In 1899, when New York City was in the midst of the Gilded Age, a miracle for conservation was established.  

This miracle to behold lies in the West Bronx, a place where you can walk from the forests of Asia to the plains of Africa, and the frigid mountains of the Himalayas. 

Traveling on East Fordham Road, you are greeted by the poorest congressional district in the US, large shopping centers, and a high crime rate. Keep heading a few blocks down and you are in a place unrecognizable: nature has engulfed the plentiful housing complexes and you hear a sea lion—and was that a dinosaur roar you heard in the distance? 

Such is the experience of one passing through the gates of the largest metropolitan zoo in the world: the Bronx Zoo, home to one of the largest conservation groups in the world: The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). 

As you go through the Rainey Memorial Gate entrance of the zoo, you see familiar sights: a parking lot, ticket booths, and long lines of people waiting to enter, especially on the weekends and hot summer days. However, just up two flights of stairs, everything changes.

Sea lions in the center of the court make their presence known with loud vocalizations. The old Beaux-Arts buildings surrounding the court give a regal yet humble impression of the zoo. As you walk towards the architectural crown of the zoo, the Zoo Center, designed by German firm Heins & LaFarge, the smell of rhinos and Komodo dragons immediately engulfs you. To some this may be a disconcerting smell, yet it is an essential part of the immersive experience at the zoo, and immersion is what the Bronx Zoo excels at. 

In order to give visitors a true taste of what life is like outside the comfort of urbanization, the zoo utilizes all five senses to simulate Mother Nature’s beauty, no matter how smelly or unpleasant it may be. At the JungleWorld exhibit, you will be encompassed by waterfalls, make-shift cliffs, and man-made tree canopies that very closely resemble the natural habitats that occur in the wild, specifically for Asian habitats at JungleWorld. This is mostly done for the comfort of the animals, and the sights, sounds, and smells you experience are merely the by-products of the Zoo’s effort to keep the animals happy.

After you pass Astor Court, the first exhibit you will see is “Madagascar!” A fairly recent addition to the Bronx Zoo, opening to the public in 2008, the exhibit was built to restore the former Lion House. However, it soon became a world-renowned exhibit. 

As you step inside the first set of doors, you are met with a small mural reminding visitors where they are about to be transported. You will no longer be in the Bronx, or anywhere in the Northern hemisphere. You will be traveling to the island of Madagascar, the fourth largest island in the world–larger than the United Kingdom–and one of the most biodiverse locations in the world, more than 8,700 miles away. 

The first ecosystem on your journey to Madagascar is the Tsingy Forest Exhibit. Here, you see something that resembles a monkey, but is ever so slightly different. The tail is too long, eyes too wide and protruding too far out. This is a lemur; specifically, the first one you will see is the collared lemur, named for the collar-like appearance it derives from its fur. Rather than the animals being restricted to a visible cage, the lemurs have access to a giant open space with no visible barrier between exhibits. 

This is true for most of the Bronx Zoo’s exhibits. Animals are allowed to roam freely within their designated areas which are accommodated accordingly, based on each animal’s different space requirements. In the African Plains exhibit, the only barrier keeping the lions, African wild dogs, and giraffes away from each other is a series of moats separating them. The debut of this exhibit in 1941 created shockwaves as it was a revolutionary exhibit that allowed animals to roam freely in a simulated environment; the first of its kind at a time when most zoos kept animals in small cages unfit for their large space requirements. 

When you visit the gorilla exhibit in the Congo Gorilla Forest, it is almost like looking into the past. The gorillas have a very tight family structure, similar to our own, and can be seen carefully thinking about and examining their surroundings. When you look into the eyes of a gorilla, you don’t see a raging beast or a wild animal. Instead, you see the gorilla carefully inspecting you with so much thought behind every movement that you wonder why we call gorillas beasts. You see the gentle nature of gorillas shine in how they take care of each other and protect each other. 

At the exhibit, visitors meet Julia, the grey-furred western lowland gorilla with two children: 17-year old Johari and 9-year old Mjukuu. Julia was saved from a controversial endangered species expo in the Netherlands, after being smuggled from Africa into Belgium by Dutch journalists. Now she enjoys her life resting in the state-of-the-art animal facilities of the Bronx Zoo.

Though the Bronx Zoo might just seem like any other major tourist attraction, the Zoo and the Wildlife Conservation Society stand for something larger. They represent the efforts of thousands of biologists, conservationists, and inventors across 50 countries, all with the same goal of protecting the Earth’s biodiversity. 

Moreover, the Bronx Zoo is not a miracle for humans or the city–it is a miracle for conservation. The Bronx Zoo is able to attract over two million visitors a year—two million that have become educated about the damaging effects of human activity and exploitation. The zoo gives a face to the word “conservation” as people feel connections to the animals. 

Being one of the world’s largest conservation organizations, the Wildlife Conservation Society also has major international outreach and influence beyond the Bronx. In Brazil, the organization was able to help create the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary to protect endangered jaguars. 

In the island of Madagascar, one of the WCS’s priority areas, they helped launch and now manages the Makira Natural Park nature reserve, which acts as a safe haven for the island’s diminishing biodiversity. The WCS in Madagascar prioritizes the conservation of lemurs, which are endemic to the island, meaning they can not be found anywhere else. Lemurs are not monkeys or apes, but rather their own type of primate, hence why the WCS is so keen to preserve them in the face of increasing deforestation on Madagascar. 

In the US, the WCS founded the American Bison Society to help reintroduce and re-wild the continental U.S. to what it was before the ecologically disastrous colonization of the West; in what is now known as the Great Slaughter, colonists killed 30 to 60 million bison, leaving less than 300 bison alive. However, thanks to the efforts of the American Bison Society and WCS,Bison are no longer critically endangered and have been saved from extinction. The story of the Bison is considered to be America’s first win for conservation, and the WCS plans on making many more wins in the name of conservation.

In 2024, WCS reported that they now conserve habitats for over 40% of the world’s biodiversity. By 2030 the WCS aims to protect 30% of the world’s ecosystems: a goal they are very close to reaching. These are both very important milestones for global conservation efforts as a whole, as the protection of critical habitats specifically set aside to protect extreme biodiverse areas creates hope for other ecosystems that are facing destruction. 

The work that the WCS and the Bronx Zoo do to get the voice of conservation out into the world is vital in promoting the welfare of our planet. This summer, on July 12th, 2025, the Bronx Zoo will be opening a new exhibit: the ‘World of Darkness.‘ It will feature nocturnal animals like the Sand Cat and the Aye-Aye lemur. This marks another step in amplifying the voices of conservation by showing public examples of how protecting all kinds of wildlife is important for each and every one of us. After all, Earth is made up of a very delicate balance of ecosystems and living organisms. If this balance is threatened by species going extinct from human activity or from climate change, then even humans will struggle to adapt to a rapidly changing planet.  

The Zoo also makes visitors very abruptly aware of the impact humans have on the environment. In 1963, the Bronx Zoo opened a revolutionary exhibit called “The Most Dangerous Animal in the World,” making headlines internationally. Once visitors walked into the old Great Apes House—what is now the Congo Gorilla Forest—they needed to brace themselves for what they were about to see, emotionally and physically. The exhibit allowed people to see a species of animal that is so unrivaled on Earth it can change the ecosystem to its will and is feared by nearly all of Earth’s other species.

The gateway to seeing this animal? A mirror. It’s a reflection? Us. The message was made terrifyingly clear to all who first witnessed the exhibit. Only a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and during the height of Cold War tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States, this mirror was a harsh reminder of how twisted humans have become as a species. Rather than use our evolutionary abilities for good, humans have used them to create weapons of mass destruction with the capability to wipe out all life on Earth multiple times over. 

This is why the mission and impact of the WCS and the Bronx Zoo is so important. Without the ability of the Bronx Zoo to educate the masses, and without the ability of the WCS to organize global conservation efforts successfully, then Earth’s wildlife may end up in an ecological crisis it can not rebound from. And we, too, will be caught in the chaos. Humans are a hyper-keystone species; they have an unparalleled influence on their environment that no other animal is capable of replicating. 

We have the power to save entire ecosystems from collapsing, the technology to change the climate, and the most important skill: the ability to understand right from wrong. There is nothing stopping humans from being able to reverse the damage done to the Earth beyond gaining enough political support. The efforts of the WCS and Bronx Zoo are only possible because of the inspiration they give people to fight for conservation. Hopefully, the generations that came before us, those with us now, and the generations yet to mature, see the need to fight for conservation and carry on the legacy and work of the WCS.

This is why the mission and impact of the WCS and the Bronx Zoo is so important. Without the ability of the Bronx Zoo to educate the masses, and without the ability of the WCS to organize global conservation efforts successfully, then Earth’s wildlife may end up in an ecological crisis it can not rebound from. And we, too, will be caught in the chaos. Humans are a hyper-keystone species; they have an unparalleled influence on their environment that no other animal is capable of replicating.