Zoo Advisors is committed to helping responsible zoos and aquariums achieve meaningful conservation impact while maximizing your conservation investment – both in terms of your organization’s actual impact on species and habitat conservation and the effect of these efforts on your staff and your guests. We all know that we are facing a species extinction crisis. And we know that conservation is increasingly central to any modern, responsible zoological organization. It connects the animals in our care to their threatened and endangered cousins in the wild. We also all know that planning is critical to improving any operation, including conservation. We want to work with you to develop an integrated, comprehensive conservation strategy that meets the needs of your overall organization and helps you achieve real, measurable impacts. Planning that ensures that your individual projects are not only well-organized, but also looks beyond to your entire conservation program.
Increasingly, conservationists outside zoos and aquariums are improving their ability to plan individual projects. In doing so, they are moving from simply measuring outputs (e.g., money spent) to actual outcomes (e.g., reduction in threats to species, slowing species declines). And some zoos and aquariums are doing the same. But, in general, many zoos and aquariums lack comprehensive programmatic conservation strategies; that is, strategies that tie their entire program together. Few organizations have done the work of understanding what actual outcomes they desire. Not just for species and habitats, but also for the organization itself.
This approach can be addressed with a series of questions:
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What are the actual outcomes you want to see from your conservation program?
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How does your conservation program connect with the animals you care for on-site? With the animal experiences you provide?
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How does your conservation program enable you to effectively tell your conservation story? How do you engage your guests?
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Are your staff involved in your conservation efforts, or just a few people? Does your program lead to increased staff engagement?
Only when your organization arrives at clear desired outcomes–for every aspect of your conservation program–will you be able to maximize your chances of success and achieve your true potential.
We believe that conservation planning can help each zoological organization address the threat to species extinction and ensure that its conservation budget has the greatest impact. Zoo Advisors can assist you in developing a comprehensive strategy for your conservation program and for your organization. When complete, you’ll have an integrated, inclusive framework that includes the long-term outcomes and short-term targets that your organization commits to achieve and a plan to achieve them. And you will have a framework for sharing the case for this conservation approach with your governing authority and key stakeholders.
Click here if you would like to talk further. We cannot afford to do less than our best as we address the current crisis of species extinction.
