Welfare Auditing Training
The online Welfare Auditing Training is kindly sponsored by Mandai Nature.
Why is Welfare Auditing so important?
The implementation of good management techniques and standards that not only meet needs and requirements, but also promote positive physical and psychological health is fundamental to the care of wild animals. Ultimately, we assess animal welfare to determine whether the care we are providing is sufficient to yield a high quality of life.
Our Welfare Auditing Framework questions a wide range of management practices relating to primary care, that can have a direct and indirect impact on an animal’s welfare. Through the utilisation of a standard that informs and directs the fundamental requirements in animal care, and a checklist that embodies the ideology of the standard, a simple audit can demonstrate gaps and opportunities in operational practice within a captive facility.
Wild Welfare’s Welfare Auditing Training is based on our robust methodology for the assessment of animal welfare within a whole animal collection. This methodology incorporates a collection-wide checklist to review all the aspects of operational management that impact animal welfare against a comprehensive, evidence-based standard.
This training has been applied in more than ten different countries, with more than five national and regional zoo associations and numerous independent zoos already seeing the benefits. This training is designed to encourage engagement in improving animal welfare practices and promote further development towards best practice standards throughout all operational activities.
We currently offer this training as a Webinar Package – which includes four individual webinars each covering a different topic. If you would like to benefit from this Webinar Package, read more about what the training involves and use contact details below to get started.
In our Welfare Auditing Webinars you will learn…
Modern concepts in wild animal welfare practice
This webinar takes the delegate through contemporary thinking behind animal welfare and what constitutes appropriate welfare for wild animals in captivity. It examines situations that represent poor welfare and the consequent outcomes of reduced husbandry and welfare practices. The aim is to empower delegates to recognise circumstances of sub-standard welfare when on a welfare audit. A series of interactive problem-based learning exercises are presented throughout the webinar as a means of understanding how to recognise poor welfare in a captive facility.
Auditing theory and practice
This webinar introduces the concept and processes of auditing against a standard. Often the very idea of auditing appears to be counter-intuitive. In this webinar we lay out the approach and rationale behind audit practice, the different types of audit, what an audit consists of, and its applicability to a captive wild animal facility in terms of a welfare audit. The webinar concludes with a series of interactive exercises.
How to be an auditor
As the title suggests, this webinar lays out the personal and professional requirements of how to act and behave like an auditor, and the disciplines necessary to be an effective welfare auditor. The webinar also covers the anatomy of an audit and what should take place and when. Webinar activities for delegates include a series of practical pre-audit exercises.
How to use a welfare Checklist
A fundamental element of an audit is the prior preparation and use of an Assessment Checklist during the audit itself. Welfare checklists are frequently misunderstood and looked upon as being a standard of welfare in their own right. This is incorrect and this webinar demonstrates how a checklist is actually developed from an animal welfare standard (Wild Welfare Core Fundamentals Standard of captive animal welfare). This webinar gives an introduction to the Standard, how the Checklist is used on a welfare audit and how the Checklist and Standard articulate with each other.
The Welfare Auditing Webinars take a similar format to our classroom-based workshops on this topic, and all relevant documentation will be provided to delegates in advance as part of your training with us.
Why use our approach?
1. Supports long-term improvements
Assessing primary care parameters on a whole zoological collection, based on a standard welfare “duty of care” framework, can support long-term improvements in both animal welfare practice and comprehension.
2. Considers all animals
By reviewing the application of human care within a whole collection, the Wild Welfare Auditing Framework considers all animals held within a facility, avoiding taxa bias and considering all aspects of animal management.
3. Generates engagement in assessment methods
We use a detailed checklist that considers how well a facility is meeting the identified standards. This checklist is comprehensive but simple to use, and helps generate engagement and further discussion in the ways to assess animal welfare across all operational practices, from feeding to cleaning and collection planning to enclosure design.
4. Acts as a benchmark
The simplicity of the Auditing Framework means it can be adapted and used for both self-assessment and external evaluation by third parties, providing an initial benchmark for either party, as well as tracking progress over time.
5. Can be used without supervision
Utilising the Welfare Standard in conjunction with the Assessment Checklist, zoological staff can use the Auditing Framework with or without supervision, dependent on their level of species care knowledge. Even with a basic knowledge, the Checklist is designed to lead an assessor through a series of questions that help create a forensic care and welfare landscape picture. This facilitates the challenging of outmoded management practices that impact animal welfare negatively and encourages engagement in a more complete approach to animal welfare management.
6. Inspiring and globally applicable
This Welfare Auditing Framework serves as a globally applicable and easily understandable system to assess the welfare of animals in zoos and aquariums, with the aim of promoting an animal’s physical and psychological condition. It can help inspire zoos and aquariums in all regions of the world to embrace modern zoological practices and raise their standards of animal care.