Management Guidelines for the Welfare of Zoo Animals - Elephant.

36 Seiten. EAZA, Amsterdam.

Einleitung:

Elephants are kept in zoos as part of an overriding conservation mission so that they are in actively managed breeding programmes. This may mean that non-breeding elephants are kept at some zoos to ensure maximization of the capacity for elephant breeding zoos. Their presence enables progressive educational activities and demonstrates links with field conservation projects and benign scientific research, leading to continuous improvements in breeding and welfare standards.

Zoos have a duty of care: that standards of husbandry practices, housing, health and welfare management are humane and appropriate to the intelligence, social behaviour, longevity and size of elephants. All zoos should aim to continuously improve welfare standards.
Zoos have a moral and legal responsibility to ensure the safety of visitors and staff.

Zoos must continually assess their performance against the EAZA Elephant Management Policy with its defined standards and procedures, in order to demonstrate legal compliance and address legitimate public concerns. The policy documents will be reviewed annually and comments can be submitted at any time by members to one of the EEP Coordinators for consideration.

The goal of this policy statement is the ongoing well-being of elephants in controlled environments in European collections. Furthermore these recommendations offer a tool to all elephant keeping institutions for improving their standards as old keeping regimes are phased out over the years and with the aging of individual elephants.

All sections of this document are intended as exemplary and make no claim to be comprehensive.

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