Information Technology and Science: Wildlife Conservation Society released an archive of historical wildlife illustrations

5 April 2021

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) released to the public a digital collection of some 2,200 forgotten, historical scientific wildlife illustrations from its Department of Tropical Research (DTR), which it ran from 1916 to 1965.

The stunning illustrations include montages of otherworldly deepwater fish, stately portraits of sloths, strange insects, brightly coloured birds, snakes, frogs, and other wildlife. Many of the illustrations seem almost whimsical, yet are scientifically accurate.

The Department of Tropical Research operated in an era when photography could not capture colour and movement. The illustrators were vital to documenting the species the DTR studied and to introducing both technical and popular audiences to these species.

The Department of Tropical Research was led by the first Bronx Zoo Curator and famed naturalist William Beebe. It was a division of the Wildlife Conservation Society, then known as the New York Zoological Society. The sites where the DTR worked include British Guiana (now Guyana), the Galápagos Islands, the Hudson Canyon, Bermuda, the Gulf of Mexico and the Eastern Pacific Ocean, Venezuela, and Trinidad.

In 1965, the DTR became part of the Institute for Research in Animal Behavior, a joint venture between WCS and Rockefeller University, and a direct precursor to today’s WCS Global Conservation Program.