Evaluation of enclosure design, with focus on wild predators in Swedish zoos

Sammanfattning: In today’s modern zoos, there are five primary goals that are focused on: research, animal welfare, conservation, entertainment and education of the public. Entertainment is stated to be one of the main factors to why visitors come to zoos. In some cases these goals creates conflicts such as visitors may want to be close to and interact with the animals, whereas it might be best for the animal if it had more space to move around. In order to get a better understanding of the animals’ welfare and ability to perform species specific behaviours, the design of the enclosures for the animals have to be taken in account. Stressors in the environment such as inadequate environmental designs can cause animals to perform unwanted behaviours such as stereotypic behaviours and this can decrease the animal welfare. Since no recent study have been made that investigates the enclosure designs in Swedish zoos, this master thesis focused on the housing of wild predatory animals in Swedish zoos. The overall aim of this master thesis is to compare Swedish regulations concerning enclosure design and environment of animals in zoos and the current enclosures in Swedish zoos, with a focus on housing of wild predators. Information about the enclosure design was collected through direct observations of enclosures combined with a questionnaire provided to the zoos visited. The questionnaire was designed to collect information regarding cleaning routines of the enclosures, whether any animals have health issues and if the zoo has extra space to care for sick animals or animals in need of extra attention among other things. The enclosure designs were then compared in relation to the Swedish regulations concerning housing of zoo animals (SJVFS 2009:92, Saknr L108) set by the Swedish Board of Agriculture. A total of 47 enclosures were observed in five different zoos located in the middle and south of Sweden. The overall results from this study shows that the enclosures on display for the visitors all meet the required standard in Swedish regulation. The barriers on each of the enclosures investigated are well designed for the species housed. Almost all of the enclosures provide suitable environments to promote performance of species specific behaviours, with a few exceptions, these being the limited possibility to hide for some individuals, or the opportunity to dig for others. In conclusion, this master thesis found that overall Swedish zoos do follow the Swedish animal welfare regulation on housing for zoo animals. The design of enclosures in Swedish zoos has not been thoroughly investigated. In order to understand the full extent of the way enclosures in Swedish zoos are designed, further studies on the design of enclosures and the way different designs affects captive animals is needed.