Case Study: San Diego Zoo achieves rapid, low-cost endangered-plant databases for species conservation with Caspio

The Center for Plant Conservation at San Diego Zoo Fights to Save Species from Extinction

The Center for Plant Conservation (CPC) at San Diego Zoo safeguards America’s most imperiled native plants—maintaining a National Collection of 750+ species—and needed a secure, standardized online database that volunteers with minimal technical training could use from multiple locations. Their legacy system was limited to office computers, and hiring a developer was too costly, so CPC required an accessible, low-cost solution to scale data collection and prevent errors.

CPC adopted Caspio’s low-code platform, letting scientists build embeddable, SQL-backed web forms and user management without heavy programming. The result was a fast, secure database that improved data quality and speed, helped document pollinators for over 1,000 endangered species, supported a 600-species seed bank, expanded the National Collection, and delivered significant cost savings while boosting collaboration.

San Diego Zoo

Katie Heineman

Scientist, The CPC