Zookeeping books help Wild Welfare training

Wild Welfare is very pleased to announce it has received a generous donation from the authors of the book Zookeeping, in co-ordination with the American Association of Zoo Keepers (AAZK).

Thanks to a donation of ten copies of the book, staff trained by Wild Welfare in our workshops will now have unlimited access to the latest information on how to best care for zoo animals. Husbandry and welfare training is a key part of Wild Welfare’s work and currently we have ongoing projects to help train zoo staff in facilities in Vietnam, Indonesia and Brazil.

The Zookeeping textbook will be incorporated into a variety of Wild Welfare’s training programmes and become a point of reference alongside our other extensive resources. Each of the zoos we currently carry out husbandry workshops with will also receive their own copy of the book.

By working with animal care staff in zoos, we are helping to improve captive animal welfare via husbandry, behaviour, welfare and enrichment training and via ongoing welfare assessments and whole facility support. The Zookeeping book includes sections on animal management, animal husbandry and behaviour, veterinary care, public education and conservation science, and it aims to promote the highest standards of care and welfare within the global zoo and aquarium community.

Our director, Dave Morgan, said: “This book will be an excellent resource for the zoos we work with. Facility staff that we help train, who are caring for captive wild animals and striving to make animal welfare their top priority, can now use this book as another tool to help them achieve just that.”

Wild Welfare will be distributing the books during our training workshops over the coming months. The donation has been made possible partly by the book’s three editors, 72 authors – one of which is Wild Welfare’s field director, Dave Morgan – and other artists, offering their time and expertise to the project of putting the book together. It was agreed when the project started that any funds would be used to help advance the profession of keepers globally.

We would like to thank the book’s editors, Mark Irwin, John Stoner and Aaron Cobaugh, the AAZK and AAZK’s executive director, Ed Hansen, for facilitating the donation.