Conserving wildlife isn’t just a scientific endeavor. It’s also cultural. Many Indigenous communities and tribes have lived alongside and preserved the wildlife and plant species in their landscapes for generations. Stories, traditions and knowledge passed down through these communities hold powerful lessons for conserving species — including wild cats around the globe.
“For Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, wildlife is not an object of curiosity — it is a relative, a story, a memory, a living spirit. The awe many feel when encountering nature’s beauty is the very emotion these communities live with daily,” said Abeer al Saud, General Manager of Panthera Saudi Arabia. “To truly protect wildlife, we must go beyond statistics and policy. We must honor the lived experiences of those who feel awe not as a moment but as a way of life.”
She added, “Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities don’t just protect biodiversity — they live in relationship with it. The awe we experience when seeing an eagle soar or hearing wolves howl is central to many Indigenous worldviews. Elevating this emotional and spiritual connection can bridge science, conservation and storytelling in powerful ways.”
The CATcrafts program, led by the Andean Cat Alliance, is a unique, collaborative conservation initiative that partners directly with Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in the Andes to protect the Andean cat. Through this initiative, the women of the Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities create high-quality, handmade goods featuring Andean cat designs which contribute to strengthening cultural identity and pride. The goods are sold through fair-trade channels, providing a sustainable source of income.
The artisans of these culturally significant crafts have become ambassadors for the Andean cat and its fragile habitat. For some of the communities, this initiative helps reduce human-wildlife conflict by offering economic alternatives to retaliatory hunting.
Panthera supports CATcrafts through our Small Cat Action Fund, and we often feature CATcrafts products in our annual holiday gift guide.
In Colombia, Indigenous cosmologies view jaguars as much more than just big cats. They’re guardians of balance and forests. This understanding forms the basis for community co-management initiatives. Panthera’s team in Latin America integrates these cultural perspectives into their conservation efforts, strengthening their co-existence strategies and securing community ownership of conservation programs.
The San, an Indigenous People in Southern Africa, are considered one of the world’s oldest continuous cultures. In Namibia, San trackers contribute their ancestral expertise to cheetah conservation, following traces and interpreting landscape signals in ways that modern science can’t on its own — a collaboration recognized by both Panthera and IUCN.
In Washington state in the U.S., Panthera collaborates with tribal nations including the Lower Elwha Klallam, Skokomish, Makah, Jamestown S’Klallam, Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribes and the Quinault Indian Nation and other partners to help understand wild cats and their habitats. The Olympic Cougar Project studies pumas on the Olympic Peninsula to learn more about their feeding, breeding and dispersal patterns and ultimately help conserve them.
Meet Vanessa Castle, the Cultural Conservation Science Coordinator for the Olympic Cougar Project at Panthera:
Saudi Arabia offers a rich example of this intersection between culture and conservation. The Almarri tribe of the Empty Quarter practices Qassas Al-Athar (قصاص الأثر), or sand-dune reading. This traditional form of wildlife tracking helps guide understanding of wild cat movements across the barren landscape.
Oral knowledge about prey migration routes is also preserved in poetry and stories from Najd and Asir, two culturally important regions of Saudi Arabia with deep traditions and history.
Archaeological sites, like Aljouf Cave, reveal physical traces of cheetahs’ historical presence in Arabia. Rock art on the Arabian Peninsula, especially in AlUla, also depicts Arabian leopards and Asiatic lions. These are all examples of tangible evidence.
An example of intangible evidence of cheetahs is the last known images of cheetahs in northern Saudi Arabia, taken by German explorer Karl Reinhard Raswan in the 1920s.
In 2022, a discovery in the Aljouf caves revealed the natural mummification of 16 cheetahs — physical representations of cheetah presence — which further confirms wild cats’ longstanding role from the north in AlUla and AlJouf to the south in Jebel Al-Sarawat and affirming their longstanding place in the region’s collective imagination.
Conserving wildlife isn’t just a matter of biology. It also requires honoring and preserving the cultural heritage that ties people to nature. Because of their close cultural connections with cats, many Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities have been longtime defenders of wild cats and their habitats. Panthera works actively to partner with, collaborate and co-create means with Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities globally to conserve wild cats.
Effective conservation weaves together science, culture and policy across borders. It forms powerful partnerships, strengthens community engagement, and helps foster long-term, sustainable futures for both wildlife and people.
Learn more about our partnerships with Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.
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© Sebastian Kennerknecht
