Soon after becoming president and chief executive of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Adam Falk visited the giraffe keeper at the Bronx Zoo. What struck Falk was the source of the keeper’s commitment. If a giraffe needed help in the middle of the night, he said, the keeper would come in because of his bond with the animal. Falk recognized something familiar. Before joining WCS, he had been a theoretical physicist, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, president of Williams College, and president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Academics often pursue highly specialized work that matters deeply to them. A university leader has to support those individual efforts while helping the institution work toward shared goals. Falk found much the same challenge at WCS: leading people whose motivation is rooted in the work itself. Adam Falk with Joe Nappi, a Senior Keeper in the Mammal Department, and a Giraffe at the Bronx Zoo. Photo courtesy of WCS. He took over WCS in July 2025 without professional experience in zoology or conservation. That was unusual for the head of an institution founded in 1895, which now operates four zoos and an aquarium in New York alongside conservation programs in more than 50 countries. His first year gave him an outsider’s view of a field with its own history and assumptions. One of his early observations was that conservation work involves people as much as animals. Public campaigns often focus on wildlife, especially large and familiar species. Field programs depend on relationships…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. For more than three decades, Willie Tucker has helped care for Sierra Leone’s western chimpanzees and watched the pressures on them change, reports contributor Patricia Sia Ngevao for Mongabay. Tucker, widely known as “Pa Willie,” helped establish Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in 1995. Since then, the sanctuary has rescued and cared for hundreds of chimpanzees, many confiscated from the illegal pet trade. It now houses more than 120 critically endangered western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus), indicating that trafficking remains a serious problem. Tacugama’s work also shows why wildlife protection cannot be separated from local livelihoods. The sanctuary supports nearby communities through livestock, seed, and other livelihood programs intended to reduce dependence on hunting and forest resources. Families with more dependable sources of food and income may have less need to exploit wildlife habitat. Such programs can also give communities a direct stake in conservation and make restrictions on forest use more workable. Public recognition has helped as well. In 2019, Sierra Leone designated the western chimpanzee as its national animal. Tucker says the decision increased awareness of the species and encouraged greater respect for it. National symbols do not protect habitat by themselves, but they can support education, enforcement, and political attention. Tacugama’s experience offers several practical lessons for conservation organizations. Rescue centers can do more than rehabilitate individual animals. They can train local staff, document wildlife crime, assist law enforcement, educate visitors, and…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. The best-known wildlife recoveries in the U.S. are often associated with the West. Yet some important gains have occurred east of the Mississippi, among cities, roads, farms, and landscapes altered over several centuries. Andrew Moore’s new book, Beasts of the East: The Fall and Rise of America’s Eastern Wilderness, examines the decline and partial return of animals that once occupied the region in abundance. Before European settlement and large-scale land conversion, eastern habitats supported bison, elk, moose, woodland caribou, cranes, black bears, passenger pigeons, and Carolina parakeets. Many disappeared as forests were cleared, wetlands drained, and wildlife hunted. Some losses were permanent. Other species have returned through reintroductions, habitat restoration, hunting restrictions, and long-term management, reports Mongabay’s Erik Hoffner. The state of Kentucky now has roughly 10,000 elk (Cervus canadensis) across a 16-county restoration zone, the largest herd east of the Mississippi. At Nachusa Grasslands in the state of Illinois, conservationists have restored tallgrass prairie on former farmland and reintroduced bison (Bison bison). Forest regrowth across parts of New England has helped moose, bears, fishers, and otters expand their ranges. These recoveries have also brought some problems. An animal may find enough food and cover while still struggling to coexist with people. Elk damage crops, browse vegetation, and get hit by vehicles. Pumas (Puma concolor) could survive in much of the East, where forests and deer are plentiful, although proposals to restore them…This article was originally published on Mongabay

For people trying to protect the Amazon, one problem has persisted for decades. A hectare of intact forest stores carbon, regulates water, supports wildlife, and provides food and materials for the people who live there. Much of that value does not appear in an economic ledger. Cattle, timber, soy, and gold do. For a farmer, a company, or a local government, clearing forest can therefore produce income more readily than keeping it standing. The Amazon bioeconomy grew from efforts to change that calculation. It includes forest products, agroforestry, biotechnology, carbon markets, and other businesses that depend on maintaining living forests. The aim is to make such activities commercially viable at a scale that matters. Mariano Cenamo spent most of his career working on that problem. He was 23 when he moved from São Paulo to Manaus in 2003. Trained as a forestry engineer at the University of São Paulo, he had first come to the Amazon for an internship. He stayed at the encouragement of Virgílio Viana, a former professor who was then Amazonas state’s environment secretary. Cenamo was struck by the gap between conservation work and the economic realities of people living in the forest. Environmental groups were doing important work, he later recalled, but local livelihoods often sat outside the conservation discussion. In 2004 he helped establish what became Idesam, the Institute for the Conservation and Sustainable Development of the Amazon. At first there was barely an institution. Cenamo later described himself as an “ING”, an indivíduo não…This article was originally published on Mongabay