This year, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums celebrates the ten-year anniversary of SAFE: Saving Animals From Extinction, AZA’s signature conservation brand, and the community’s commitment to collaborative conservation. SAFE benefits from engagement by a majority of members, is ahead of growth targets, and is ever closer to securing the SAFE vision where, “Together we are saving the most vulnerable wildlife species from extinction and protecting them for future generations.”
The power of collaboration in the AZA community is clear. Forty years of cooperative animal population management revolutionized the culture of the AZA community, benefiting accredited members by increasing access to animals, and improving animal care and wellbeing. Collaboration also drove $445 million from the Shuttered Venue Operator Grant (SVOG) program to AZA members impacted by the global Covid-19 pandemic.
Collaboration for a shared conservation purpose is equally powerful.
Dr. Lily Maynard reminds us that collaborative alliances are necessary when complex problems cannot be resolved by a single organization’s activities, and that networks facilitate mobilization and allocation of resources, influence other stakeholders to participate, and even influence movements themselves. She states that “zoos and aquariums focused on endangered species can form collaborative alliances to pool resources and enhance the scope of their impacts.”
This is exactly what SAFE is intended to do. And progress has been made.
What does conservation look like under a single, signature conservation brand? Fifty SAFE species programs have been established—racing ahead of targets by more than two years. Eighty-five percent of the membership is involved, and multi-year workplans guiding the AZA community on the implementation of recovery plans are publicly available on AZA’s website. In 2023, AZA members invested more than $350 million in conservation projects that directly impacted animals and habitats in the wild—projects ranging from monitoring endangered species across continental-scale landscapes; advocating for legal, ethical wildlife trade, and supporting law enforcement; creating, protecting, and restoring habitat for animals ranging from birds and butterflies to mussels and orangutans; and to reintroducing animals such as endangered wolves and releasing rehabilitated sea turtles.
Community resources have been re-aligned to support SAFE species programs and their goals. Board-level committees have raised funds, engaged staff, trained colleagues, developed a supportive research agenda, and amplified the voices of SAFE programs. SAFE species programs have introduced visitors, vendors, and volunteers to the threats facing wildlife and the solutions that allow people and animals to thrive together. Party for the Planet supports members’ partnership efforts to solve conservation challenges locally, benefiting both communities and SAFE species.
AZA’s management centers, scientific advisory groups, and individual members are developing and applying innovative scientific strategies, including innovative biotechnologies, targeted behavior change, and community co-design. Population biologists are adjusting processes to support programmatic goals of sustainable populations in the wild. AZA conservation partner members lend their expertise, leadership, and connections to local programs, communities, and governing authorities. AZA commercial members tell SAFE stories to new audiences in engaging ways, such as in Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild television series and podcast, and contribute resources, for example by helping make AZA’s last two silent auctions the most successful for AZA’s conservation granting programs ever.
In 2019, AZA introduced a second conservation grants program thanks to the generous support of the Arthur L. And Elaine V. Johnson Foundation. After securing a $1 million endowment in 2021 to sustain SAFE granting programs in perpetuity, matching grant challenges have more than tripled the endowment’s size. By limiting eligibility to AZA’s Conservation Grants Fund to projects that advance SAFE program priorities, applicant success rates have increased from an average of 20 percent to 40-60 percent.
What did conservation look like in the AZA community a decade ago, before SAFE? In 2013, $160 million was invested in conservation projects directly impacting animals and habitats in the wild that year. That July, AZA’s board of directors passed the following resolution:
“The board of directors of AZA believes that saving species from extinction is a critical mission of AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums. Therefore, the board directs all AZA committees to develop specific plans, tools, and training to help increase the resources devoted to species conservation, including additional means to recognize those that lead in this mission. Furthermore, the board urges all AZA-accredited institutions to increase their commitment to conservation, achieving a level of support that will allow them to be defined individually and collectively as organizations committed to conservation of species in the wild.”
On 15 May 2015—Endangered Species Day—SAFE was publicly launched, welcoming a new era of cooperative conservation for the AZA community and laying the trajectory for where we are today.
Built on and adapted from previous collaborative conservation models from throughout the community, SAFE capitalized on those efforts’ strengths while broadening the scope and providing structural support. SAFE focused on species of conservation concern and on the implementation of recovery plans—the “Act” piece of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission’s (SSC) model to “Assess-Plan-Act.”
By 2018, AZA had described a vision of what success would look like if SAFE were to have been successful after ten years. AZA monitors SAFE against those measures of success and publishes progress in annual reports.
AZA board leadership, dedicated work by task forces, and member input and expertise shared via focus groups, surveys, and community conversations resulted in us setting an ambitious challenge for ourselves: to save animals from extinction. And we rallied. Now, thanks to the diligent efforts of AZA committees and the daily commitment of SAFE species program leaders and partners, we can celebrate the first ten years of SAFE and look forward to a second decade of progress.
Hero Photo Credit: © Samuel Beomon.
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