So chatting to some colleagues this morning, I got a couple of responses. One gentleman said to me, Oh, you're the prozu guy. And someone else for me, oh, you're a brave man, or you're a crazy man.

And that's exactly why I'm here. So I did have to give some thought to, why would I want to stand up and Defend or put forward. The point of views.

And so I will stick very much to the wording of what we've decided to debate and that will become clear why I've chosen to do that in a second. So We've kept wild animals in captivity, not domestic animals, for a long time, OK. Many people agree that we're living in the Anthropocene.

So a period where there's a lot of humans and we're having all sorts of impacts on the planet and a lot of animals are endangered and that threatened with being, with going extinct. And so we have this balance with people understanding we're trying to achieve something to address this, from conservation, from research, from education, but mitigating that with What about the welfare of these animals that are being kept for this purpose? So there's good being done.

And if we're honest about it, we have to be honest what is really necessary. But how do we balance that obviously with the individual animals. Now, not pro zoo.

And I'm not anti. I'm pro happy animals, and I use the word happy like I do to my 5 and, you know, now 6 year old son and my daughter, so they can explain the concept. So I apologise to you who are welfare scientists who hate that word.

But we have to communicate with non-veterinarians and non-scientists in a way that they can understand that because that is the people that zoos will reach. OK? So I'm not employed by a zoo.

I actually spend 70% of my time working with wild animals that go back to the wild. They're either living there or they rehabilitate and they go back to the wild. The rest of my time is split between zoos and sanctuaries, which are permanent refuges for wild animals in captivity.

So they are, in essence, the same thing, although the purpose is different. Now, If you're that gibbon, are you in the wild, are you in rehabilitation? Are you in a sanctuary, or are you in a zoo?

It doesn't matter because it's your perception of your environment and what your life is that matters. The person looking outside is happier that that is called a sanctuary rather than a zoo, but it doesn't matter to the individual who's experiencing that life. OK.

So we also tend to get very focused on everything being rosy in the wild. So I remember a conversation with a colleague in East Africa about a black rhino with a broken leg. And it couldn't be managed and it took 7 weeks and it died.

That's not a very happy experience. That's not a high welfare state for an animal that is in a perfectly natural non man-made state in the wild, OK? I think it's perfect in in zoos, but many animals actually can have a very high level of welfare in the zoo.

So that's an important concept. The other thing is that this is not an ethical debate, OK? I'm not saying we should have zoos.

We shouldn't have zoos. That's something completely different. They're gonna exist whether I like them or not, OK?

I'm not Harry Potter, I can't wave a wand and change the world. They're gonna be zoos. So can we manage the welfare of these animals at a sufficiently high level that they have a life worth living of good quality, OK?

So, and I think that's very important and I think I relish the opportunity for different sides to debate this because Many in the zoo community are very fearful of an organisation like Born Free, who is critical of many things we do. But that's fantastic. Otherwise you get complacent.

Everything's great. We've always done it that way. If there is pressure from outside, from people who disagree with your viewpoint, you have to question why you see things the same way.

And the big problem from the zoo community is they're so focused on telling everyone about the conservation work that they do. And that is not an individual animal thing, that we do not communicate what the welfare status of these animals are. And in many, many situations, it can be really good.

OK. So it's not an ethical debate. This is not defending zoos.

This is not anti-zoos. We want to talk about welfare, which is about individual animals. OK?

So Obviously, stereotypic behaviour in a sea lion is very obviously poor welfare. However, the caveat is that lack of poor welfare doesn't mean the animal has good welfare, and that sometimes gets missed in captive animal husbandry in general. We see this problem with dogs and cats.

You know, I come home, I pat my dog on on the head. It's a solitary dog. You see it at night.

Is that great welfare? That's a, a social canard that is diurnal, but it sits at home sleeping on its own all day, and I pat it at home and then. That's not really the situation at home, but We deal with these cases every day.

So how come is that very different when you come to the zoo? Then we also have this problem of what the public, because people are coming to zoos, perceive as being good for an animal versus what is. So you've got the jaguar in a beautiful naturalistic environment that looks fantastic to the public, but it is sterile as heck for that animal.

That animal's miserable, but the public doesn't perceive that as the problem. Then the public sees an arid species tortoise in a big exhibit wandering around on its own and it's quite dry and it's eating grass and it's miserable. They think it's miserable.

Why doesn't it have friends? Because I'd be lonely because we're monkeys. I mean, apes, whatever you wanna call it, but we're social, you know, whether you watch TV and there's something science fiction or historical, it's all about the personal interactions.

So that for social animals is important. But for tortoises living in an arid area, that's solitary. Put them in a big group, keeping the public perception good.

I informed as it is, is actually detrimental to that animal's welfare. So this is a constant struggle is meeting what people think is good welfare from a layperson's perspective and what is actual good welfare. So I don't really like the the concept of the the five freedoms because it's a very negative way of approaching welfare and saying, you know, you mustn't do this, rather than what should we be doing.

So, you know, thinking about it in a domain perspective is quite good. There are all these things that go into a good mental domain and then into a welfare status. And whatever animal we keep, there's a process that we can try and achieve, whether it is a dog, whether it is a bearded dragon, whether it is a zoo animal, or it's an animal in a sanctuary.

We need to understand what they need. And there's a huge body of science that, you know, that helps us with this. We then need to find a way to apply that in practise.

And we need to check that that actually makes sense because what we may discover from our scientific research may actually make very little difference. Well-meaning and well-intentioned and well based in logic as it is, it may not actually work in the situation that we're applying it. Then we need to use that as a feedback loop.

So there is a lot of research out there looking at many different things. For example, control, the animal's perception of control over its situation. So the zoo manager might be terrified that this important species that the zoo's livelihood depends on if they leave the slide open, they can go and hide in the inside house.

No one sees it and that's a disaster. You close the slide, then the animal paces by the slide. When you open the slide for many of these species, you find the fact that they know they can go offshore.

They don't bother because it's there. If they get annoyed and there's someone with a, a neon pink outfit and they really don't like it, then they go in the back. But most of the time they don't need to.

And, you know, these are, these are little nuances that still need to be looked at further to to understand the basis for what was on. So, you know, I must applaud Adele and her team for Good article on octopus in the veterinary record where the zoo community with our. You know, with what we're trying to achieve, we're worrying about the conditions that will keep this octopus hidden.

And there are forces working in very different directions in other parts of the world. Can we industrially farm these, these, you know, these animals? And we'll come back to the spider.

There's some very interesting research and there is a point for that. We'll come back to it. So many of these concepts are not new.

I mean, they've been around for ages. There's just been this conservation mentality that You know we're trying to achieve something there, and I like Born Free's concept of compassionate conservation. We're trying to achieve something, but not at the expense of the individuals, OK.

So a war in the Middle East or in another country does not threaten the existence of humankind. It's a disaster for the individuals caught in there, and this is the same thing. We're trying to achieve something, conservation in some terms.

But it shouldn't come at the expense of the individuals. So I hate this term enrichment, which will drive people mad here. So it's not the devices, but it's the term because it implies that we can fix things by putting in a bunch of toys.

So you keep an animal in an enclosure and then we put in a toy and things are better. And then keepers do not understand this, the public doesn't understand this. If you have a fantastic environment, a panda up a tree, it doesn't need a little cardboard toilet roll with a bunch of straw and some tidbits in it, does it?

It's mentally stimulated, it can smell things, tries to snap it, flies going past, it's looking at Sort of the animal doesn't lie down at the bottom and, you know, amused by someone wandering past. So enrichment's a bad term. It should be a temporary solution as a compromise while you fix the environment, OK?

So a suitable environment that meets the animals need doesn't need enrichment, as a, we put this in twice a week when we've got time. And a suitably enriching environment. So a welfare management protocol or device would be a better term.

Just the word sounds silly, and to me, it actually, it's detrimental to how we achieve things. And the other bit I would point out is the word can in this topic. Can we meet these animals' welfare needs?

Of course we can. You can probably feasibly meet any animal's welfare needs. Do we?

Of course not. In many situations we don't, and that's to our shame. But this can is extremely, extremely important because if we lose this debate, so you agree with Chris and Mark that we can't keep these animals, there's two results to this.

There there is a community of people who are going to keep these animals, and there are people who fervently believe in the conservation perspective. And if they disengage from welfare, then why bother? Because we cannot make things, we cannot meet these animals' needs.

So we agree, we can't, we can't meet their welfare needs. Well, we're still gonna keep them for conservation, and we don't improve things like non-stun slaughter, OK? If you're a purist, and it's this or nothing.

You may not make get your way, but in the middle ground is where you improve things for the animals. And so this can we keep them is important because it implies that we can do things better. We need to continue to learn.

We need to try. We need to find a feedback mechanism. And then we can engage people who don't, it's not that they don't care about animal welfare.

It's not their priority, but we need to engage them to make this work. So can is really important. And the most difficult part of this whole cycle is this part, which we know, all everyone who practises animal welfare knows that.

We do a lot of research and this is wonderful, and then we put a lot of things into practise, but it doesn't work. What we think may work often doesn't. And so this is the part that we are still working on finding things that work in practise and are not pure research.

So my last little bit that I want to say is the zoo licencing, but this is a framework and Chris will tell you how it doesn't function and it's flawed. And my bit is to point out the spider again. So if I take a spider to a television camera and I pull its legs off one by one, now you may not like tarantulas and they may horrify you, but they can live almost 40 years, OK?

They have a very different perception of the world, and we don't understand it. But it's an animal that lives 4 times as long as your dog deserves some consideration. But if I pull off this, this animal's legs and crush it slowly in my hand or under foot on a television camera, you cannot prosecute me, OK?

Under welfare legislation. But in a zoo, you'll see the Zoo licencing Act classifies mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, any multicellular organism that's not a plant or a fungus. So I can go around as a zoo inspector and I can look at the environment and I can just go.

It's not acceptable for the needs as we understand it at the moment. I can improve the life of that animal, even with the limitations that go around that, which is something no other legislation to protect animal welfare can do, OK? And this enables us, of course, as our, as our knowledge evolves, to continue to be more demanding of what we ask zoos to do.

So it, it fights against complacency as we understand these animals better and it's easy for orangutans, but obviously for lesser species that people don't focus on, we can still do good as our knowledge improves. So thank you for that and I look forward to some robust debate. And again, I'm really, I'm really pleased to get a different perspective from people like Mark and Chris because we need it.

We need different opinions to make us think about what we do.