We will celebrate the 2024 World Day for Laboratory Animals on April 24th, 2024 at 7 pm CET with a webinar that will focus on non-invasive wildlife research.
The webinar’s speaker, Dr. Miriam A. Zemanova, an ecologist, from the Environmental Sciences and Humanities Institute at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, won the 2022 Prize for Humane Teaching Methods Development, awarded by the Animal Protection Commissioner of Berlin. She will present the teaching and training materials she developed with the prize money and talk about her work.
Abstract:
Wildlife research remains crucial for increasing our knowledge and improving species management and conservation amid the current biodiversity crisis. However, obtaining information on population status often involves the invasive or lethal sampling of a certain number of individual animals. Marking and sampling practices include taking blood and tissue samples, mutilations, and attaching or implanting various instruments – all of which are techniques that might negatively affect the animal. Wildlife research may then result in a fundamental conflict between individual animal welfare and the welfare of the population or ecosystem. This conflict could be significantly reduced if non-invasive and non-lethal research practices were more broadly applied. In this talk, an overview of the non-invasive research practices will be provided, demonstrating their combined advantages for both conservation and compliance with ethical and legal norms.
Bio sketch:
Dr. Miriam A. Zemanova is an ecologist currently based at the Environmental Sciences and Humanities Institute at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. Her main research interests are wildlife welfare, animal ethics, and implementation of the 3Rs principles in wildlife research. You can find out more about her work at https://miriamzemanova.com