How Animal Behavior and Welfare Consulting Improves Shelters, Zoos, and Sanctuaries

Nonprofit organizations often face chronic understaffing and demanding schedules, which can cause essential programs like behavior management to receive less attention than they deserve. While training, enrichment, and behavioral support may sometimes be viewed as secondary to immediate needs such as nutrition and shelter, they are in fact critical components of overall animal welfare. Animal behavior and welfare consulting offers organizations a flexible, sustainable solution by providing expert insight, tailored recommendations, staff education, and project-based support. This allows animal shelters, zoos, and sanctuaries to strengthen their programs and improve animal outcomes without the long-term financial commitment of adding a full-time employee and associated benefits.

What is Animal Behavior and Welfare Consulting?

For a zoo, sanctuary, or shelter, animal behavior and welfare consulting may consist of the following:

• Behavioral Assessments: Having an outside perspective can often help in seeing things that the staff are having trouble seeing. A consultant can help pinpoint exactly what is triggering an undesired behavior or when an animal is over threshold. They can then help in addressing the issue through training and behavioral management plans.

• Welfare Audits: It can be difficult to come up with the framework for a welfare audit so a consultant not only can help with producing a scientifically accurate framework, they can also use its results to implement better welfare management practices.

• Staff Training: Training staff through educational presentations and workshops can help create consistency in behavior programs and ensure that all staff are up-to-date on current and scientifically accurate processes.

• Program Development: If a program is lacking, a consultant can help build one into something that’s easy for staff to implement at their organization.

• Policy and Procedure Improvement: A consultant can check over policies and procedures to ensure that everything is accurate to what is actually being done and help address inconsistencies or improvements if they arise.

A consultant will tailor their services to help your organization no matter where it is currently at.

Benefits for Animal Shelters

Some of the benefits an animal shelter can see with behavior and welfare consulting include:

• Reducing Stress and Behavioral Decline

• Improving Adoption Success

• Lowering Euthanasia Rates

• Addressing Burnout in Staff and Volunteers

• Safer Animal Handling Protocols

To see more about hiring a consultant to make improvement at your animal shelter, please see https://www.jigsawconsulting.org/animal-behavior-welfare-consulting-nonprofits

Benefits for Zoos

The benefits zoos may see when they partner with an animal behavior and welfare consultant include:

• Species-specific enrichment

• Welfare compliance

• Behavioral monitoring

• Guest education improvements

• Exhibit design recommendations

To see more about hiring a consultant to make improvement at your zoo, please see https://www.jigsawconsulting.org/animal-behavior-welfare-consulting-nonprofits

Benefits for Animal Sanctuaries

When sanctuaries seek animal behavior and welfare consulting, some of the benefits they will encounter are:

• Trauma-informed animal care

• Long-term welfare planning

• Quality of life assessments

• Rehabilitation support

• Staff burnout prevention

To see more about hiring a consultant to make improvement at your animal sanctuary, please see https://www.jigsawconsulting.org/animal-behavior-welfare-consulting-nonprofits

Common Challenges Animal Behavior and welfare Consulting Helps Solve

Some of the most common challenges a nonprofit animal organization might face are:

• Undesired animal behaviors resulting from stress

• Enrichment gaps

• Inconsistency among staff and volunteers

• Safety risks

• Public criticism

It’s important to get ahead and address these challenges and seeking help is the first step.

How Jigsaw Animal Behavior and welfare Consulting Helps Nonprofits

Jigsaw Animal Behavior and Welfare Consulting LLC can provide services such as:

• Welfare audits

• Behavior assessments

• Staff and volunteer education

• Program design

• Research-backed recommendations

Services provided are tailored to your specific organization’s needs, so this is not an exhaustive list, but a general idea of what Jigsaw can provide.

Final Thoughts: Investing in Animal Welfare Matters

Investing in animal behavior and welfare consulting improves outcomes for animals, which ultimately improves the function of the organization. This leads to increased donor trust and a good reputation.

Looking to strengthen your shelter, zoo, or sanctuary program? Contact Jigsaw Animal Behavior and Welfare Consulting today.