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: Collaboration and perseverance

When? 21 November from 1 to 2 pm (CET)

What? Collaboration and perseverance: a story on developing an animal welfare assessment method for the Dutch Association of Zoos

This webinar describes the journey undertaken by the Dutch Association of Zoos (NVD) to develop an animal welfare assessment method for collaborative use by its members: from where it began to where they are now; the lessons learned, the practical challenges, etc. Supported by examples and experiences from the zoos, this talk will show how collaboration and perseverance are key to successfully work towards the shared goal of improving and maintaining positive animal welfare in zoos.

Who? This talk is dedicated to all zoological staff wanting to get involved and know more about the practicalities of executing and/or developing animal welfare assessments in zoological institutions.

About the speaker

Lisette van den Berg is a behavioural biologist and a research & animal welfare coordinator at Apenheul Primate Park (the Netherlands). Together with the zoological team, from caretakers to veterinarian, she works to optimise positive animal welfare. She also collaborates with welfare & research coordinators within EAZA and NVD zoos. Lisette is the research advisor for the Gorilla EEP, a member of the EAZA Animal Welfare Working Group. In the context of her PhD, she coordinates a longitudinal research project monitoring the behaviour and welfare of western lowland gorillas in Dutch zoos in collaboration with the research group Animal Behaviour & Cognition, Utrecht University.

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: