Dear Colleagues, With pleasure we announce the forthcoming workshop 'Welfare in the Wild: Welfare Science – Current Understanding and Next Steps to Assessment and Application' to be held 6th April, prior to the upcoming coming European Cetacean Society conference to La Spezia, Italy.
Thanks to generous support from the International Fund for Animal Welfare, fees have been waived for this half-day workshop. Registration will begin from 12.30pm, with the workshop commencing 1pm sharp and expected to wrap up by no later than 6pm. Please email co-organizer Isabella Clegg izzicl...@hotmail.co.uk<mailto:izzicl...@hotmail.co.uk> to register your place at this workshop. Abstract Scientific evaluations of animal welfare contribute critical information to ethical, legal and political debates about the ways in which humans impact wild animals and their habitats. Increasingly, human activities, influence not only the survival but also the welfare of wild animals. The investigation of animal welfare via rigorous scientific methods (i.e. welfare science) is a relatively recent development, and especially within its infancy when considering marine mammals. For example, limited scientific literature exists concerning welfare science, with most focused on captive animals. However, as welfare is the balance of positive and negative affective states, its application to wild animals is both necessary and warranted, especially within the Anthropocene. Naturally, key differences in the approach to measuring wild animal welfare exist, with the primary difficulty being access to the animals themselves. Nevertheless, recent technological advances (e.g. drones) alongside the advent of non-invasive behavioural, physiological and cognitive measures can collectively serve to advance the field of wild welfare assessment. This workshop will review what welfare priorities exist for wild populations and identify what methods /technology/tools are best applied to address matters of welfare in the wild. Furthermore, conservation welfare, the emerging discipline which represents the nexus between the scientific disciplines of animal welfare and conservation, will further be addressed. Here the aim will be to identify what scientific principles are needed to best inform decision-making so as to ensure best conservation objectives are met while also maximizing welfare outcomes for the individual animals involved (e.g. Conservation interventions). We look to seeing you in La Spezia! Dr Karen Stockin Animal Welfare and Bioethics Centre Massey University, New Zealand Dr Isabella Clegg Animal Welfare Consulting United Kingdom
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