What began as a single visit grew into a decades-long partnership built on a radical but simple truth: lasting conservation is fundamentally about people. This partnership included a 20+ year informal mentorship of Cincinnati Zoo leadership by SORALO leaders. The zoo now has an entire department dedicated to coexistence, which recognizes the importance of people in conservation.
By investing in local communities for the long haul, the Cincinnati Zoo and SORALO are proving that wildlife thrives when conservation is led by the people who live and work alongside it every day. As one zoo team member said, “The world needs heroes, and we should celebrate projects by highlighting people’s work and accomplishments.”
Putting Partnership to the Test
Instead of simply assuming their partnership was on the right track, the Cincinnati Zoo and SORALO recently decided to take a deeper look at their relationship using the PARTNERS Principles to reflect on their conservation journey together.
The PARTNERS Principles—developed by the Snow Leopard Trust—are a framework for engaging ethically with communities for conservation. They act as a “health check” for conservation relationships. Rather than an outside organization coming in with all the answers, these principles ensure that the people living closest to the wildlife are the ones leading the way. By applying this framework, the team sought to create a blueprint that could help other international organizations move beyond traditional top-down approaches.
Their paper, recently published in Ecological Solutions and Evidence, offers a roadmap for the future of wildlife conservation.
Snow Leopard Trust was thrilled to see this framework applied in such a meaningful way, especially with the team recommending it to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums as a tool for better aligning institutional work with community voices.
To learn more about this process, we sat down with the Cincinnati Zoo team to discuss how the framework shaped their assessment and how their reflections might help other international organizations rethink community-led conservation.
When asked the single biggest lesson learned over two decades, the team’s answer was immediate: Trust.
But in this partnership, trust isn’t just a “soft” concept; it’s a structural requirement. As the team explains:
“Give autonomy to community organizations and really mean it. It’s easy to say you ‘support community-led conservation,’ but it’s much harder to step back and trust partners to set the agenda, define success, and decide how funds are used”.
Living the Principles
The evaluation highlighted that Respect and Empathy were the strongest pillars of their bond. There is a real commitment to addressing any “power dynamics” and to showing up for one another during tough moments like droughts, the COVID-19 pandemic, or intense human-wildlife incidents. That respect and empathy have shaped how they respond to each other.
The partnership also illustrates that conservation belongs to everyone, not just scientists. For example:
- The Maintenance Team: In a recent exchange, the zoo maintenance team provided support, training, and knowledge-sharing with the SORALO team on installing and maintaining solar power systems.
- Institutional Buy-in: By engaging staff across different departments such as facilities, communications, visitor engagement, and education, the zoo builds internal transparency and accountability, providing opportunities for organizational relationships and involvement beyond the conservation department.
“Don’t isolate the partnership within your conservation department. Identify leverage points across your institution – communications, education, facilities, retail, design, and finance. When staff beyond scientists are meaningfully engaged, you build internal buy-in, increase transparency, and create more relevant support. Make decisions from a place of sharing abundance.”
The “Growth Edges”
Authentic partnerships require honesty about where things are difficult. The team acknowledged that Presence is often the hardest principle to live up to. In professional terms, they call these their “growth edges,” the specific areas where the organization recognizes it still has room to learn, evolve, and do better.
- Being on different continents and in different time zones creates internal constraints.
- Staying “relationally present”—not just sending checks—takes immense effort and capacity.
“We can’t be more effective if we aren’t able to reflect on and transparently share our growth edges,” the team noted.
By championing the PARTNERS Principles within the AZA, the team hopes to shift the industry standard. The goal is to inspire other international organizations to be intentional, creative and collaborative and to rethink how they may effectively support conservation partnerships. Prioritizing community voices makes conservation efforts significantly more effective and relevant.
As the Cincinnati Zoo and SORALO continue their journey, they hope their story inspires a shift toward conservation that truly listens to the people living alongside wildlife.
By using these principles, the zoo and SORALO have shown that conservation isn’t just a short-term project—it’s a lifelong commitment to growing together.
There is so much to learn from their journey (which is far from over). Read the full paper, titled: ‘Growing together: Strengthening the partnership and impact of a zoo and community‐led conservation organization’.
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Photos: Guy Western and SORALO team
Acknowledgments: Special thanks to Bailey Cadena, Mahi Puri, and David Jenike for meeting with us and to the entire Cincinnati Zoo Conservation Team and SORALO team for sharing their paper and story, and for their conservation efforts.