Dr Jake Veasey
Apr 30, 2023
Care For the Rare has worked with Four Paws for nearly a decade raising standards of animal welfare around the world in Four Paws extensive sanctuary network. As that collaboration deepens, Four Paws and Care for the Rare plan to bring the latest innovation in welfare orientated facility design to sanctuaries around the world.
I just finished a fantastic few days at Four Paw's Tierart Sanctuary in Germany. During the visit, we took time out with a documentary team from the Swedish national broadcaster to discuss the status and future of zoos; I gave my personal views on the future of wild animal care and facility design, and tried to make the case that welfare needs to be the foundation of zoo based conservation, not something that is unnecessarily traded for conservation impacts.
In addition to discussing our ongoing collaboration with Four Paws to deliver what will be the most advanced (and fundamentally different) welfare enhancing habitats for tigers at Tierart, we discussed further collaborations on projects across the Four Paws sanctuary network.
We've already collaborated on numerous development projects over the years in Ukraine, Germany, Switzerland and Vietnam, but we are looking to expand that collaboration, undertaking welfare priority assessments for African lions, development work at Lion's Rock in South Africa and a number of other projects around the world. We also got to discuss the science behind our new approach with the entire sanctuary network in a virtual sanctuary managers meeting.
Four Paws is such an inspiring team to work with, not only are they rescuing animals and tackling policy and education issues around the world, they are also willing to push the boundaries of conventional best practise and consider fundamentally different, evidence-based approaches to facility design and management, and that is something we find particularly exciting, and unfortunately, surprisingly rare!
#fourpaws #carefortherare #animalwelfare #sanctuary #design #collaboration #zoo #conservation #SVT #Sverigestelevision