Founder and Director: Dr. Laura H Graham founded the non-profit WRG Conservation in 2016.  Dr. Graham is an assistant professor at Ryerson University.  Her research profile can be found on Research Gate

Mission: Our mission is to facilitate wildlife conservation through research and education

Background:

  It’s no secret that the global outlook for biodiversity is bleak, with species going extinct at a rate far above normal with a corresponding loss of ecosystem function.  This human-caused loss of biodiversity has been nicknamed the 6th mass extinction.  While there are dedicated people in the field working tirelessly for the conservation of biodiversity, at the moment they are losing the war, partly because the market forces working against species’ conservation are so strong.  With rhino horn having a street value greater than heroin and the $20 billion per year trade in illegally obtained wildlife parts controlled by crime cartels, efforts to conserve wildlife are under constant attack. It will take a planetary shift in humans’ cultural perceptions as well as global initiatives to improve the lives of the impoverished to stop the extinction of wildlife populations.  Hopefully the war against human-caused species’ extinction will be won eventually but there are going to be many irrecoverable casualties of that war unless safeguards are put in place.  And for many species those safeguards must include captive populations.   Regardless, it is expected that some level of human management and species-specific conservation will be necessary for the surviving species in the future. 

  Our research program is focused on improving the understanding of the physiology of wildlife species with the goal of improving species’ management and welfare.  Our focus is primarily, but not exclusively, on threatened and endangered mammal species.  Our investigations cover a wide spectrum of species and conservation management models ranging from free-ranging populations to game reserves in range countries to populations managed in captivity.