Wildlife Conservation Society history

In 1897 it commissioned its first field study, on the effects of hunting on the Alaskan fur seal population.

Opened on November 8, 1899, the zoo offered a rather difference experience to visitors.

In 1901, a small herd of American Bison were gathered in a 20-acre meadow just off what is now the Pelham Parkway roadway.

The findings from the Society's first field study, conducted by Andrew J. Stone, led to the Alaskan Game Act of 1902.

Starting in 1905, Hornaday led a national campaign to reintroduce the almost extinct bison to government sponsored refuges.

Beginning in 1906, Hornaday featured Ota Benga, a member of the Mbuti from the Congo, in a zoo exhibit.

The Bronx Zoo sent 15 bison to Wichita Reserve in 1907 and additional bison in later years.

Eminent biologist William Beebe embarked upon a massive survey of Asian pheasants in 1909, covering 50,000 miles during his studies.

In 1913, the Society published Hornaday's Our Vanishing Wildlife, a book that would profoundly influence public policy in the United States, helping establish legislation to spare migratory birds from hunting.

Beebe's fieldwork also resulted in the creation of WCS's Department of Tropical Research, which he began directing in 1916, leading ecological expeditions across tropical regions.

Moreover, the Society helped form the Save-the-Redwoods League in 1918 to protect that species in California.

Aiming to inspire an appreciation of ecological diversity through observation of wildlife in captivity, the Society founded the first formal zoo education program in 1929.

Beebe’s research in an undersea vessel called the bathysphere took him half a mile under the ocean floor off Bermuda in 1934 to record for the first time human observations of the bottom of the deep sea.

Fairfield Osborn and Laurance S. Rockefeller, named Society president and board chairman, respectively, in 1940, would oversee a long period of growth.

Guests were allowed to bring their own cameras into the Bronx Zoo, while animals were grouped by continents and ecosystems rather than genetic orders and families, beginning with the African Plains exhibit in 1941.

In 1957, the Society celebrated the opening of a new aquarium on Coney Island.

In 1964, a newly renovated Aquatic Bird House reopened to the public at the Bronx Zoo, 65 years after its original debut.

Other new zoo exhibits and facilities followed, notably the World of Birds in 1972.

In 1980 the City of New York turned to the Society for help in renovating three aging municipal zoos.

…Society (formerly, until 1993, the New York Zoological Society), is financed by the society and the city.

More than four million people visited the Society's zoos in 1997, half of them school children.

The remainder of WCS's 1998 revenues of $78 million was generated through contributions, investment income, grants, and subscriptions to the Society's publication Wildlife Conservation.

In 2001, in collaboration with the Madagascar Ministry of Environment and Forests, the WCS launched a program to create the 372,470 hectare Makira Forest Protected Area.

…was a trustee of the Wildlife Conservation Society, and in 2013 she joined the board of directors of the Audubon Society.

In 2017, WCS partnered with carbon-reduction platform Cool Effect to allow users to fund ongoing carbon-reduction projects directly supporting the Makira Natural Park.