Gars and Sturgeon at the New York Aquarium in 1916 photographed by Elwin Sanborn, who was the staff photographer for WCS at the time.

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This week in 1999, the Congo Gorilla Forest opened at the Bronx Zoo. This illustration by Jack Unruh was on the invitation for the Opening Day ceremony. Since it opened, 7 million visitors have visited the exhibit, which allows zoo guests to donate their admission fees to WCS field conservation efforts in Central Africa. The exhibit has raised more than $10.6 million, which has gone directly to fund the conservation of Central Africa’s Congo Basin rainforest and wildlife. A happy 20 Year Anniversary to the exhibit! 

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In celebration of World Giraffe Day, here are an adult and a baby giraffe at the Bronx Zoo in 1982.

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Happy Father’s Day! Here are a lion and his cub hanging out at the African Plains exhibit at the Bronx Zoo in 1968.

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For Endangered Species Day, we’re revisiting the story from 1905 when Bronx Zoo director William Hornaday formed the American Bison Society (ABS) to save the species from extinction. The Wildlife Conservation Society continues the fight to save wildlife and wild places.

Learn more about the work of the ABS in this Wild View post. For some information about bison at the Bronx Zoo today, look to this week’s Wild View post.

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Happy Mothers’ Day! Here is a South American Tapir with her young at the Bronx Zoo in 1941.

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To celebrate today’s 124th anniversary of WCS (founded as the New York Zoological Society), we held a blackout poetry contest using the first page of the Society’s First Annual Report during our staff Library & Archives Open House last week. Here are some selections of the poetry our creative staff came up with! 

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For National Library Week, we’re highlighting books in our library written and edited by WCS authors, both historical and present: William Bridges, William Hornaday, George Schaller, William Beebe, Amy Vedder and Bill Weber, Liz Bennett and John Robinson, and Ullas Karanth.

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Did you know that alligators sometimes bellow together to create their own little chorus? In a 1919 article from a WCS published magazine, there is a story about the Bronx Zoo alligators singing along to the whistles of ships returning to New York from World War I. Here we have the article as well as a photo of the largest alligator at the Zoo at the time. For more, read the blog post at Wild View.

It’s International Women’s Day! We’re joining the Biodiversity Heritage Library in celebrating women in natural history by featuring the work of artist Else Bostelmann.

From 1929 to 1934, Bostelmann served as a member of WCS’s Department of Tropical Research staff.  Using her artist’s skills, she brought to life the incredible marine creatures the DTR explored in the deep seas around Bermuda.  Some of her work was featured in National Geographic, making visible for the first time these never-before-seen species.

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