Wild Times: Engaging with the UK Zookeeper Community

During the fading days of British summer time, the UK Wild Welfare team packed their bags, bucket hats and tents ready to venture south for a weekend festival with a twist! Keeperfest 2024, a new event hosted by Jimmy’s Farm and Wildlife Park in Suffolk, brought together around 150 animal care professionals for a unique two-day event. Festival goers had the chance to connect with many other zookeepers, wildlife professionals, and industry experts from across the UK and beyond. A packed schedule of events on the main stage included informative seminar and workshop sessions, covering a multitude of topics from animal behaviour and enrichment, to conservation and welfare.

The lively trade show marquee would be our base for the weekend. Here, visitors could explore the latest products and services from animal charities and service suppliers such as ZSH and the Big Cat Sanctuary. The Wild Welfare stall gave us a wonderful platform to connect with this passionate community of individuals, spreading the word about our vital work. Our dynamic trio including Sarah (Animal Welfare Field Manager), Victoria (Fundraising Manager), and Andy (Communications Manager), were on hand to showcase the latest Wild Welfare merchandise, including “Welfare Warrior” t-shirts, pin badges and tote bags. The sale of merchandise goes directly towards funding our important global project, helping improve the welfare of wild captive animals.

Our stall gave us a great opportunity to chat with attendees about our extensive welfare work and resources. We were thrilled to see so many people interested in our mission, eager to learn more about what we do and how we do it. The crowd truly connected with our core values and were eager to explore how they could pursue our vision within their own work. Some event revellers were already familiar with some aspects of Wild Welfare and our resources. A number of experienced animal keepers were already keen users of our free downloadable resources. Many attendees we spoke to were in the early stages of their careers, eager to learn and grow within their new roles. We were always excited to introduce them to our extensive suite of helpful online resources, including the “Wild About Welfare” e-learning course and “Care for Us” guides, offering insights into how to encourage positive species specific behaviours for optimum welfare outcomes. Our popular digital education programme, developed in partnership with The Jeanne Marchig International Centre for Animal Welfare Education at the University of Edinburgh’s Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, explores essential components of animal care and management, which in turn can help improve welfare standards for animals under human care.

Likewise, the “Enrichment Roadmap”, developed in conjunction with Wild Enrichment guides users through the entire process of planning and assessing enrichment provision within a captive animal collection. The roadmaps were available to purchase as large physical prints at the event, and can also be downloaded for free from the Wild Welfare website. 

Keeperfest provided us scope to connect with senior industry professionals and the chance to explore new potential partnerships. One great example of this is our ‘Partner For Animals’ programme, which aims to pair experienced staff from some of the world’s leading captive wild animal facilities, with zoos, aquariums and sanctuaries around the world that are looking for support to improve their animal care and welfare practices. The programme aims to establish a positive partnership between Wild Welfare and the facilities, where together all parties plan and carry out the necessary actions to raise animal welfare standards. Partnering facilities help to strengthen the skills and competencies of people and their communities, creating unique and practical relationships that transverse cultural and language barriers, supporting active partnerships that encourage immediate and long-term welfare improvements. Wild Welfare are always on the lookout for new suitable partners for this impactful programme, and Keeperfest gave us an opportunity to lay the foundation of exploring new avenues with potential partners. 

The standout highlight of day three was Sarah’s captivating talk entitled, “Dinosaur Welfare: What we can learn from Jurassic Park“. A fun exploration into the unexpected animal welfare lessons to be learnt from Steven Spielburg’s classic 1993 movie. This innovative presentation used dinosaurs to convey the value of recognising key animal welfare concepts, such as the motivation animals have to seek out food in species-appropriate ways, and the environmental and behavioural needs of different species. The thought-provoking session successfully sparked intrigue amongst the festival going crowds, while introducing key concepts and considerations in a brand new light. 

While Keeperfest 2024 may have been a one-off event for us, it was a great experience and unique chance to engage with this community of enthusiastic professionals. We’re grateful to everyone who attended and supported us across the weekend. We have already begun exploring how to leverage the lessons learned from this experience to continue our mission of improving the lives of captive animals worldwide.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by guest bloggers are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Wild Welfare or any employee thereof. Wild Welfare is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by the guest bloggers. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content (including images) belongs to the author and any liability with regard to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.

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