Datasets:

ESGBERT

/

environment_data

like 2

Follow

ESGBERT 25

The work of Educators Outdoors was essential in as we saw disproportionate impacts of the pandemic on communities of color in our region.

In partnership with trained youth development professionals from a diverse set of organizations, AMC supported transformative outdoor experiences in both city parks and wilderness areas to engage young people with nature and each other.

Each location houses a store, with snacks, gifts, and last-minute gear, plus water, restrooms, and picnic tables.

$funding to Maine State Parks for capital projects The ‘Protect the View’ campaign in greater Philadelphia The rise in outdoor recreation paired with the ongoing crisis of climate change highlights the importance of AMC’s conservation advocacy work across the region.

Pleasant River Headwaters Forest Over the past four years, AMC has been working to raise $Pleasant River Headwaters Forest in Maine.

This acquisition provides critical watershed protection for the Pleasant River, enlarges our responsibly-managed forest operations, and will bring AMC’s total holding of protected land in Maine to more than 100,000 acres.

NECEC Suspended The New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) power transmission corridor, which AMC has long opposed on the basis of forest fragmentation, is on the ropes following several developments in 2021.

Following the referendum, the Department of Environmental Protection suspended the permit for the project, and Hydro Quebec suspended construction on the Canadian side of the border pending the outcome of several lawsuits.

Consistent with our conservation mission, protecting dark skies enhances human and ecological health.

Protect As a leader in the national Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) Coalition, AMC has advocated for full funding of the LWCF for decades and recently joined the push for committing to the goal of protecting percent of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030.

With your support, AMC is advocating for this equitable and full funding of LWCF projects to the communities connected to those conservation efforts.

They limit impact, redirect water, and protect fragile ecosystems.

Imp Shelter, Carter Moriah Trail, White Mountain National Forest, NH: The entire shelter was disassembled to replace the rotting floor and sills, plus a new roof was installed.

A H E A D AMC’s research scientists provide essential data to help guide regional leaders in making sound environmental decisions.

Understanding how climate change is affecting our region keeps AMC’s team of scientists busy as they study the air, waters, forests, and fields throughout the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.

Warming Winters on Mount Washington AMC’s most recent study of the Pinkham Notch and Mount Washington area indicates that warming winter temperatures lead to less snow—since AMC began recording snowpack in the depth declined by 50 percent, and total snowfall declined 25 percent.

Over the longer horizon, projections through climate throughout this century, but reducing greenhouse gas emissions can help to slow the rate and amount of warming and snow loss.

Dragonfly Mercury Project The Merrimack River and its tributaries have a legacy of pollution dating back to early industrialization in Lowell and Lawrence, MA.

Community observations help us understand how climate change impacts mountain plants and their reproductive phenology.

AMC has long been conscious of and taken responsibility for the impacts created by our use and enjoyment of the outdoors.

To that end, AMC has committed to achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2050.

To meet these ambitious climate targets, AMC is developing a Net Zero Strategic Plan—a roadmap that will set forth our strategic vision for the production, consumption, and conservation of energy at AMC facilities and from our operations.

AMC’s Ken Kimball Research Fellow, Arcadia Lee, has worked to establish organizational Energy and Climate Policies, setting the path for net zero no later than 2010 levels by 2030.

In the United States, giant grocery stores, which purchase the majority of chicken raised for meat, started to recognize that these sensitive and intelligent beings deserve better treatment—a tipping point in our campaign to impact the most widely abused land animal on earth.

Vicky Bond, formerly our UK Managing Director, will be leading THL as we continue to scale our programs and work to dismantle factory farming with focus and energy.

When companies fall behind, THL uses highly public pressure campaigns to hold companies accountable for profiting off animal abuse.

Crammed by the thousands into windowless sheds, they suffer chemical burns from lying in their own waste.

the world have now agreed, and each one of their pledges impacts millions of chickens.

In tirelessly to bring the animal welfare movement into the mainstream and engage new allies in our mission.

Though many in the animal protection movement have long known of the scale of suffering that fishes and other aquatic animals experience, the challenge has been identifying evidence based interventions that are powerful enough to change the industry.

Our goal is to change this: we imagine a world where the considerable grassroots power of the animal movement is aligned around an achievable list of policy aspirations; and where these incremental legislative changes are won and then scaled over the years.

In the successful model of the OWA to build political and legislative power for farmed animal protection advocates in the US.

Our new Public Policy program will focus on organizing and empowering a national alliance of local and state-level animal advocacy groups and uniting them around legislative agendas that include animals raised for food.

A key focus of this project will be to provide resources—grants, training, legislative templates, and coordination—to local animal advocacy groups that are involved in electoral politics or implementing legislative strategies for animals.

In to have created a nationally-recognized, powerful alliance of state and local animal protection groups that wield strong legislative power on behalf of animals raised for food.

That’s why we work to share resources, train animal advocates, and build a welcoming, collaborative community of Changemakers around the world.

will recommend and propose standards to the Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Agriculture once the development is completed.

This led me to join the animal advocacy movement, first as a scientific researcher, working to build our understanding of how animals experience suffering and the interventions that can best help them, and then as an advocate and leader of groups working with global food companies.

Thanks to you, THL has never been stronger—from our board and staff to our programs and finances— laying the foundation for this opportunity to inject new energy and strategic ideation into our mission.

Our team of analysts and animal welfare scientists helps ensure that our efforts make the greatest impact—and that your dollars do the most good for animals.

OPPORTUNITY because of their strong programs aimed at improving the welfare standards of farmed animals and strengthening the animal advocacy movement across multiple countries.

I trust the organization’s evidence based and result-oriented approaches are the best avenues to transform animal welfare.

You fuel our work with your donations, your time, your ideas, and your voices.

We Stand for Wildlife® http://www.wcs.org MISSION WCS saves wildlife and wild places worldwide through science, conservation action, education, and inspiring people to value nature.

VISION WCS envisions a world where wildlife thrives in healthy lands and seas, valued by societies that embrace and benefit from the diversity and integrity of life on Earth.

guide our conservation action, and inform policy decisions to scale up our impact.

Mending our broken relationship with nature is the defining challenge of our lifetime.

The collapse of biodiversity, the climate crisis, and the pandemic have made that abundantly clear.

We must find a new path that balances human needs with protecting and restoring nature—a path that actually harnesses nature’s immense power.

This is a moment when Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) can make a vital contribution.

We have been at the vanguard of conservation since mission to save the earth’s wildlife and wild places through a unique mix of zoo- and field-based work.

wildlife parks ■ Reimagine zoo-based learning during the pandemic ■ Devise promising new conservation strategies for lions, jaguars, elephants, whales, and sharks ■ Advance efforts to ban the commercial trade in wildlife for human consumption ■ Unlock the power of intact forests ■ Protect Nature’s Strongholds around the globe We also hope that the passion and dedication of our very diverse staff and partners around the world shine through when you read their profiles, which this year include a New York Aquarium marine mammal and bird keeper, an Indigenous ecotourism guide in Bolivia, a Robertson Big Cat Conservation Fellow from China, a Thai anti-poaching leader, and a Bronx Zoo admissions manager.

power of intact forests We face three interconnected crises: extinction; climate change is accelerating; and the pandemic, which is linked to the dangerous commercial trade in wildlife for human consumption, has claimed millions of lives.

From the smallest birds, bats, and insects that pollinate crops to the largest predators—including the big cats and sharks that keep food chains strong and balanced—biodiversity plays a vital role in the web of life that sustains us.

We are protecting priority species that are ecologically vital and culturally valued: apes, big cats, bison, crocodilians, elephants, whales and coastal dolphins, sharks and rays, and tortoises and freshwater turtles.

In this section, you can read highlights of our progress toward protecting and recovering wildlife around the world, and learn about promising new conservation strategies for lions, jaguars, elephants, marine mammals, sharks, and more.

They also have far-reaching and beneficial impacts on their habitats.

Science has shown that elephants play a key role in the growth and health of forests by dispersing seeds, minerals, and nutrients over long distances, and by opening pathways and mineral-rich clearings.

Elephants’ browsing patterns also improve trees’ ability to store carbon, helping to curb climate change.

WCS works in more elephant landscapes than any other conservation organization—and we have an evidencebased, proven strategy to not only stop their decline, but enable them to recover.

Using science to combat elephant poaching and ivory trade: Historically, African forest elephants and African savanna elephants have been grouped together and scientifically classified as just Vulnerable.

Increasing elephant populations: WCS’s quarter century of conservation action in the Republic of Congo’s Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park has made it one of the rare places in Africa where forest elephant populations have remained stable over the last 20 years.

We have accomplished this by helping Niassa’s law enforcement officials stay a step ahead of poachers and traffickers, and through community-led conservation—working with the more than Reserve to strengthen livelihoods and develop improved solutions to human-wildlife conflict.

WCS signed a new agreement with the Government of Mozambique in 2020 and is now drafting a 10-year conservation management plan for Niassa.

Leading Global Recovery of Big Cats Tigers roaming through the snowy Russian Far East and the lush forests of Asia.

But the presence of big cats in the wild is also an important sign of a healthy ecosystem.

WCS has been at the forefront of big cat conservation for more than 50 years.

Our global big cat conservation efforts are focused on stopping top threats and stabilizing or growing big cat populations at all WCS sites.

Safeguarding tiger strongholds: To date, WCS has supported governments to create protected areas of critical tiger habitat, including massive strongholds in the Russian Far East, in the mountains of India’s Western Ghats, and in Thailand’s tropical forests.

We protect these gains through rigorous patrolling, bolstering law enforcement, and partnering with communities to foster conservation.

Restoring tigers by increasing their food sources: WCS recently led research on how to fully restore a key tiger landscape by rewildling it with large prey animals.

Scientists looked at three large prey species in Thailand’s Western Forest Complex, a stronghold where tigers have made a comeback but have not fully recovered because of insufficient prey in some areas.

This first-of-its-kind study shows that if people living near tiger habitats modify activities even to a small degree, tiger prey can bounce back.

Here, the dotted green lines show the potential trajectory of lions, tigers, and jaguars with WCS’s immediate and long-term conservation action.

BALANCING POPULATIONS Sharks are predators at the top of the marine food chain—they keep ecosystems stable by maintaining the natural balance of species.

BOLSTERING LOCAL ECONOMIES Sustainable shark and ray tourism can help local communities and funnel funds back into conservation.

CYCLING NUTRIENTS Sharks often eat and eliminate in different places, transferring nutrients across the ecosystem.

Many of those smaller species graze algae, which helps keep coral clean and healthy, thereby supporting the entire ecosystem.

Connecting People to Nature Saving Sharks in Though often feared, sharks maintain healthy ecosystems and are among the world’s most threatened species groups: open-ocean sharks have declined over 70 percent in the last 50 years.

But from the age of four, I loved observing any animal I could find, which usually meant beetles.

As I made my way through forestry school and then a master’s degree in wildlife ecology, I kept hearing about WCS, which has an iconic reputation in China.

For six years, I looked for snow leopards in the Chang Tang region of the Tibetan Plateau, where the average elevation is 5,000 meters.

Because snow leopards are so elusive, we set up across 5,000+ square kilometers—creating the highest altitude camera trap network in the world .

XIAOXING: China has snow leopard habitat, and half of that is on the Tibetan Plateau.

Though WCS helped protect the Chang Tang through the creation of one of the world’s largest reserves, the snow leopard’s habitat extends into heavily populated areas.

[marks] of a snow leopard, and the longer, clawed track of a wolf.

He showed us where to find blue sheep, snow leopards’ favorite prey, and the best locations for our cameras.

I also, just once, got to see a wild snow leopard.

I jumped like a rocket, ran up the mountain, and found super-fresh scat and tracks in the snow.

With a WCS scholarship, I am writing my PhD at the University of Florida on human-snow leopard coexistence.

Rapidly Changing Arctic With climate change and melting sea ice, the Arctic is changing rapidly and new areas are opening up Saving Whales with Smart Science To see a whale for the first time is astonishing: an impossibly large, air-breathing mammal is visible for a moment, then disappears into the ocean depths.

With a moratorium on commercial whaling and increased conservation efforts, some whale populations are slowly recovering.

However, a range of new threats including ocean noise, ship strikes, and entanglement in fishing gear mean that we must remain vigilant.

This science empowers us and our Alaska Native partners to promote more targeted protections for iconic Arctic marine mammals and provides a way to monitor changes in the ocean’s soundscape.

Building on work in the New York seascape and the Arctic, WCS is launching a new effort to quiet ocean noise in the Western Indian Ocean.

In New York, WCS science is informing best practices for marine wildlife in the context of planned offshore wind projects; we are committed to minimizing potential impacts on marine mammals—from siting, to construction, to operation.

The global public health and economic crises unleashed by this zoonotic-origin pandemic have shone a harsh spotlight on the far-reaching dangers of the increasing contact between people and wildlife through deforestation, and the harmful commercial trade in wildlife for human consumption.

The One Health approach that WCS has pioneered recognizes the strong links between human, animal, and environmental health.

This section highlights WCS’s progress in banning the commercial trade in wildlife for human consumption, our efforts to help local communities detect and reduce transmission of deadly diseases such as Ebola, and our long track record of leadership in wildlife health.

Stressful and unsanitary conditions increase the chances of “spillover events” where pathogens move between animal hosts, then jump to humans.