Defining Enrichment

Animal care staffs have been enriching the lives of animals for as long as there have been zoos and zookeepers. It was only recently (beginning in the 1970's) that the concept was formerly described as "enrichment."

Enrichment can be defined as: “…a process for improving or enhancing animal environments and care within the context of their inhabitants’ behavioral biology and natural history. It is a dynamic process in which changes to structures and husbandry practices are made with the goal of increasing behavioral choices available to animals and drawing out their species-appropriate behaviors and abilities, thus enhancing animal welfare (AZA/BAG 1999).

Enrichment and Animal Welfare

The enrichment framework we have developed provides us with a process to ensure that our enrichment program meets the needs of the animals, and provides them with the opportunity to experience enhanced animal welfare. Animal welfare involves both the physical health of the animals (e.g., preventing and treating illnesses and injuries), as well as their psychological well-being.

As an important aspect of welfare, an animal’s psychological well-being is influenced by whether it can:

• Perform its highly motivated behaviors;
• Respond to environmental conditions using its evolutionary adaptations;
• Develop and use its cognitive abilities;
• Effectively cope with challenges in its environment.

Ensuring that the animals experience good animal welfare is our highest priority. The enrichment framework we developed provides a process where we can begin to answer some very general questions about enriching the lives of the
animals  - questions that are important in terms of welfare.

• How do we develop effective plans for enriching the lives of animals in our care?
• How do we decide what type of enrichment is best for a particular animal?
• How do we know if the enrichment we provided actually worked?
• How do we make sure that enrichment is provided consistently to our animals?

A Plan of Action

We propose moving beyond trying to simply determine what we can "add to" an animal’s existing exhibit that is meant to "enhance" its environment. Instead, as others have proposed, we suggest looking at the animal’s entire captive environment and, using the species’ behavioral and biological needs, to re-think the way we house, feed, train, and exhibit them. We see a need to be pro-active, not reactive, creating specific goals for these animals and developing ways to measure how well we attained these goals. Enrichment needs to be more than a bandage on abnormal behavior or inactivity; it should be a concerted plan of action for captive management with measurable goals and results. Such an approach may require a shift in the current philosophy around animal care. 

We suggest that a good enrichment program (e.g., the framework or process your zoo/aquarium has adopted) has several guiding principles:

1. The program should be both proactive,  (e.g., don’t wait until your animal is pacing; instead provide an environment in which the animal is less likely to pace); and also be able to react to behavior challenges that may arise.
2. Each enrichment plan (i.e., a plan for a specific individual, group or species) should allow animals to have some choices within their environment (e.g.,  if an animal is hot, there is shade available; if it’s frightened, it has a place to hide);
3. Each enrichment plan should be: based upon the animals’ biological, social, and cognitive needs; contingent upon encouraging species-appropriate behaviors; and mediated by the animals’ individual history.
4. An enrichment program should cover all taxa represented in the collection (i.e., we need to move beyond being ‘mammalist’), and be specific enough to deal with the needs of individual animals.
5. An enrichment program should involve all relevant staff members including director, curators, veterinarians, scientists, nutritionists, horticulture, and maintenance representatives, as well as aquarists/keepers – since all have responsibilities for providing animals with an enriched environment. At many institutions, volunteers, students, and docents assist with enrichment; their roles in the enrichment program should also be defined.
6. Successful enrichment programs must be fully integrated into the animal management program and supported at all levels of the institution. The establishment of comprehensive frameworks ensures that the programs are not dependent on a few key people, but are part of an institution’s common goals.

AZA Accreditation Standards

The framework described in this web-site is very similar to the process recommended by the 2003 American Zoo and Aquariums Association accreditation standards, which state:

“A formal written enrichment program is recommended which promotes species-appropriate behavioral opportunities for appropriate taxa.

Explanation: It is recommended that an enrichment program be based on current information in behavioral biology, and should include the following elements: goal-setting, planning and approval process, implementation, documentation/record-keeping, evaluation, and subsequent program refinement.” (AZA Accreditation Guide & Standards 2003, pp.38)