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News

(March 18, 2020) With a focus on the links between emerging diseases and wildlife trade and the actions that need to be taken to protect human health and biodiversity, our Spring newsletter also highlights the our work with Albatross in Chile and sharks in New York waters, the spillover of a livestock virus that has devastated wild ungulates in Mongolia, the recently established Berlin Principles on One Health and over 100 years of veterinary excellence at the WCS. 

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(March 17, 2020) Christian Walzer, executive director of global health at the Wildlife Conservation Society, talks with Scientific American about how the wildlife trade, especially for human consumption, can lead to disease outbreaks. Listen here

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(March 17, 2020) “It’s just a numbers game,” WCS's Dr. Christian Walzer told Mongabay of markets that trade in wildlife. “If you just put enough species together and allow them to share viruses and then put a lot of people in contact with the animals and their parts, then you just invariably will have a virus that can enter a human cell and replicate and, in rarer occasions, transmit from human to human.”

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(March 17, 2020) "Facing such a vast, unknown and unpredictable universe of zoonotic agents," write WCS's Amanda Fine and Aili Kang on Medium, "we firmly believe that limiting the chances of contact between human and wild animals is the most effective way to reduce the risk of emergence of new zoonotic diseases."READ MOREPhoto By: Elizabeth L. Bennett/ WCS

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(March 13, 2020) The Prime Minister of Viet Nam has directed the Government to promptly draft a directive to prohibit wildlife trade and consumption. The following statement has been issued by the Wildlife Conservation Society concerning these important steps being taken to prevent future outbreaks of zoonotic pathogens like COVID-19:  Said Ms. Hoang Bich Thuy, Country Director of WCS Vietnam:  “We commend Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc for his leadership in taking this important first step. We ...

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