(April 07, 2022) April 7th is WHO’s World Health Day. The WHO estimates that more than 13 million deaths a year are due to avoidable environmental causes and, for the first time, is using World Health Day to focus global attention on urgent actions needed to support human and planetary health.    From Dr. Chris Walzer, Wildlife Conservation Society’s Executive Director of Health:  “It is increasingly clear that planetary mismanagement has led to an escalation...

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(March 14, 2022) A new study in the journal Frontiers in Public Health, led by scientists from WCS, confirms that pangolins confiscated from the illegal wildlife trade in Viet Nam host SARS-CoV-2 related coronaviruses. The findings are further evidence that the transnational nature of the wildlife trade can facilitate coronavirus and other viral transmission and amplification along the trade chain. "Eliminating the trade in pangolins and other wild mammals and birds will eliminate this hig...

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(February 10, 2022) The virus doesn't appear to make them very sick. Spread in new hosts could lead to new variants that cause trouble for people and wildlife later on, though. "We need wildlife surveillance,” says WCS's Sarah Olson. Read VOX story: "There’s a Covid-19 epidemic in deer. It could come back to haunt us." Photo Tim Lewthwaite

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(December 03, 2021) In a consensus decision aimed at protecting the world from future infectious diseases crises, a special session of the World Health Assembly agreed to launch a global process to draft and negotiate a convention, agreement or other international instrument under the Constitution of the World Health Organization to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. The following statement is from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Vice President for International Policy...

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(November 23, 2021) The discovery by a team of scientists, including from WCS, along with the recent detection of the closest ancestors of SARS-CoV-2 known to date in cave-dwelling bats in Laos, indicates that SARS-CoV-2-related viruses that cause COVID-19 have a much wider geographic distribution than previously reported. It also further supports the hypothesis that the pandemic originated via spillover of a bat-borne virus. Said Dr. Lucy Keatts of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) Health Program ...

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