references
The Kea Husbandry Manual – two years on
Tamsin Orr-Walker
As stated in the Kea Husbandry Manual, kea are an easy species to hold badly and a difficult species to hold well. For zoos this is a very important point to reflect on, as one of the primary reasons for holding kea in captivity is for advocacy purposes. Hancock (2001) highlights the connection between best practice and advocacy value: ‘In the very best zoos, wild animals can be seen as ambassadors for the survival of their species in the wild. In the worst zoos, they generate nothing but negative reactions’. Today’s zoo visitors are more knowledgeable about what constitutes natural behaviour, indicators of good health and appropriate welfare standards. Ensuring all captive kea are maintained at or exceed the new minimum standards is therefore vital not only for the kea’s future but also for the credibility of the captive organisations which hold them. But what should these minimum standards look like? Modern best practice zoos invest significant funds into the animals they hold, particularly so for ‘high priority species’ (Kreger et al, 1998; Mench, 1998) – traditionally the most difficult group to hold well. High priority species are defined as opportunistic, generalist species adapted to highly variable habitats,
with sophisticated social structures and/or those which exhibit complex antipredator behaviours (ibid). All these factors require complex cognitive abilities to make decisions from information previously learned and interpreted. High priority species include primates, cetaceans, bears, canids and by the above authors’ definition, kea – which are intelligent, neophilic, highly social longranging species inhabiting extreme environments in the wild. All high priority species have a greater requirement for enriched environments as they are more likely to develop atypical behaviours such as stereotyping (ibid); a developmental response to living in stressful or barren environments over an extended period of time. Studies conducted in 2005 on NZ captive kea, showed a population generally held in facilities of low complexity and variability and displaying high levels of stereotypic (repetitive) behaviour. In response to these results as well as research which highlighted the complex nature of wild kea habitat, a new husbandry manual was developed by the Kea Conservation Trust (KCT) and endorsed by the Department of Conservation (DOC) and the Zoo and Aquarium Association (ZAA). The new
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manual required holders to not only increase their general husbandry standards but also to include complex enrichment and training regimes, and enclosure environments that more closely reflect the husbandry practices of other high priority species. The new manual was developed with considerable input from a range of experts across both ex-situ and insitu fields in NZ and overseas making it a robust and credible document providing detailed explanation of the reason for changes in the husbandry requirements of kea. The changes have been born out of a need to ensure optimum welfare of this species and are based on current scientific knowledge of kea behaviour and needs in-situ and ex-situ. To enable the changes to be actioned across all New Zealand holders, a draft audit document was included in the
Husbandry Manual, Photo: Orana Wildlife Park