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 webinar

Who? Ross Hickles, Live food coordinator at ZSL London Zoo and member of the BIAZA Terrestrial Invertebrate working group

What? At the start of 2025, BIAZA's Terrestrial Invertebrate working group launched a new series of live food care guidelines, aimed at providing a good standard of welfare for inverts regardless of purpose. This workshop will provide a starting block of information for everyone in attendance to aid in unity of live food husbandry and will focus mainly on black crickets Gryllus Bimaculatus. Details on the work currently being undertaken by the working group will also be given. Anyone interested in invertebrate welfare is welcome to join.

When? 26 September from 13h to 14h CET

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

Provisional dates	Webinar titles	Speakers	Roles and affiliations
13 January	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	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	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	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	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
26 September	Live food culturing and welfare	Ross Hickles	Live food coordinator at ZSL London Zoo
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 (English) 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.

Русский Russian Translation

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: