Currently Director of Care for the Rare and Veasey Zoo Design working with governments, zoos and NGOs on wild animal welfare, conservation and zoo design, Jake Veasey is one of the world’s leading zoo animal welfare experts. He was central to the renaissance at both the Calgary Zoo in Canada and the Woburn Safari Park in the United Kingdom, Veasey is most passionate about the role of zoos at the interface between conservation and animal welfare. Here is his story.
@ Calgary Zoo
Veasey’s love for animals began at a young age. “Like a lot of kids, I was obsessed with dinosaurs,” he remembered. “Even at the age of three or four I was aware of the fact I could never see a dinosaur as they were extinct and that made me sad, and the closest thing to a dinosaur I could see in my mind was a rhinoceros, which I knew was threatened because of poaching. And so I wanted to help rhinos and decided at a really young age that I wanted to save rhinos from extinction.” Veasey’s first zoo job was selling hot dogs at the London Zoo while at school where he felt even as a hotdog vendor he was part of something bigger with a purpose. He later carried out research on the behavior of tigers at London Zoo as well as four others zoos in the U.K. before being offered a PhD to study black rhino in Zimbabwe. “The PhD fell through at the last-minute due to a surge in poaching there,” he recalled.
“Because I’d produced some interesting an animal welfare focused research from my undergrad, the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals funded me to do a master’s degree in applied animal behavior and animal welfare," Veasey said. "For the research component of the degree I went out to Zimbabwe to work alongside the rhino researchers I would have been carrying out my PhD with, and collected data on giraffe behavior. I compared this to data I’d collected on giraffe at five UK zoos and safari parks to examine a lot of assumptions about the comparative welfare of wild and captive animals. Two things struck me at the time, the first was the wild was a really tough place and so not all differences in behavior between wild and captive animals were likely to indicate a reduction in captive animal welfare. The fact that safari park giraffe spent more time sat down than wild giraffe suggested to me they were aware of their reduced vulnerability to predators in captivity which I felt could most reasonably be interpreted as a positive impact of captivity. The second was how fragile wild populations such as rhino were to extinction; where we worked was a militarized Intensive Protection Zone or IPZ, and even here, the data we collected on rhino distribution was withheld from individuals employed to protect them because there was a belief it might be used by some to poach rhino. This awareness of how vulnerable many wild animals were to extinction and the potential positive welfare impacts captivity can have on some aspects of animal wellbeing profoundly shaped my career. When I finished my masters I undertook a PhD on behavioral ecology; essentially studying animal behavior as a product of evolution where I was given the challenge of answering a question first raised by Darwin well over a century previously on why birds lay fewer eggs than they can rear. The answer as it turned out is predation risk but that’s another story!”
@ Calgary Zoo
After getting his PhD, Jake Veasey got hired as Head of Animal Care and Conservation at Woburn Safari Park. “Woburn had been open for thirty years and so in my opinion a lot of the infrastructure was at the end of its life cycle” Veasey explained. “But the Woburn estate had an interesting history with wildlife and conservation; it helped save the Prezwalski’s wild horse and was responsible for saving the Pere David’s deer and reintroducing it back to China, but I didn’t think the safari park reflected this conservation legacy at that time. I was lucky enough to join at a time where I could help shape the park’s redevelopment.”
@ Calgary Zoo
“It was widely perceived at that time in the non-charitable zoo sector that conservation was a cost; something you do with surplus resources,” he elaborated. “I felt very strongly conservation made absolute sense commercially as well as ethically. There’s a far more compelling story that can be told with endangered species that visitors want to hear, and after all a hybrid giraffe or tiger is no less expensive to care for than a critically endangered one, so it was a clear to me to focus wherever possible on endangered species.” In subsequent years the safari park saw its attendance grow dramatically and its redevelopment to become what Veasey described as “one of the best hoofstock conservation centers on the planet”.
@ Calgary Zoo
Another important change was the way in which animals were presented to the public; exemplified by the lemur habitat Veasey designed. “One of the things I loved about the safari park were the huge enclosures; our lion and rhino enclosures were bigger than most zoos, and in these habitats Woburn’s visitors didn’t surround animals like they did in traditional zoos, it was the other way around with the animals surrounding people. I felt that was good for the animals and great for the visitors and I wanted to replicate that in the ‘zoo’ element of the park so we reduced the number of smaller single species habitats people walked around, and replaced them with, bigger, more engaging multispecies habitats in which people could safely be surrounded by animals, flipping the traditional zoo concept on its head. The first major step I took on that journey was with the lemurs. Woburn had lots of mature trees on the site and a huge amount of land but our lemurs like everyone else’s at the time were in relatively confined spaces,” Jake Veasey stated. “I took the view we had huge trees and we had arboreal primates that have evolved to live and feed in the canopy of mature trees so why wouldn’t we put the two together and build a habitat that far more effectively provides for the needs of the lemurs with a cluster of mature trees at its core?."
@ Calgary Zoo
"To accommodate both the trees and the jumping distance of the lemurs, the habitat needed to became so big that if people looked into it from the outside they weren’t going to see the lemurs," Veasey continued. "So we brought the visitors in the now much bigger lemur space, lifting the visitors up into the trees on a raised walkway. This combination of lemurs thriving in complex tree-filled spaces and immersing visitors in that space in a way that didn’t interfere with the natural behaviors of the lemurs was unique at the time and was as popular with the park’s lemurs as it was with our visitors. We won awards for the design of this enclosure, became the biggest fundraiser for lemur conservation in the EAZA Madagascar campaign off the back of this exhibit and successfully bred three endangered lemur species there. This was a pivotal development, it went on to change how people built for lemurs; I’m not sure if a single lemur ‘cage’ was built in the UK after that date; everyone started building walkthroughs, and its great to see that legacy continuing with the opening of Calgary’s new lemur habitat this year, a project I devised before leaving which ultimately has its roots in that development at Woburn.”
@ Calgary Zoo
“The important point about Woburn’s lemur habitat is it showed that improving welfare and conservation outputs could make sense commercially as well as ethically," Jake Veasey reflected. "For me, my motivation was to do the right thing by the animals Woburn held and the species more generally, but I believe this also dramatically improved the visitor experience and so that’s been my guiding light ever since; welfare, conservation and the visitor experience aren’t at odds, they’re actually interdependent. People don’t like seeing unhappy animals, and whilst they might not come to a zoo to save a species, if they can leave having had a good day but known they’ve helped support an organization that does help save species, I think that’s a powerful combination and something that differentiates zoos from any other visitor experience. I think in recent years we’ve seen how poor perceptions of welfare have been the downfall of a number of wild animal facilities and so zoos that don’t prioritize welfare and conservation are playing with fire.”
@ Calgary Zoo
The Woburn Safari Park had the space and resources to become a leader in conservation and breeding a variety of species. “We developed a focus on ungulate conservation, building on the P-horse and Pere David deer legacy and playing to the strengths we had with the large grass and wooded habitats at our disposal. In 2007 we constructed the African Ungulate Conservation Center, we designed this around a centralized ‘mega-barn’ that through a series of races serviced some 60 acres of paddocks,” Veasey elaborated. “It held large breeding herds of bongo, addax, Grevy’s zebra, scimitar-horned oryx, Somali wild ass and mhorr gazelle. As probably the biggest concentration of critically endangered African ungulate species on earth it was a very powerful statement of commitment to conservation which was backed up by the work I was able to do in-situ with the Kenya Wildlife Service developing a conservation strategy for mountain bongo and also managing the European breeding program for the species. Not long after we constructed one of the most innovative and biggest facilities for white rhinoceros which we designed specifically around their social behaviours with large woodchipped communal spaces inside, to complement the 50 plus acres we provided them outside.”
@ Calgary Zoo
Veasey also led vital changes to the wellness of Woburn’s giraffes and elephants; “With the insights from my giraffe research in zoos and the wild we made some significant changes to diet and management, and over the course of the next decade Woburn became probably the most successful breeder of the critically endangered Rothschild’s giraffe outside of Africa,” he commented. “I was acutely aware of the importance of browse to giraffes and we made a huge commitment to their welfare by planting 10,000 trees on the estate so we could harvest leaves giving our giraffe access to fresh leaves in spring and summer, and browse silage in autumn and winter; I think we were probably the first temperate zoo or wildlife park to guarantee daily access to leaves for giraffe year-round, and to do it for as many as 18 giraffe was a massive undertaking. It’s great to see how this has caught on because giraffe aren’t a species that complains about poor welfare in an obvious way, but there’s no doubt in my view that they are an obligate browser and need access to a broad leaf based diet daily”.
@ Calgary Zoo
“Also among the biggest transformations we made were to the elephant facility at Woburn which was parallel to an ongoing shift in elephant management generally at the time through my involvement in the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the innovative husbandry guidelines we established at the time. Foot problems were a widespread issue amongst zoo elephants at the time and I took the view we needed to focus our efforts on preventing these problems rather than focusing on treating them which was the way things were back then. I believe the substrates we used in the new barn at Woburn, both sand and woodchip, have proven to be successful in doing just that and are now the norm. I also took the view we needed to prioritize the psychological needs of elephants more effectively; in the past physical health had been the overriding management focus; things like treating foot problems, drawing blood and so forth dominated so much elephant management thinking. To address the psychological as well as the physical needs of elephants I felt we need to manage them as a herd rather than a collection of individuals and so at Woburn we put a lot of effort into designing a house in which elephants could feed as a herd for biologically appropriate amounts of time without getting obese. In the past zoos concentrated elephant feed in time and space; we gave them high energy ‘meals’ rather than allowing them to feed on low energy foods on a near continuous basis and this created a lot of spare time and also set elephants up to fail socially, the ‘meals’ provided opportunities to compete for food in a way that didn’t exist in the wild, and this competition, and the reaction of zoos to it of separating elephants for feeding and overnight ultimately destroyed their social structure in so many facilities and undermined their welfare hugely. Getting elephants to feed as a herd, for as long as they do in the wild, I felt was crucial and together with the substrate, influenced not just the design of the new elephant house but its management as well."
@ Calgary Zoo
In 2010, after over a decade at Woburn, Veasey crossed the Atlantic to become Director of Animal Care, Conservation and Research at the Calgary Zoo. At the time, the zoo was in need of a culture change. “Visitor wise the zoo has always been very successful but there were some challenges in regards to the public perception of welfare management and internal conflicts within the organization were an issue,” Veasey recalled. “Mistakes were occurring and a number of animals died in avoidable circumstances, which blew up into a media storm in Calgary. Things like enrichment devices going wrong, life support systems failing and animals getting injured. This all culminated in a poor standing with the community and the Calgary Zoo’s accreditation with the AZA being tabled. The zoo decided to look for new leadership in the animal management team and I was hired to help get it out of what had become a bit of a mess!”
@ Calgary Zoo
Part of the problem was the governance structure of the zoo. “The management of the zoo was overseen by the Zoological Society of Calgary while the keeper staff were employed by the City of Calgary,” Veasey remarked. “Both sides had the best interests of the animals at heart but effectively having two employers within the same organization led to all sorts of problems; it’s certainly not how you’d design an ideal working environment! What I tried to do with the benefit of coming in from the outside was bring it back down to the basics and remind everyone we’re all here for the same reasons; to deliver the highest standards of animal welfare we can regardless of who employed us, and I focused my decision making on that and encouraged my team to challenge my decisions through that filter; what’s ultimately best for the animals rather than simply what individual staff preferred to. I tried to keep everything above the politics of the organizational structure and whilst it was challenging at times, the strategy was successful which was probably most clearly demonstrated by our unconditional reaccreditation by the AZA in 2013; a leap forward from having previously been in the ejector seat and the brave decision of the zoo to relocate is breeding herd of Asian elephants on welfare grounds without any external pressure at the time.”
@ Calgary Zoo
Jake Veasey felt his outside perspective was able to help him guide the Calgary Zoo to being the best zoo it could be. “Coming in from the outside, you always have the benefit of looking at things with fresh eyes,” he explained. “When you’re too close to something you can’t always see it for what it is. I like to think I helped the organization recognize its strengths and build on them but also to identify its weaknesses and deal with them and thankfully, the leadership at Calgary empowered me to make a success of this transition with them. In our conservation activities we played to our strengths focusing on species recovery and community based conservation and in animal management terms we addressed gaps by putting in place robust animal welfare management strategies covering everything from a new long range masterplan supported by clearly defined collection planning principles, relocated the highly popular elephants from the zoo all the way through to establishing a more structured approach to ensure best practice in animal care was delivered every day, by everyone, to all our animals.”
@ Calgary Zoo
@ Calgary Zoo
“One aspect of that was the zoo’s mission and vision which I felt should be a greater call to action and statement of intent for all staff and our community. And so we changed the zoo’s vision to be Canada’s leader in wildlife conservation,” Veasey elaborated. “That’s a very ambitious goal for a zoo but I feel Calgary Zoo has a unique conservation opportunity. Parks Canada who manage the nation’s national parks clearly have a huge conservation impact within Canada that we couldn’t rival but Calgary Zoo could and does support them with reintroduction and species monitoring programs in a way that few other organizations could, but crucially Calgary also had a mandate oversees in a way that Parks Canada can’t have, and that’s what makes a zoo like Calgary potentially so special.”
@ Calgary Zoo
@ Calgary Zoo
When Jake Veasey arrived at the Calgary Zoo in late 2010, the zoo was developing Penguin Plunge, a state-of-the-art habitat for Antarctic and sub-Antartic birds. “When I arrived, construction was underway and it was very much along the standard North American penguin habitat model with a focus on indoor space, gunnite and life support systems,” he remembered. Veasey proposed some different ideas in the exhibit, building on his experience managing penguins in Europe. “Calgary had an interesting climate from a penguin perspective as our winter temperatures went down to those comparable with Antarctica,” he explained “so there was an opportunity to give the penguins both indoor and outdoor components depending on the species and season; King Penguins could live out in winter and Humboldt’s could live out in summer with the species flipping seasonally. So I felt we should be a bit more imaginative with the outside space which we more than doubled in size from the original plans and actually adding extensive undulating vegetated spaces and cutting back on the gunnite so penguins had more scope to could and dig their own nests if they wanted.”
@ Calgary Zoo
@ MIG Portico
A number of other changes were made to ensure top-notch penguin welfare. “We also enlarged the indoor pool to maximize the behavioral opportunities for the penguins,” Veasey remarked. “Within the footprint of the original plan we shifted the design which enabled us to double the space available for the penguins inside and out, and still stay within budget and schedule! Instead of hard gunnite surfaces where we couldn’t have grass and plants, we used a pebble substrate which completely eliminated bumble feet, which was great to see. Again, we shouldn’t just get good at treating health problems, we need to focus our efforts on designing environments and management systems for animals where they don’t have these issues in the first place and my experience in the UK showed the benefit of substrate on foot health; the small patches of AstroTurf you see so often on gunnite habitats are not the solution!”
@ Calgary Zoo
@ Calgary Zoo
The biggest challenge the Calgary Zoo faced during Jake Veasey’s tenure was a flood that caused $50m worth of damage to the zoo. “Canada is a big place with a lot of nature, and the flood was Canada’s biggest natural disaster and the zoo was absolutely at its epicenter, this was a big deal and could have been a much bigger disaster than it was. The flood occurred a week or so after the zoo’s reaccreditation with the AZA and so at the time, the zoo was looking amazing!” he recalled. “At around 2 o’clock that afternoon, I got a call saying there was going to be some flooding. Calgary Zoo is essentially an island on the Bow River and as time went by, it became clear the flooding would be unprecedented so we had no way of knowing just how devastating it was going to be. With so little time I called the animal care staff together and we triaged our rescue efforts based on what animals were most at risk to flooding, which posed the most risk in a flood situation and which, like elephants we couldn’t move at such short notice but who could stand in water for a day or so without too much harm. We couldn’t move the entire zoo in the 6-7 hour notice period we had but we did move all of our big cats, a whole variety of primates and many other animals to our veterinary center which is on higher ground outside the island. It was a very tense emotional time and everyone in the zoo and across the city pulled together so effectively. It was a near miracle it worked out as well as it did and everyone involved in that should feel proud of what we achieved.”
@ Calgary Zoo
The amount of effort and thought that had to go into keeping the animals safe was immense. “For those left on the island we fed out emergency rations whilst making sure they couldn’t escape the flood-compromised facilities,” Veasey stated. “The hippos had swum out of their habitat into the Savannah building that certainly wasn’t hippo proof so a lot of effort was put in to securing that. This was a real challenge because we couldn’t even see them half the time as the giraffe bedding had floated to cover the entire water surface in the building! At one point, myself and two curators Jamie Dorgan and Colleen Baird were literally swimming with giraffes to try and get them to high, dry ground hoping we wouldn’t bump into a loose hippo! It’s strange to think that we might be among only a handful of people who have swum amongst giraffes in human history! Giraffes are a sensitive species and as the days went by I felt there was a risk we were going to lose them as their condition was dropping before our eyes and we were struggling to get food in them as the stood chest deep in cold water. We tried so hard to push them out of the flooded building but they just refused to go somewhere new. It wasn’t until several weeks after the flood I began to relax for their sake.”
@ Calgary Zoo
Fortunately animal casualties were minimal and the zoo was able to rebound and reopen after a couple of months. “We lost a number of facilities but we took it as another opportunity to prioritize construction that could enhance our ability to deliver excellent animal welfare and increase our conservation and education output.” Veasey said. “Collectively we turned this devastating event into an opportunity to drive the zoo forward.”
@ Calgary Zoo
One of Jake Veasey’s biggest accomplishments that stemmed from his time at the Calgary Zoo was developing a process “to identify the psychological needs of animals which can be used to guide habitat design and management to deliver peak welfare.” He cited explaining animal management decisions to the zoo’s board members who didn’t have a zoological background as one of the triggers for him to “think in a slightly different manner about welfare prioritization and think about how a process could be made repeatable and quantifiable.” As a result of this kind of thinking, animal welfare practices at the Calgary Zoo became some of the best in the world.
@ Calgary Zoo
Veasey also oversaw a shift in conservation activity at the zoo. “The Calgary Zoo had been breeding Vancouver Island marmots and whooping cranes at offsite facilities dedicated to breeding for release for many years,” he noted. “and so it was natural for us to start discussions with Parks Canada in assisting the breeding of woodland caribou and greater sage grouse, as it became clear they needed assistance in the wild. We began positioning ourselves as becoming the go to breeding facility for Parks Canada reintroduction projects. I felt very privileged to be selected by the Canadian Association of Zoos and Aquariums to speak to Canadian parliament about the roles zoos could play in a national conservation plan for Canada and Calgary Zoo continues to deliver that, demonstrating how they can support both conservation at home through captive breeding for release and in the science of species recovery, as well as overseas through community based in-situ projects like the Wechiau Hippo Sanctuary in Ghana and the Bongo Surveillance Project in Kenya; a species the zoo does not even hold.”
@ Calgary Zoo
Jake Veasey pointed out the Wechiau Hippo Sanctuary as a textbook example of where he wants to see zoo conservation projects going. “Here Calgary Zoo showed over an extended period of time that it was possible to assist communities and conservation by finding synergies between the needs of people and wildlife. The project is not just about the hippos but the habitat and the other species that share that. Over the years the zoo has assisted in the economic development of the people who live there in a way that’s compatible with environmental conservation and this was demonstrated in the data the zoo’s conservation research team collected on biodiversity in the sanctuary over the year. We showed working with communities and finding ways communities can benefit from conservation activities really is the way to go.”
@ Calgary Zoo
In 2014, having help get the zoo back on its feet following the flood Veasey decided it was time to move back to the UK. “Calgary Zoo had definitely turned a corner and was heading in a fantastic direction but I was keen to return to the UK and pursue some new conservation, animal welfare and zoo development opportunities,” Veasey remarked. “The biggest impact I could have at the Calgary Zoo was probably already behind me. It felt like a good time to move on so I started consulting in the UK, helping set up a new wildlife park there and in-situ as well in Southeast Asia working with governments and NGO’s on a variety of national conservation and animal welfare initiatives.”
@ Calgary Zoo
Currently Jake Veasey heads up Care for the Rare; “What I’m doing now is focusing on the interface between animal welfare and conservation,” he elaborated. “Animal welfare and conservation are almost seen as two separate goals but if we look at species conservation issues in the wild, they go hand in hand with animal suffering. And the relationship ex-situ is just as close as well; zoos can’t and won’t solve conservation challenges at the expense of animal welfare. If we look at the vaquita, there’s now an effort to bring them into human care as a last chance to save them but I remember this being discussed at a marine mammal conference two decades ago where the writing was already on the wall for the vaquita, we knew this time would come despite all the efforts at protection in the wild but as a conservation community we waited too long. I think the delay in establishing that breeding program until it might well be too late was due to a fear of a backlash from the public about the welfare implications of bringing them into captivity. And so for zoos to really address urgent conservation issues such as we are seeing across the world but especially in Southeast Asia, we need to address public concerns about welfare more effectively and I hope the framework I’ve developed will help do that.”
@ Calgary Zoo
“Zoos are a vital component in the conservation tool kit and we also have skills in abundance in small population management and conservation genetics that are in such short supply in-situ but so relevant to the fragmented state of affairs we see out there,” Veasey reflected. “If we want to provide options for future generations, we need to provide those resources in the form of healthy animal populations that can be returned to the wild as part of what I hope will be widespread habitat restoration projects, and the intrinsic link between animal welfare and conservation is I feel crucial to delivering that. It’s becoming increasingly clear of the need to preserve the cultural elements of species, not just genetic and biological diversity. Socialized groups of gorillas and elephants are examples of that; they thrive only as part of societies, never as unsocialized individuals, so we need to be looking at the animals we take care of not just as guardians of genetic diversity but also of behaviors, societies and culture that will be crucial to their survival in the wild and to their welfare in captivity. To deliver that, we need to address the psychological needs of animals in conservation; that’s really 2 ways where I like to operate.”
@ Calgary Zoo
One of Veasey’s projects is currently in Vietnam. “It started out when I was asked to design a sanctuary for all of Vietnam’s tourist elephants but that project has become much more holistic,” he stated. “We’re now looking to establish a conservation strategy for elephants in Vietnam generally; integrating welfare initiatives with elephants in human care with conservation initiatives in the wild.”
@ Calgary Zoo
“We have to have humility and an eye for the future,” reflected Veasey on the zoo and aquarium community. “I think about the decisions I make now and how they’ll be judged by future generations. We need to recognize the things we are doing now could still potentially be done better and so we have to continually challenge ourselves on that basis. Animal welfare and our ability to deliver it is developing rapidly and in the future we’ll definitely be better than we are now, so we need to be less defensive and far more open to change as a community. Too often the zoo and animal welfare communities are seen as opposing sides with animals caught in the middle and I genuinely feel part of both; I’m a welfare scientist by training and a conservation and welfare advocate by inclination but I’m also passionate about what zoos can become so I don’t fall easily into the ‘them and us’ mindset. My personal belief is that conservation is the mandate of zoos and animal welfare is our license to operate; its neither one or the other, it has to be both.”
@ Calgary Zoo
“When I think about how future generations will judge us, the area I think we’ll receive the harshest criticism is that zoos didn’t realize their conservation potential when it mattered; I believe species are going extinct now that zoos could have saved if they’d chosen to and been allowed to and I find that difficult to accept. I’d go as far to say its unforgivable. We’re discovering new species of Asian turtles in markets as they become extinct, we find them for sale and never see them again. I am excited by the potential of zoos with regards to animal welfare and conservation but often frustrated by where we are at, we all need to be pushing harder and faster because time is running out.”
@ Calgary Zoo
On being asked about his proudest achievements Veasey said “I think its important to remember, no one ever achieves anything alone, and anything I have achieved has always been part of something bigger. I’m grateful to have helped shift the management of elephants in zoos to one that’s more focused on their psychological needs” Jake Veasey stated “and I’m also proud of my involvement in bongo conservation. I think bongo illustrate that there’s potentially so much more to captive breeding programs than just waiting for species to go extinct and stepping into release animals back into what’s left of the wild. The research I carried out showed the European bongo population was six times more effective at conserving genetic diversity than Kenya’s fragmented wild populations ever could be and that illustrates an important point that captive populations could actually be used to help prevent extinction rather than just waiting in the wings for extinction to happen. Funds from zoos to protect bongo in the wild together with metapopulation management planning incorporating wild and captive populations using techniques like embryo transfer could revolutionize the role of captive breeding in species survival in the wild, something I hope will develop over time. I also think the lemur facility at Woburn has helped shape lemur facilities worldwide and as a result improved the welfare of countless lemurs and hopefully inspired millions of visitors. But, I hope there’s more to come and right now, I’m most excited by the potential to help establish a new welfare standard where not only can we secure the physical needs of animals, but also their psychological needs, and in doing so, unlock the conservation potential of zoos as well.”
@ Calgary Zoo
