by helping communities adapt how they earn their livelihoods.
Over the next five years, we seek to further improve forest management in the Congo Nile Divide and deliver additional nature-based benefits to nearly 1.4 million people.
For example, we will work to lower sedimentation levels and improve water quality by helping Rwanda produce cleaner, cheaper hydropower energy.
We estimate that we can help sequester more than of CO2 equivalents by 2050—keeping Rwanda’s national CO2 emissions negative throughout this time period.
Through forest restoration, continued biodiversity monitoring, and ecotourism initiatives, we can secure a resilient future for the Congo Nile Divide’s mountain gorillas and other iconic species.
The three national parks within Rwanda’s Congo Nile Divide region—Volcanoes, Gishwati Mukura, and Nyungwe—are home to dozens of threatened species, including chimpanzees, golden monkeys, owl-faced monkeys, and mountain gorillas.
But the Congo Nile Divide as a whole is extremely vulnerable to climate change, and climate change impacts—amplified by land conversion for agriculture and over-harvesting of fuelwood—have severely degraded its forests.
By building capacity among local communities to improve forest management and restoration within the Congo Nile Divide, WCS aims to create forest corridors that will strengthen climate resilience for Rwanda’s wildlife, people, and national economy.
We are helping more than transition to more climate-resilient and productive livelihood models, which will reduce their exposure to flash floods, landslides, and soil erosion, while increasing crop productivity.
To take just one example: WCS is promoting sustainable beekeeping in this region by working directly with modernize beekeeping practices.
by climate change, traditional methods of wild honey collection have sometimes caused catastrophic forest fires, further degrading the integrity of remaining forests.
By scaling this work up to include more than beekeepers, we can reduce fire risk while significantly increasing farmers’ incomes from honey production.
LEFT Despite threats from climate change, habitat loss, poaching, and disease, the world’s mountain gorilla populations have doubled over the last several decades.
North America’s boreal and Arctic regions contain some of the world’s greatest wildlife aggregations and remaining expanses of intact ecosystems.
But the climate crisis is hitting these strongholds harder and faster than anywhere else.
The Arctic has warmed about twice as fast as the rest of the planet.
In the far North, many species such as polar bears, caribou, wolverines, walruses, seals, and migratory birds are being forced to adapt to profoundly different conditions.
Humans are also adapting to this warming world, and some of those adaptations—including creating new shipping lanes where sea ice has melted—are increasing impacts on species already having difficulty surviving.
WCS is working to help Arctic species adapt in sustainable ways, and partnering with the region’s Indigenous Peoples who rely on the Arctic’s incredible wildlife and resources.
For example, WCS is mapping the location of walruses in the Arctic as they adapt to climate change.
Female walruses and their calves have had to move to land due to the loss of summer sea ice, and by doing so are closer to coastal villages and shipping lanes.
With this WCS-supported monitoring data, real-time advisories can go out to mariners and airplane pilots to avoid areas where these iconic, at-risk animals are present across the Alaskan coastline.
Half a billion people rely on coral reefs for food security and cultural traditions.
Yet as climate change causes ocean waters globally to heat up and become more acidic, and sea levels to rise, the vast majority of coral reef ecosystems are at risk.
WCS is leading efforts to scale up global monitoring for sensitive corals—and targeting conservation efforts to those reefs with the best chance of surviving climate change.
There is reason to be hopeful: in late discovered an incredible climate refuge within a rare ocean cool spot along East Africa’s KenyaTanzania coast after analyzing data we and our partners collected over three decades.
Despite its modest size, we found that this cool spot is protecting large populations of corals from thermal stress, bleaching, and mortality, and therefore is providing a safe haven for vulnerable marine species.
If well-managed, this region can serve as a sanctuary for threatened biodiversity while providing high yields of foods central to the region’s unique cultural heritage.
Building on East African research and a similar study in Asia’s Coral Triangle, WCS scientists are making the case for coral reef protection globally, and showing that vulnerable species can survive climate change.
We will work to identify similarly resilient environments and reefs across the world’s oceans, and encourage our government and community partners to focus conservation efforts on these safe havens.
Across North America, we seek to leverage our cutting-edge science, longstanding commitments to the places we work, and enduring partnerships with governments as well as First Nations and Indigenous communities to strengthen local stewardship and policy, and ensure these extraordinary ecosystems adapt and survive.
To protect Arctic wildlife, we will advance monitoring techniques and lay the groundwork for new protected areas and other conserved areas that benefit both wildlife and people.
We will also work with partners across the globe to monitor and protect the millions of birds that come to the Arctic to breed each summer, whose migratory habitats are under threat due to development and climate change.
WCS research on corals in the Western Indian Ocean has helped prove the existence of climate refuges that are poised to survive even as water temperatures rise.
Global Programs Management and General $153,354,765 Zoos and Aquarium (incl.
We are deeply grateful to our generous private and public funders for their strong support and partnership, which enables us to deliver on WCS’s vital mission.
This was especially true during the pandemic, when WCS, along with so many organizations and individuals, faced unprecedented hardships.
WCS’s parks were closed for months during the pandemic, shrinking a critical part of our attendance-based revenue.
Despite this, we ensured the health and well-being of the animals in our care, as well as the safety of our staff.
Our longstanding public-private partnership with New York City and New York State spans 125 years.
WCS’s track record of sustained conservation results also makes us a trusted partner of governments around the world.
Without private philanthropy, WCS would not be able to accept these funds.
Each dollar we receive from private donors allows us to leverage and put to work at least five dollars of additional funding toward the programs and operations described in this report.
We hope you feel proud of what we have accomplished together.
PLANNED GIVING You can build a conservation legacy by designating WCS as a beneficiary in your will or trust.
You can also name WCS as a beneficiary of your individual retirement account, life insurance policy, donoradvised fund, or brokerage account.
PRESIDENT’S CIRCLE WCS is pleased to recognize those who contribute annual gifts of $of the President’s Circle.
At this level of giving, you receive all the benefits of Conservation Patrons, plus exclusive invitations and insider access to WCS leadership and Program experts.
WCS’s Conservation Patrons are saving wildlife and wild places by giving at the $1,500 to $24,999 level.
Patrons receive special conservation impact updates, invitations to insider events, recognition in the WCS Impact Report, and the option to receive zoo benefits with access to our five NYC wildlife parks.
NAMING OPPORTUNITIES There are exhibits, galleries, and benches available for naming within well-loved spaces at our five wildlife parks.
WCS Corporate Partners provide vital operating support of our conservation efforts through philanthropic giving, corporate membership, sponsorship, and cause marketing.
Partnerships with WCS help corporations gain brand exposure, consumer loyalty, and community engagement, while aligning with an important cause that resonates with their consumers, employees, and investors.
A copy of this annual report may be obtained by writing to the Chair of the Board, Wildlife Conservation Society, New York 10460.
In addition, a copy of the WCS’s annual filing with the Charities Bureau of the Office of the New York State Attorney General may be obtained by writing to the Charities Bureau, New York State Attorney General’s Office, 3rd Floor, 120 Broadway, New York, New York 10271.
The report can also be found online at wcs.org.
Annual Report Picture thousands and thousands of bag lunches, packed with love and given to starving kids on the streets… Imagine health clinics filled with street kids… being given life-saving medical care for everything from frostbite to gunshot wounds… Think about entire communities of former street children… young people now in their thirties and forties who are now taxpayers, with homes, jobs and families of their own.
Covenant House is more than caring for kids in across six countries.
Imagine that with me for a moment… across the Americas.
When I first started with Covenant House, my job was to reach out to some of our most forgotten kids.
In a van filled with sandwiches and juice, we would go out each night and try to convince some really good, scared homeless kids that their lives weren’t over at seventeen.
It is a great privilege to share in the strength, the commitment and the covenant of this mission.
It is a great privilege to work with our staff, our donors, and most importantly, our kids, as we strive to be a voice for those young people who too often go unheard.
Too many of our kids have heard the same message in their short, painful lives.
When a kid hears that over and over, the different resonances and timbres and pitches of those voices meld into a single voice.
So they don’t aspire, they don’t dream, and they don’t realize how precious and beautiful they are in the eyes of God.
That’s why your support of this mission is so important.
You not only provide for the immediate needs of our kids – you give us the chance to show them love.
You give us the chance to show them their dreams and hopes and lives matter.
You let us show them they are beautiful in our eyes and God’s eyes.
It’s easy to be overwhelmed by gloom that surrounds us.
But that misses the tremendous opportunity we have to transcend the darkness and be the icons of Christ’s love in this world that our kids so desperately need.
Forty-five years ago, a simple and profound mission was started, a ministry to rescue homeless kids from the street.
Covenant House is bigger than we were justice that we need to achieve in the world is greater, and the work ahead is enormous.
It is estimated that young people in the United States between the ages of 18 and 25 will experience what it is like to be homeless this year.
Many of them are trafficked for labor or sexual exploitation each year, robbed of their childhoods and forced into slavery and brutality.
We need to do more to help these kids and bring them to safety.
I’m committed to the unshakeable belief that we can be the change for kids and help them shape futures of hope and promise.
We can be the visible sign of God’s love in their lives.
In this report you will read about our efforts at Covenant House to fight human trafficking, about our efforts to open more beds in more cities, our the rights, lives and futures of our young people.
Covenant House is leading the fight on behalf of these youth to build a better world for them.
This cannot happen overnight, but I have tremendous faith in our staff, the support of our donors, the vigilance of our advocates, and the will of our kids.
We face many challenges on top of the already overwhelming ones presented to our kids in the form of crime, addiction, abuse and sexual exploitation.
More families are struggling to survive and more young people are ending up alone, on the streets, looking for our help.
Thanks to everyone who gives their time, their work, their hard-earned dollars and their love to Covenant House.
We will continue to provide safe sanctuary to kids, and always look for new and better ways to help our kids redeem the promise of their lives.
This is our mission that from the very beginning has been made possible because of the love and generosity of our donors.
On behalf of all our kids, and the thousands more alone on the streets, thank you for caring.
“You not only provide for the immediate needs of our kids – you give us the chance to show them love.

These forests have an astounding ability to store carbon—nearly twice as much as all of the world’s tropical forests combined—and are also essential to the culture and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples who have lived in them for millennia.

But pressure is growing to push new mines, roads, and forestry operations into intact areas.

To counter those pressures, WCS is providing technical support to the land use planning efforts led by the Indigenous Peoples who co-govern and steward the land and resources.

This partnership has already protected Yukon, 67,000 square kilometers of wilderness that are the spiritual heartland for the four First Nations whose traditional territories overlap the area.

Promoting Peatlands as Climate-Fighting Powerhouses The peatlands of Canada’s Northern Boreal region hold major stores of carbon in their soils, formed by accumulation and decay of waterlogged plants and mosses over thousands of years.

Since has been working in the Hudson Bay Lowlands, the second largest peatland in the world—equivalent to the size of Spain.

We are urging the Canadian government to invest in Indigenous Guardians to help monitor and protect the Lowlands; and to ensure that peatlands are no longer overlooked in climate policy decisions.

ABOVE Intact forests provide vital climate benefits as well as critical habitat for wildlife, such as this jaguar in the Maya Forest.

Canada’s boreal forests (left) and northern peatlands (below) are some of the richest carbon sinks and strongholds for wildlife on the planet.

WCS is protecting them in partnership with Canada’s government and Indigenous Peoples, for whom these ecosystems hold great cultural and spiritual significance.

As the impacts of climate change degrade ecosystems, disturb economies, and threaten human life at a greater rate than ever before, there is heightened urgency to help animals, habitats, and people adapt and build resilience to these impacts over the long term.

WCS is advancing on-the-ground adaptation projects globally in close partnership with Indigenous Peoples and governments—from ensuring that species have the space and ecosystem integrity they need to thrive, to making forests more resistant to wildfires by helping communities adapt how they earn their livelihoods.

Over the next five years, we seek to further improve forest management in the Congo Nile Divide and deliver additional nature-based benefits to nearly 1.4 million people.

For example, we will work to lower sedimentation levels and improve water quality by helping Rwanda produce cleaner, cheaper hydropower energy.

We estimate that we can help sequester more than of CO2 equivalents by 2050—keeping Rwanda’s national CO2 emissions negative throughout this time period.

Through forest restoration, continued biodiversity monitoring, and ecotourism initiatives, we can secure a resilient future for the Congo Nile Divide’s mountain gorillas and other iconic species.

The three national parks within Rwanda’s Congo Nile Divide region—Volcanoes, Gishwati Mukura, and Nyungwe—are home to dozens of threatened species, including chimpanzees, golden monkeys, owl-faced monkeys, and mountain gorillas.

But the Congo Nile Divide as a whole is extremely vulnerable to climate change, and climate change impacts—amplified by land conversion for agriculture and over-harvesting of fuelwood—have severely degraded its forests.

By building capacity among local communities to improve forest management and restoration within the Congo Nile Divide, WCS aims to create forest corridors that will strengthen climate resilience for Rwanda’s wildlife, people, and national economy.

We are helping more than transition to more climate-resilient and productive livelihood models, which will reduce their exposure to flash floods, landslides, and soil erosion, while increasing crop productivity.

To take just one example: WCS is promoting sustainable beekeeping in this region by working directly with modernize beekeeping practices.

by climate change, traditional methods of wild honey collection have sometimes caused catastrophic forest fires, further degrading the integrity of remaining forests.

By scaling this work up to include more than beekeepers, we can reduce fire risk while significantly increasing farmers’ incomes from honey production.

LEFT Despite threats from climate change, habitat loss, poaching, and disease, the world’s mountain gorilla populations have doubled over the last several decades.

North America’s boreal and Arctic regions contain some of the world’s greatest wildlife aggregations and remaining expanses of intact ecosystems.

But the climate crisis is hitting these strongholds harder and faster than anywhere else.

The Arctic has warmed about twice as fast as the rest of the planet.

In the far North, many species such as polar bears, caribou, wolverines, walruses, seals, and migratory birds are being forced to adapt to profoundly different conditions.

Humans are also adapting to this warming world, and some of those adaptations—including creating new shipping lanes where sea ice has melted—are increasing impacts on species already having difficulty surviving.

WCS is working to help Arctic species adapt in sustainable ways, and partnering with the region’s Indigenous Peoples who rely on the Arctic’s incredible wildlife and resources.

For example, WCS is mapping the location of walruses in the Arctic as they adapt to climate change.

Female walruses and their calves have had to move to land due to the loss of summer sea ice, and by doing so are closer to coastal villages and shipping lanes.

With this WCS-supported monitoring data, real-time advisories can go out to mariners and airplane pilots to avoid areas where these iconic, at-risk animals are present across the Alaskan coastline.

Half a billion people rely on coral reefs for food security and cultural traditions.

Yet as climate change causes ocean waters globally to heat up and become more acidic, and sea levels to rise, the vast majority of coral reef ecosystems are at risk.

WCS is leading efforts to scale up global monitoring for sensitive corals—and targeting conservation efforts to those reefs with the best chance of surviving climate change.

There is reason to be hopeful: in late discovered an incredible climate refuge within a rare ocean cool spot along East Africa’s KenyaTanzania coast after analyzing data we and our partners collected over three decades.

Despite its modest size, we found that this cool spot is protecting large populations of corals from thermal stress, bleaching, and mortality, and therefore is providing a safe haven for vulnerable marine species.

If well-managed, this region can serve as a sanctuary for threatened biodiversity while providing high yields of foods central to the region’s unique cultural heritage.

Building on East African research and a similar study in Asia’s Coral Triangle, WCS scientists are making the case for coral reef protection globally, and showing that vulnerable species can survive climate change.

We will work to identify similarly resilient environments and reefs across the world’s oceans, and encourage our government and community partners to focus conservation efforts on these safe havens.

Across North America, we seek to leverage our cutting-edge science, longstanding commitments to the places we work, and enduring partnerships with governments as well as First Nations and Indigenous communities to strengthen local stewardship and policy, and ensure these extraordinary ecosystems adapt and survive.

To protect Arctic wildlife, we will advance monitoring techniques and lay the groundwork for new protected areas and other conserved areas that benefit both wildlife and people.

We will also work with partners across the globe to monitor and protect the millions of birds that come to the Arctic to breed each summer, whose migratory habitats are under threat due to development and climate change.

WCS research on corals in the Western Indian Ocean has helped prove the existence of climate refuges that are poised to survive even as water temperatures rise.

Global Programs Management and General $153,354,765 Zoos and Aquarium (incl.

We are deeply grateful to our generous private and public funders for their strong support and partnership, which enables us to deliver on WCS’s vital mission.

This was especially true during the pandemic, when WCS, along with so many organizations and individuals, faced unprecedented hardships.

WCS’s parks were closed for months during the pandemic, shrinking a critical part of our attendance-based revenue.

Despite this, we ensured the health and well-being of the animals in our care, as well as the safety of our staff.

Our longstanding public-private partnership with New York City and New York State spans 125 years.

WCS’s track record of sustained conservation results also makes us a trusted partner of governments around the world.

Without private philanthropy, WCS would not be able to accept these funds.

Each dollar we receive from private donors allows us to leverage and put to work at least five dollars of additional funding toward the programs and operations described in this report.

We hope you feel proud of what we have accomplished together.

PLANNED GIVING You can build a conservation legacy by designating WCS as a beneficiary in your will or trust.

You can also name WCS as a beneficiary of your individual retirement account, life insurance policy, donoradvised fund, or brokerage account.

PRESIDENT’S CIRCLE WCS is pleased to recognize those who contribute annual gifts of $of the President’s Circle.

At this level of giving, you receive all the benefits of Conservation Patrons, plus exclusive invitations and insider access to WCS leadership and Program experts.

WCS’s Conservation Patrons are saving wildlife and wild places by giving at the $1,500 to $24,999 level.

Patrons receive special conservation impact updates, invitations to insider events, recognition in the WCS Impact Report, and the option to receive zoo benefits with access to our five NYC wildlife parks.

NAMING OPPORTUNITIES There are exhibits, galleries, and benches available for naming within well-loved spaces at our five wildlife parks.

WCS Corporate Partners provide vital operating support of our conservation efforts through philanthropic giving, corporate membership, sponsorship, and cause marketing.

Partnerships with WCS help corporations gain brand exposure, consumer loyalty, and community engagement, while aligning with an important cause that resonates with their consumers, employees, and investors.

A copy of this annual report may be obtained by writing to the Chair of the Board, Wildlife Conservation Society, New York 10460.

In addition, a copy of the WCS’s annual filing with the Charities Bureau of the Office of the New York State Attorney General may be obtained by writing to the Charities Bureau, New York State Attorney General’s Office, 3rd Floor, 120 Broadway, New York, New York 10271.

The report can also be found online at wcs.org.

Annual Report Picture thousands and thousands of bag lunches, packed with love and given to starving kids on the streets… Imagine health clinics filled with street kids… being given life-saving medical care for everything from frostbite to gunshot wounds… Think about entire communities of former street children… young people now in their thirties and forties who are now taxpayers, with homes, jobs and families of their own.

Covenant House is more than caring for kids in across six countries.

Imagine that with me for a moment… across the Americas.

When I first started with Covenant House, my job was to reach out to some of our most forgotten kids.

In a van filled with sandwiches and juice, we would go out each night and try to convince some really good, scared homeless kids that their lives weren’t over at seventeen.

It is a great privilege to share in the strength, the commitment and the covenant of this mission.

It is a great privilege to work with our staff, our donors, and most importantly, our kids, as we strive to be a voice for those young people who too often go unheard.

Too many of our kids have heard the same message in their short, painful lives.

When a kid hears that over and over, the different resonances and timbres and pitches of those voices meld into a single voice.

So they don’t aspire, they don’t dream, and they don’t realize how precious and beautiful they are in the eyes of God.

That’s why your support of this mission is so important.

You not only provide for the immediate needs of our kids – you give us the chance to show them love.

You give us the chance to show them their dreams and hopes and lives matter.

You let us show them they are beautiful in our eyes and God’s eyes.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by gloom that surrounds us.

But that misses the tremendous opportunity we have to transcend the darkness and be the icons of Christ’s love in this world that our kids so desperately need.

Forty-five years ago, a simple and profound mission was started, a ministry to rescue homeless kids from the street.

Covenant House is bigger than we were justice that we need to achieve in the world is greater, and the work ahead is enormous.

It is estimated that young people in the United States between the ages of 18 and 25 will experience what it is like to be homeless this year.

Many of them are trafficked for labor or sexual exploitation each year, robbed of their childhoods and forced into slavery and brutality.

We need to do more to help these kids and bring them to safety.

I’m committed to the unshakeable belief that we can be the change for kids and help them shape futures of hope and promise.

We can be the visible sign of God’s love in their lives.

In this report you will read about our efforts at Covenant House to fight human trafficking, about our efforts to open more beds in more cities, our the rights, lives and futures of our young people.

Covenant House is leading the fight on behalf of these youth to build a better world for them.

This cannot happen overnight, but I have tremendous faith in our staff, the support of our donors, the vigilance of our advocates, and the will of our kids.

We face many challenges on top of the already overwhelming ones presented to our kids in the form of crime, addiction, abuse and sexual exploitation.

More families are struggling to survive and more young people are ending up alone, on the streets, looking for our help.

Thanks to everyone who gives their time, their work, their hard-earned dollars and their love to Covenant House.

We will continue to provide safe sanctuary to kids, and always look for new and better ways to help our kids redeem the promise of their lives.

This is our mission that from the very beginning has been made possible because of the love and generosity of our donors.

On behalf of all our kids, and the thousands more alone on the streets, thank you for caring.

“You not only provide for the immediate needs of our kids – you give us the chance to show them love.