Animal welfare resources

EAZA Welfare Webinars

EAZA Welfare Webinars are free and open to all, to support animal management professionals across the wider animal management community. Joining the webinars is a fantastic opportunity to gain professional development from experts in the animal welfare field, which you can apply within your own work to promote evidence-based positive animal welfare.

View the past welfare webinar recordings

Our next Welfare Webinar:

When? 9 April, from 1 to 2 pm (CET)

What? Pain is a key contributor to poor welfare in zoo animals, and may often be underdiagnosed due to a lack of validated pain assessment methods, or due to misunderstandings in how different species may demonstrate signs of pain. An understanding of signs of pain in zoo species, pain physiology, and the management of different types of pain, is essential to promoting good welfare in zoos. The diversity of species housed in zoos and their unique physiologies and behaviours mean that evidence-based recognition and thus pain is often challenging to adequately recognise and manage in zoo species. This presentation will use case studies and evidence to review the physiology of pain in a variety of species, and identify key ethical and welfare considerations for pain management.

About the speaker

Heather Bacon is a veterinarian and Dean of the Veterinary School at the University of Central Lancashire. Heather has worked in the UK and internationally and has a particular interest in veterinary skills training, clinical and ethical reasoning, and animal behaviour and welfare. She is a Member of the EAZA Animal Welfare Working Group and of the BIAZA Bear Focus Group.

What is coming in 2025? Get a sneak peek and save the dates!

Provisional dates	Webinar titles	Speakers	Roles and affiliations
13 January 2025	Behind Closed Doors: Considering 24-hour Welfare	Emily Hanley	Lead Keeper (Asian Elephant Team) at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo (UK), EAZA Animal Welfare Working Group Member, EAZA Academy Instructor (Welfare Assessment)
5 February 2025	Swimming Towards Better Welfare Practices for Fish	Claudia Tay	Manager of Animal Welfare and Behaviour Science at S.E.A. Aquarium (Singapore), EAZA Animal Welfare Working Group Advisor
9 April 2025	Pain in zoo animals: challenges and opportunities for better welfare	Heather Bacon	Dean of the Veterinary School at the University of Central Lancashire; Member of the EAZA Animal Welfare Working Group and of the BIAZA Bear Focus Group
28 April 2025	A Dream of a holistic welfare for aquatic species: Enrichment, learning & cognitive abilities	Kai Mattsson	Animal behaviourist at Meritime Consulting, and Senior animal care expert at Särkänniemi Ltd, Aquarium
2 June 2025	The importance of human-animal interactions for zoo animal welfare	Samantha Ward	Associate Professor of Zoo Animal Welfare at Nottingham Trent University (UK), EAZA Records Working Group
date tbc	(TBC) Coral welfare: What does a coral tell you?	Max Janse	Aquarium Curator at Royal Burger's Zoo, EAZA Aquarium Representative and Chair of the European Union of Aquarium Curators (EUAC)

Animal Welfare Assessments

The ability to assess animal welfare within our zoo and aquarium collections is a very valuable tool. Periodic assessment will not only provide understanding of the current state of welfare for the animals in our care, but it will also allow for monitoring of welfare changes and identify areas for welfare improvement.

To help support our Members to fulfil EAZA Standards, the EAZA Executive Office and the EAZA Animal Welfare Working Group (AWWG) have created a guide on how to develop your own institutional welfare assessment programme.

We encourage you to read this guide and believe this will be a helpful resource to your zoo / aquarium to move forward the aim of excellent welfare for all animals in EAZA Members.

Download the guide

Library

The EAZA Animal Welfare Assessments Library is a collection of previously established animal welfare assessments / auditing tools that have been kindly shared from researchers and animal management institutions.

The established assessments all take slightly different approaches to welfare monitoring and therefore this gives the opportunity to align your organisations needs with the appropriate pre-established assessments. A decision-making tool has been provided for the full library by the EAZA Animal Welfare Working Group in order to support Members in selecting the most appropriate assessment for their needs.

A number of institutions have offered to share their welfare assessment tools publicly. Please see below the welfare assessment library for public use. It will continue to grow with more institutions offering their assessments and more translations of the current assessments being submitted.

BIAZA Animal Welfare Toolkit: