The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) based at the Bronx Zoo was founded in 1895 as the New York Zoological Society (NYZS) and currently manages some 200 million acres (810,000 km²) of wild places around the world, with over 500 field conservation projects in 60 countries, and 200 scientists on staff. It also runs five facilities in New York City: the Bronx Zoo, Central Park Zoo, New York Aquarium, Prospect Park Zoo and Queens Zoo which together welcome over 4 million visitors per year. All of its New York City, USA facilities are accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA).

The stated mission of the Wildlife Conservation Society is:

The Wildlife Conservation Society was originally chartered by New York on 26 April 1895 as the New York Zoological Society with a mandate to advance wildlife conservation, promote the study of zoology, and create a first-class zoological park. Its name was changed to the Wildlife Conservation Society in 1993.

Among the founders of WCS were Andrew H. Green, best known as the father of greater New York City, and Henry Fairfield Osborn, Columbia University professor and curator of the American Museum of Natural History. Theodore Roosevelt and other notable New Yorkers were also involved in the Society's creation.

Wildlife conservation is the practice of protecting endangered plant and animal species and their habitats. Among the goals of wildlife conservation are to ensure that nature will be around for future generations to enjoy and to recognize the importance of wildlife and wilderness lands to humans. Many nations have government agencies dedicated to wildlife conservation, which help to implement policies designed to protect wildlife. Numerous independent nonprofit organizations also promote various wildlife conservation causes.

Wildlife conservation has become an increasingly important practice due to the negative effects of human activity on wildlife. The science of conservation biology plays a part in wildlife conservation. The ethic of conservation, in addition to lobbying by conservationists, has made it an important environmental issue.

Endangered species in India comprise large varieties of rare species of wild animals, aquatic animals and insects. Indian wildlife consists of numerous species of birds, mammals, reptiles etc, and is well known for comprising one of the richest varieties in the world. The Indian wildlife also contains several endangered species that are living critically on the verge of extinction. An endangered species is defined as a population of a living being that is at the danger of becoming extinct because of several reasons. Either they are few in number or are threatened by the varying environmental or predation parameters. The endangered species in India have been identified by different national and international organisations like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII).

Wildlife includes all non-domesticated plants, animals and other organisms. Domesticating wild plant and animal species for human benefit has occurred many times all over the planet, and has a major impact on the environment, both positive and negative.

Wildlife can be found in all ecosystems. Deserts, forests, rain forests, plains, grasslands, and other areas including the most developed urban sites, all have distinct forms of wildlife. While the term in popular culture usually refers to animals that are untouched by human factors, most scientists agree that wildlife around the world is impacted by human activities.

Humans have historically tended to separate civilization from wildlife in a number of ways including the legal, social, and moral sense. This has been a reason for debate throughout recorded history. Religions have often declared certain animals to be sacred, and in modern times concern for the natural environment has provoked activists to protest the exploitation of wildlife for human benefit or entertainment. Literature has also made use of the traditional human separation from wildlife.

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Human societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent members. In the social sciences, a larger society often evinces stratification and/or dominance patterns in subgroups.

Insofar as it is collaborative, a society can enable its members to benefit in ways that would not otherwise be possible on an individual basis; both individual and social (common) benefits can thus be distinguished, or in many cases found to overlap.

A society can also consist of like-minded people governed by their own norms and values within a dominant, larger society. This is sometimes referred to as a subculture, a term used extensively within criminology.

Cristián T. Samper Kutschbach (born September 25, 1965) is a Colombian-American biologist and Director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. He was acting secretary of the Smithsonian from 2007 to 2008, the first Latin American to hold the position.

Samper was born on September 25, 1965 in San José, Costa Rica, the youngest child of Armando Samper Gnecco, an Agronomist and Economist from Colombia, and Jean Kutschbach, an American from New York State. He was raised in Colombia, the country of his father, Armando Samper, from one year of age. His other siblings were Marta, Belén, and Mario.

Samper graduated in 1987 from the University of the Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, with a B.Sc. in Biology. He then moved to the United States to attend Harvard University, where he graduated in 1989 with a M.Sc., and received his Ph.D. in Biology in 1992 with his dissertation Natural disturbance and plant establishment in an Andean cloud forest.

Back in Colombia, he participated and collaborated with the creation of the Colombian Ministry of Environment in 1993, and was successful in conceiving the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute, a public funded research institute of which he became its first Director from 1995 to 2001. In 1999 he was appointed Chairman of the Subsidiary Body of Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, a post he held until 2001. He was Deputy Director and staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.