Wildlife Conservation Society

Some highlights from Saturday at WCS's #REELWILDNY Film Festival in NYC. 🦬 We celebrated the world premiere of Wild Hope: Thunder and Fire by HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, which tells the story of the importance of bison to the Osage Nation and how WCS's Bronx Zoo helped revitalize their herd. 🦈 “Sharks aren’t the way they’ve been portrayed throughout history,” Hans Walters of WCS’s New York Aquarium told families as part of our Family Day program with Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild. Walters and Wild Kingdom's Peter Gros spoke to the kids about the importance of protecting sharks around the world. 🗻 "What we eat and wear can support conservation and local people," said WCS's Eliot Logan-Hines. His short film, Coexistence, produced with Brian Nunes, debuted, driving the message that conservation is all about humans and wildlife. The short film features WCS teams assisting local communities in Bolivia and Argentina. 🦏 “Only a rhino needs rhino horn,” said Cindy Lee, director of the Oscar-nominated short film The Last Ranger. Rangers are on the frontlines of conservation and the film celebrates their dedication.

In February 1925, the WCS-led Arcturus Oceanographic Expedition set sail from New York City. A rarity for the time, women were an integral part of the team, including Ruth Rose (pictured), who was described as being in “complete charge of the intricate system of cataloguing and dissections, the KOH [potassium hydroxide] transparent processes, all the livestock, and the press reports.” In 1926, Rose married Ernest Schoedsack, the Arcturus Expedition’s assistant in cinematography. They went on to collaborate on one of the best-known Hollywood productions of all time, King Kong (1933), with Rose as screenwriter and Schoedsack as co-director. Rose continued to write Hollywood films through 1949. In honor of #WomensHistoryMonth, Madeleine Thompson, Executive Director of the WCS Library and Archives, and WCS's Alyssa Daughdrill write about the scientific legacy of the women of the Arcturus. https://lnkd.in/d-eirmqa

“In this film, you can see the hard work of the scientist,” said The New Yorker’s Paul Moakley of Haulout at tonight’s screening at #REELWILDNY in New York. Haulout tells the story of Maxim Chakilev, a Russian scientist, studying walruses on a remote coast of the Russian Arctic amidst warming seas. At the festival, we’re sharing powerful films like this that show the urgency of protecting the planet and inspiring stories of people making it happen. Learn more: reelwild.org

With REEL WILD Film Festival, writes WCS’s John Calvelli for the New York Daily News, we hope to achieve a new way for conservation organizations like ours to help educate the public and at the same time inspire them to become further engaged as changemakers. https://lnkd.in/eAjs2Jvj #ReelWildNY

We kicked off REEL WILD Film Festival last night, which will engage audiences in the beauty and urgency of protecting our planet and connect them with filmmakers, scientists, and explorers. https://lnkd.in/e_j9wCWt #ReelWildNY

Endangered giant otters are one of the Amazon’s top aquatic predators. “No one who has ever been fortunate enough to encounter a group of giant otters in the wild will ever forget the experience,” says WCS's Robert Wallace. Scientists, including Wallace and our team in Bolivia, have identified 22 key areas to conserving them, writes Mongabay. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eJeKAPnK

LISTEN: On this week’s episode of #WCSWildAudio, hear from the hosts of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild, Peter Gros and Rae Wynn-Grant, PhD, on their upcoming appearance at Family Day at REEL WILD Film Festival this Saturday. 🔊 https://spoti.fi/41VKbAJ #reelwildny 🎟️ https://lnkd.in/eDC8SSWE

Overfishing is eroding the sustainability of tropical coral reef fisheries in East Africa, with small-scale fishers losing out on fisheries productivity as entire species disappear from their catch. A new study led by scientists from WCS and the University of Rhode Island says that protecting and managing the capture of the whole community of fish in a given fishery is a much better approach than trying to sustainably manage individual target species in very diverse reef fisheries. “This finding argues for maintaining all or most species, and not to estimate sustainability from a few resilient target species,” says WCS's Tim McClanahan. Read more: https://lnkd.in/ePFi6T7s

Come meet the co-hosts of Mutual of Omaha’s Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom! This Saturday at REEL WILD Film Festival. AMC Lincoln Square 13. Get tickets at reelwild.org.

“More than 30 years into my zoological career, I still smile when I see an animal eating and I’m even more grateful that I can continue to enrich their lives every day.” Lisa Eidlin (McCarthy), Assistant Director of the Zoological Health Program at WCS, writes about her career path. https://lnkd.in/eH6ivs5U #WomensHistoryMonth