San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and Species360 partner to advance biobanking for global species conservation
- By Gavrielle Kirk-Cohen
New collaboration will connect the world’s largest wildlife biobank with the world’s largest wildlife data repository, creating a transformative global resource for biodiversity banking, scientific discovery, and conservation innovation.
To recover threatened species and slow the pace of extinction, Species360 and San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (SDZWA) have announced a new partnership to create the world’s first shared global system that links biobanking data with animal health and care records.
The partnership will connect two of the most significant resources in conservation: SDZWA’s Frozen Zoo®—the world’s largest repository of viable wildlife cells, containing over 11,500 cell lines that represent more than 1,300 species and subspecies—and Species360’s Zoological Information Management System (ZIMS), the world’s most comprehensive database of wildlife knowledge. The invaluable living resources of the Frozen Zoo will be represented in ZIMS for collaborative biobanking efforts.
With more than one million wildlife species at risk of extinction and a 73 percent decrease in monitored wildlife populations over the last 50 years, biobanking is increasingly recognized as a critical insurance policy for biodiversity. Biobanking is the intentional, long-term storage of viable living cells and tissues collected from wildlife, which can include reproductive materials, DNA, blood, embryos and other biological materials, together with the data that describes them. By storing these materials, biobanks safeguard genetic diversity, support population health and sustainability, reduce extinction risk, and create a growing library of biological knowledge for scientists to draw upon. They also make possible a growing set of practical conservation tools, from assisted reproduction and cloning to research on how species adapt to disease and a changing climate.
This new collaboration will focus on expanding access to data on cryopreserved genetic material by integrating it directly into the Species360 Zoological Information Management System (ZIMS). The result will be the first global system to link biobanking data directly with animal health, wildlife care records and population management tools, allowing researchers to locate, prioritize and make use of genetic material held by zoos, aquariums and conservation organizations worldwide.
SDZWA has been at the forefront of biodiversity banking for over half a century. Its Wildlife Biodiversity Bank, which includes the Frozen Zoo, is the most extensive repository of viable wildlife cells on Earth, holding hundreds of thousands of living and nonliving biological materials.
Through this partnership, SDZWA will support the development of new capabilities within ZIMS to catalogue and track cryopreserved samples alongside the data already maintained by Species360 member institutions.
By integrating cryopreservation data into ZIMS, conservationists will be able to:
- Standardize and secure data that is essential for cryopreservation of living samples.
- Align and integrate with global biobanking networks and partner organizations.
- Establish global metrics for sample holdings that can inform species action plans and coordinate conservation priorities.
- Support global collaboration promoting local action and prioritization of sample collection for species conservation.
- Document chain of custody and provenance of specimens to honor partnerships with Indigenous communities.
“Effective conservation depends on our ability to work together across institutions, disciplines, and borders. This collaboration marks a transformative step toward a more connected future for biodiversity conservation by enabling greater data sharing, standardization, and accessibility for the global community. It also strengthens our commitment to respecting Indigenous Peoples and local communities and advancing equitable benefit-sharing. By building this shared resource today, we are helping ensure that future generations inherit the knowledge and tools needed to safeguard biodiversity for decades to come.”
Nadine Lamberski, DVM, DACZM, DECZM (ZHM), SDZWA Chief Conservation and Wildlife Health Officer.
Jim Guenter, Species360 CEO, said: “This partnership with San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance is an important step forward in developing the first collaborative global system to integrate wildlife health and care records with biobanking data. Biobanking is one of the most powerful tools we have to safeguard the future of wildlife, and its value grows when the data behind every sample can be shared and trusted across institutions around the world. The more we know about what genetic samples are stored globally for threatened species, the more conservationists will be able to make evidence-based conservation decisions for species recovery efforts.”
The work supports SDZWA’s broader vision of a collaborative global movement to bank genetic materials from all endangered species by 2075. As the IUCN SSC Center for Species Survival Biodiversity Banking, SDZWA is helping to promote a distributed network of biodiversity banks in partnership with the Animal Biobanking for Conservation Specialist Group. Species360 will support this work by offering ZIMS access to SDZWA’s regional biobanking partners in four biodiversity-rich regions: Kenya, Vietnam, Hawai’i and Peru.
The partnership will also enhance how banked genetic material data is saved, shared, and used in population management. Working alongside investment from the European Association of Zoos and Aquariums (EAZA), Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), and the Toronto Zoo, SDZWA’s support will help connect ZIMS with the Species Conservation Toolkit Initiative’s PMx software, so that gametes and somatic cells can be factored into population planning and advanced reproductive technologies.
This infrastructure directly supports critical international frameworks, including the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Nagoya Protocol, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, CITES, and the IUCN’s 2020 Resolution 079 calling for a collaborative global biobanking network. Much like the Millennium Seed Bank has safeguarded the world’s flora, ZIMS for Biobanking aims to create the ultimate global repository to preserve and restore the world’s fauna.
