Talk:Wildlife Conservation Society

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2022 and 28 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lovebird.butterfly.turtle, CBM33 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Erobertson222, Goondog101, AA07232021, UrbanPlanningLover.

Political ties?

Perhaps oddly, this group has been tapped by the Bush administration to run wildlife reserves in Afghanistan.

Does anyone have any idea why this group was selected? (Unsigned, 2006 June 29‎)

Probably because it is the most prominent, experienced and successful wildlife conservation organization on Earth and has more expertise and more resources to devote to the task than anyone else. These criteria don't seem "odd" to me. (Unsigned, 2007 June 13‎)

The criticism section needed references, and was more of a political argument than a statement of fact

As written, this section violated Wikipedia's Neutral point of view policy and should be deleted. Oliver7303 17:31, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Hijacked by Fordham

Why on earth is more than half of this article taken up by a Fordham press release? The new degree program is worth mentioning, but probably warrants no more than a few sentences. It seems an enthusiastic Ram has decided to overwhelm the article on all of WCS's great work with a discussion of just one small part of that work. I'd cut the section down to size myself but I am not an expert in any of the relevant fields and would prefer that someone with more expertise decide what should go and what should remain. (Unsigned, 2007 June 13‎)

The section is a word-for-word transcription of a Fordham University press release (GSE and Bronx Zoo Announce Master's Degree Program). As such, it takes very little expertise indeed to determine that the section is not compatible with Wikipedia's policy on copyrighted material and I have removed the section in its entirety as a consequence of that policy. I have advised the original editor of this deletion and invite anyone to paraphrase the press release, should they think it furnishes anything useful for this article. Gosgood (talk) 16:02, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Factual fixes provided by Wildlife Conservation Society, May 2013

A number of factual corrections made by WCS, along with additional historical and organizational details. ecowriter1897 19:32, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

• Number of square miles of wild places protected
• Mission statement correction
• Additional corrections to organization history

COI tag (July 2023)

One prolific editor to this page may be the Executive Director for Strategic Communications at the Wildlife Conservation Society, and is responsible for peacocking and promotional tone. JesseRafe (talk) 14:57, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I am that editor Jesse referred to above. I am a member of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Communications team who has made changes to the first paragraph of this WCS page once this week and then reverted them when they were rejected (they were then rejected again).

I would not call myself prolific. Several years ago I made some additional factual edits to the content here (see the factual fixes section above from 2013). I have never removed any content that was critical of what we do (or have done in the past). I regret that the first sentence I used in my edits this week read as promotional to Jesse. But my principal purpose has been and is to correct facts about my organization.

Because my attempt to make corrections has been rejected, I would be thrilled if someone watching this page might make the following corrections:

1) WCS works in more than 50 countries today.

2) WCS has a new president, Monica Medina, who took the place of Cristian Samper on June 1, 2023. She has her own Wikipedia page so if you could link to it that would be super.

Many thanks,

Nat Natmoss1 (talk) 16:55, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I should have said that Monica Medina is our new President and CEO. Natmoss1 (talk) 16:58, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

One additional fact correction to the first paragraph:

WCS's New York City parks receive more than 3.5 million visitors a year.

ALSO: I'm not familiar with terms like "peacocking," but based on the species referenced I'll assume that means "showing off." I think Jesse is referring to this sentence in the edit I made this week because he highlighted it when he reverted my edit:

"WCS combines the power of four zoos and an aquarium in New York City, and a Global Conservation Program in more than 50 countries, to achieve its mission to save wildlife and wild places."

I can see why the use of the word "power" led Jesse to say that sounded promotional. My bad. I believe that's only sentence I've ever suggested for this page that would qualify as "peacocking" as I understand the term. Natmoss1 (talk) 17:35, 7 July 2023 (UTC)