Wild Welfare supports Brazil animal welfare programme

From 9-12 March, Wild Welfare was invited to attend the Brazilian Zoo Association (SZB) ‘s 41st annual conference in Pomerode Zoo, Santa Catarina State, Brazil. SZB devoted the whole conference to zoo animal welfare.

Our team provided three two-hour-long workshops on the implementation of an animal welfare programme. More than 45 people attended the workshops, where we provided a theory lecture, followed by splitting the audience into groups and giving them an hour of scenarios requiring deconstruction, or drawing up species-specific behaviour, ethograms and enrichment options.

SZB’s President, Claudio Maas, also gave a presentation on the roll out of a welfare certification process for SZB. These processes allow for greater monitoring and evaluation of practices that effect animal welfare in captivity and provide constructive feedback. We are delighted that the SZB will be using our assessment methodology as their own welfare assessment method going forward, and that we can support them in this process.

SZB are keen to process the methodology quickly, so that many Brazilian zoos can start taking part in the process. Wild Welfare will continue to help with the roll out of this process and are committed to supporting SZB in this exciting new step towards welfare accreditation and evaluation.