The winner is Cindy: The story behind Brisbane 2032’s emblem inspiration

“She loved my husband. She loved showing off to people every time somebody came in,” she says.

“She’d step up on their hands, flick out her wings and throw a crest out. She loved the people.”

Malins says everyone at Parrots in Paradise was “absolutely blown away” by Cindy’s involvement in the Olympic emblem design process.

“We get very excited when anything happens here,” she says.

“To realise our little lovely Cindy that we’ve known so long is the poster girl for 2032 is really special.

“She was lovely and everything about her was great.”

Cindy was photographed as part of Sartore’s 30-plus-year Photo Ark project—a global quest to document every species in human care using plain studio backgrounds.

“To date, we’ve photographed nearly 19,000 species this way using black and white backgrounds and studio lighting,” he says.

“By using this technique, we give all animals an equal voice because there’s no size comparison. A mouse and an elephant are the same size in these pictures.”

While hard to quantify Photo Ark’s success in raising awareness, Sartore says there have been some tangible, positive results for conservation – including here in Australia.

He pointed to the impact of his photography of the red handfish, a Tasmanian species that has a higher population at a breeding centre in a Hobart university than in the wild.

“When we named that our 18,000th species, the folks in Tasmania got a hold of us and said featuring that fish as a milestone species helped save their breeding efforts, because they didn’t know where their funding was going to come from next,” he said.

“They heard from people all around the world that wanted to help support them – that’s a big win for us because it doesn’t happen near nearly often enough.”

The project typically keeps Sartore away from his Nebraska home for half the year.

“In terms of captive species, there’s probably 30-to-40,000, because things change a lot, especially at aquariums and rehabbers,” he says.

“In terms of the numbers of animals in the wild, there’s about 1.5 million described now.

“I like to say we’re just getting started.”

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.