Roadmap to the WAZA 2023 Goal
Successful ALPZA and ZAA Accreditation Workshop
Alexandra Guerra and Carmen Linares ALPZA Executive Director and Coordinator of ALPZA’s Accreditation and Ethics Committee Between 24-26 February of this year, the Latin American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums (ALPZA) held a workshop at Africam Safari, Mexico, to review and update its animal welfare standards, within the framework of its accreditation process. The goal of the meeting was to strengthen ALPZA’s animal welfare standards, as well as to learn from the experiences of the Zoo and Aquarium Association Australasia (ZAA) in the implementation of its accreditation process in animal welfare. The workshop was attended by Frank Carlos Camacho, President of ALPZA and CEO of Africam Safari; Nicolas de Graaff, ZAA Accreditation Manager; Alexandra Guerra, Executive Director of ALPZA; Carmen Linares, Coordinator of ALPZA’s Accreditation and Ethics Committee and Director of Conservation Education for Africam Safari, and Diana Vivas, member of ALPZA’s Accreditation and Ethics Committee and Coordinator of Processes and Continuous Improvement at Cali Zoo, Colombia. Following the workshop and consultation with ZAA, ALPZA added 12 new animal welfare standards to the 81 standards already in place, increasing their animal welfare representation from 35% to 41% of the total standards.
In addition to the thorough animal welfare evaluation process carried out by ZAA – utilising the Five Domains model focusing on good welfare – one of the greatest strengths in ZAA’s accreditation system is its approach of examining all of its standards from the animals’ perspective. ZAA explains the rationale behind the system is to give the utmost consideration as to whether the animal is leading a fulfilling life full of positive experiences, providing animals with choice in most of their daily activities. This approach has proved to be invaluable, as it has enriched the ALPZA accreditation process and has meant that the inclusion of the animals’ perspective is pivotal to the animal welfare standards and the overall evaluation process.
About the ALPZA Accreditation Process
During the workshop, the best practices of both associations’ accreditation programmes were identified so as to strengthen the process that the Latin American Association has been working on since 2017, when it first launched its accreditation programme.
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