Fall 2023 Methods Workshop
In Fall 2023, Wild Animal Initiative hosted a five-part virtual workshop series on methods in wild animal welfare science. The program was free and covered an introduction to wild animal welfare, guidance on measuring wild animal welfare, guidance on creating and validating new measures, and a walkthrough exercise in which participants designed a wild animal welfare study. Selected talks from the workshops are shared here.
Workshop 3 | November 13, 2023Applying Animal Welfare to Wild Animals
The third workshop translated the concepts introduced in the second session and applied them to wild animals. Dr. Dave Daversa provided a detailed description of various physiological measures of welfare in wild animals, while Dr. Bonnie Flint presented a comprehensive overview of the various types of welfare indicators and metrics currently being used or evaluated for wild animal welfare. Dr. Andrea Harvey shared her research on assessing the welfare of wild horses.
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Dr. Dave Daversa is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, where he studies the impacts of stressors on amphibians in California. His foundational research examined stress in the context of wildlife infectious disease, and he has contributed to several publications on the fungal pathogen of amphibians, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), which is causing amphibian declines worldwide. His current research examines wildlife stress in the context of human disturbance. Dr. Daversa uses epigenetic approaches to develop new measures of welfare and stress across animal lifespans.
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Dr. Bonnie Flint completed her PhD at the Virginia Tech Department of Biological Sciences, studying behavioral ecology, physiological ecology, and disease ecology of banded mongooses in Botswana. She has worked on varied projects in ecology and conservation and spent many years in science education teaching introductory biology, as well as anatomy and physiology.
Andrea Harvey
Application of Animal Welfare Assessment Methodology to Wild Animals: A Case Study in Wild Horses
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Andrea Harvey is an RCVS Registered Specialist in Feline Medicine, a European Specialist in Veterinary Internal Medicine, and holds ANZCVS memberships in Animal Welfare. Andrea is also the International Society of Feline Medicine (ISFM) Australasian Representative, has lectured widely internationally, and has contributed to numerous textbooks, including co-editing the BSAVA Manual of Feline Practice and Feline Medicine: Review and Test. Andrea is passionate about animal welfare as well as the behavior and welfare of horses. She is currently undertaking a PhD in the population ecology and welfare of Australian wild horses (brumbies), and in her spare time, enjoys training and rehabilitating brumbies on her farm. She also provides veterinary care to brumbies being prepared for rehoming.
Additional information
Event Accessibility and Inclusivity Guide
Contact
Grey Fernandez, event coordinator
grey.fernandez@wildanimalinitiative.org