This is the accepted version of the following article: Mishra, C., Young, J. C., Fiechter, M., Rutherford, B. and Redpath, S. M. (2017), Building partnerships with communities for biodiversity conservation: lessons from Asian mountains. J Appl Ecol, 54: 1583–1591., which has been published in final form at doi: 10.1111/1365-2664.12918. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with the Wiley Self-Archiving Policy [http://olabout.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-828039.html].