Increasing AZA-Accredited Zoo and Aquarium Engagement in Conservation

Kayla J Ripple,Megan E Brown,Shelly Grow,Estelle A Sandhaus

doi:10.3389/fenvs.2021.594333

Abstract

Conservation should be the higher purpose of any modern zoological facility and has consistently been a required element of accreditation by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). Each year, AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums collectively commit considerable resources to conservation around the world, exceeding 150 million USD annually since 2011 and exceeding 231 million USD in 2019. Furthermore, with 195 million people visiting AZA-accredited zoos and aquariums each year, there is enormous opportunity to connect people to nature and engage them as agents of change. As AZA facilities continue to prioritize conservation-driven missions, their participation in field conservation has increased greatly. AZA SAFE: Saving Animals From Extinction (SAFE)®was established in 2014 to encourage greater collaboration of AZA members and their field partners to save species. The SAFE framework is dedicated to species recovery and based on conservation best practices. SAFE species programs develop 3-year action plans that build on established recovery plans, evaluate impact, and combine AZA facilities and visitors to increase resources for research, public engagement, communications, and conservation funding. Here we share preliminary outcomes of the SAFE program as they relate to programmatic measures of success to determine whether the framework 1) is useful for the AZA membership as measured by engagement and participation, and 2) increases conservation activity on behalf of targeted species as measured by the number of facilities supporting a species' conservation and financial investment. In this analysis we utilized data supported by the AZA Annual Report for Conservation and Science (ARCS) to demonstrate benefits of the SAFE framework and provide insights into future strategies to enhance conservation impact.

Highlights

Conservation should be the higher purpose of any modern zoological facility, and collaboration is key to conservation success
We evaluated overall AZA member engagement in field conservation through conservation spending (USD) and the number of members engaged in field conservation before and after the inception of SAFE using individual generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) each with a gamma-distributed response variable built in the lme4 package (Bates et al, 2012) in the R software platform (R Core Team 2014)
When we look at the selected SAFE species case studies we see that the overall effect of SAFE has a highly positive effect on amount spent (p < 0.0001) and on the number of members reporting engagement (p < 0.0001) for in situ conservation

Summary

Introduction

Conservation should be the higher purpose of any modern zoological facility, and collaboration is key to conservation success. Each of the 240 AZA members has met the accreditation standards, which are rigorous, scientifically based, and publicly available (Association of Zoos and Aquariums, 2020a). These standards examine an entire zoo or aquarium’s operation, including animal welfare, veterinary care, conservation, education, guest services, physical facilities, safety, staffing and governing body. The majority of standards are performance-based, which includes assessing the level of achievement considered acceptable to fulfill a performance characteristic, and choice in method for meeting the goal This approach is in contrast to engineering standards which prescribe the exact, precise steps required to fulfill an engineering characteristic and offer little or no variation in the method for meeting the goal. There is an emphasis on a continual raising of all–including conservation–standards

Methods

Results

Conclusion