Graduate Scholarship Program
Investing in the Conservation Leaders of Tomorrow
Zoo New England is committed to equality and diversity in everything we do. As part of this commitment, we've partnered with the Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN) to help provide graduate scholarships to the conservation leaders of tomorrow from low-income countries.
Too often brilliant young conservationists from around the world find their career paths blocked by a lack of opportunity to continue their education and collaborate with colleagues from around the world.
The WCN Rising Wildlife Leaders Scholarship Program provides these young conservation leaders of tomorrow with just this rare opportunity – to get a Masters or PhD to advance their training and experience at some of the best universities in the world. They also get to travel and meet other colleagues from around the world and build important new relationships, and learn from global experts in ways that greatly builds and improves their nations’ capacity to protect wildlife.
The program also has a wildlife veterinarian graduate scholarship program, and it recently opened a new graduate scholarship opportunity to young Tribal conservationists from indigenous US Native American communities.
Zoo New England is now a proud partner in this important initiative. In February 2025 the WCN Graduate Scholarship Program provided 19 graduate scholarships to young conservation leaders from such countries as Uganda, Tanzania, Brazil, Mongolia, Cameroon, Myanmar, and South Sudan. These brilliant young conservationists will be advancing their careers at top-flight universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Cornell, Texas Tech, and Wisconsin-Madison.
The program also has a wildlife veterinarian graduate scholarship program, and we have awarded five scholarships to wildlife vets from countries such as Brazil, Rwanda, and Indonesia to attend graduate programs at schools such as the University of London, University of Edinburgh, and Montpelier.
Some of the highly threatened and even critically endangered wildlife that these young conservationists have committed to saving include the Amur tiger, Persian leopard, mountain gorilla, giant armadillo, African painted dog, Sumatran rhino, African elephant, and pangolins.
A third funding stream is for young Tribal conservationists from indigenous US Native American communities. This year we awarded three scholarships to young conservationists from the Yaqui, Creek, and Kewa Pueblo tribes to further their academic careers at the University of Arizona and University of Montana.
These opportunities for advancement will empower these young conservationists to become international leaders in the effort to save the highly threatened species that they have already dedicated their lives to protect.
Learn more about this program and 2024's extraordinary young conservation leaders.
