The CERC Consortium

Columbia University | American Museum of Natural History | The New York Botanical Garden | Wildlife Conservation Society | Wildlife Trust

 

Columbia University

The Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC) is headquartered at one of America's preeminent educational institutions in one of the world's most international cities. Columbia's outstanding and diverse schools, departments, and experts unite through CERC to exchange ideas, information, and resources.

 

American Museum of Natural History

The American Museum of Natural History is one of the world's preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. AMNH comprises 45 permanent exhibition halls, state-of-the-art research laboratories, one of the largest natural history libraries in the Western Hemisphere, and a permanent collection of 32 million specimens and cultural artifacts. With a scientific staff of more than 200, the museum supports research divisions in anthropology, paleontology, invertebrate and vertebrate zoology, and the physical sciences. The museum's scientific staff pursues a broad agenda of advanced scientific research, investigating the origins and evolution of life on earth, the world's myriad species, the rich variety of human culture, and the complex processes that have formed and continue to shape planet Earth and the universe beyond it.

Some 22 senior research scientists from AMNH currently serve as adjuncts research scientists at CERC or adjunct professors in Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology (E3B) (depending on their current teaching load).

 

The New York Botanical Garden

The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG), with its 6.5 million specimen herbarium, the largest in the Western Hemisphere, and its Lu Esther T. Metz Library, the largest botanical and horticultural reference collection on a single site in the Americas, comprises one of the very best locations in the world to study plant science. NYBG's systematic botanists discover, decipher, and describe the worlds plant and fungal diversity, and its economic botanists study the varied links between plants and people. The Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, the largest Victorian glasshouse in the United States, features some 6,000 species in a newly installed "A World of Plants" exhibit. The new International Plant Science Center stores the garden collection under state-of-the-art environmental conditions and has nine study rooms for visiting scholars. In recent years, NYBG has endeavored to grow and expand its research efforts, supporting international field projects in some two dozen different countries, ranging from Brazil to Indonesia. Field sites around the world provide numerous opportunities for work in important ecosystems of unique biodiversity.

Some ten research scientists from NYBG currently serve as adjunct research scientists at CERC or adjunct professors in E3B (depending on their current teaching load).

 

Wildlife Conservation Society

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) works to save wildlife and wild lands throughout the world. In addition to supporting the nation's largest system of zoological facilities—the Bronx Zoo, the New York Aquarium, the Wildlife Centers in Central Park, Prospect Park and Queens, and the Wildlife Survival Center on St. Catherine's Island, Georgia—WCS maintains a commitment to field based conservation science. With 60 staff scientists and more than 100 research fellows, WCS has the largest professional field staff of any U.S.–based international conservation organization. Currently, WCS conducts nearly 300 field projects throughout the Americas, Asia, and Africa. A staff of conservation scientists based in New York supports the field programs in their own research.

Some 17 research scientists from WCS currently serve as adjunct research scientists at CERC or adjunct professors in E3B (depending on their current teaching load).

 

Wildlife Trust

Wildlife Trust empowers local conservation scientists worldwide to protect nature and safeguard ecosystem and human health. Wildlife Trust is a conservation science innovator and leverages research expertise through strategic global alliances. Wildlife Trust pioneered the field of Conservation Medicine, a new discipline that addresses the link between ecological disruption of habitats and the effects on wildlife, livestock and human health.

Founded in 1971 by British naturalist and author Gerald Durrell, Wildlife Trust has built its reputation on 35 years of global research, education, training and experience. Research and conservation work in the United States include programs in the metropolitan New York area, Florida and along the coast of the Southeastern U.S.

Internationally, Wildlife Trust trains and supports a network of scientists around the world to save endangered species and their habitats and to protect the health of vital ecosystems. Wildlife Trust created the first egalitarian international network of science-based conservation organizations called the Wildlife Trust Alliance and is a founding partner organization of the Consortium for Conservation Medicine, a unique think-tank of prestigious academic institutions.