Evaluation On Welfare Of Animals In Zoos

As an important element of human living environment,animals play a key role that can't be ignored.It is unimaginable what the world might be if the animals were to disappear from human life.However,It doesn't mean that we human beings shouldn't use animals,but how to use them in a more reasonable and humane way.We ought to guarantee the basic benefits of animals as far as possible that have made contribution and devotion to human beings.For the sake of animal protection,both the western and eastern countries have their ethical background and social basis.Moreover,considering the economic development,moral and environmental protection,a lot of countries have constituted animal welfare protection standards and the animal welfare act in the past decades.So far more than 100 countries have set up relatively perfect animal welfare regulations in this world.In recent years,it's gratifying to see the same happening in China.A growing number of organizations,media and scholars began to advocate and pay attention to animal welfare,but it is still far more satisfactory.For many people,it is hard to be convinced that how can animal's welfare be achieve when people's welfare hasn't been improved.The reason why people thought so is that they lack the basic knowledge of animal welfare protection.In fact,animal welfare and human welfare are not contradictory;on the contrary,human beings are the ultimate beneficiaries of animal welfare.In this paper,the author deals with the following:Firstly,beginning with the introduction of the connotation of animal welfare,the author elaborates the serious phenomenon of infracting animal welfare,which existed in our current animal welfare protection through fully analyzing and studying ethical basis,religious foundation,philosophy infrastructure of animal welfare.Then a deeper exploration about the reasons and factors of this phenomenon was given.Then the conclusion is drawn from various aspect and angles that it is the very time that China should pay adequate attention to the protection of animal welfare.This article analyzes various favorable factors which are contributed to deepen animal welfare protection.According to the survey data,the rate of personal willingness to pay for animal welfare protection is 66.2%,which shows that our country has possessed all kinds of conditions needed for implementing animal welfare protection.Due to the lack of relevant standards of animal welfare protection,it is difficult to see the extent animal welfare protection.Although there are existing standards for special animals, however,these can't be applied to all animals,which make it a necessity to accelerate the study of animal welfare standards and build up a comprehensive,scientific and rational animal welfare evaluation system as soon as possible.This article builds a set of evaluation index system only for the welfare of wild animals in zoos.Based on the principles of evaluation system,this article establishes the evaluation model's framework system of zoo wild animal welfare,including three levels,called the target layer,element layer and indicator layer.Element layer consists of physiological welfare, environmental welfare,health welfare,psychological welfare and behavior welfare.Indicator layer comprises 43 evaluation factors.Aided with computer,the author calculates and analyzes each indicator's weight.The results show that for the zoos,physiological welfare is the most significant factor affecting wild animal welfare,followed by the environmental welfare,health welfare,psychological welfare,behavior welfare.At the same time,target criteria is set up. according to the criteria,wild animal welfare in the zoo can be graded into excellent,good,medium and poor.A case study and validation are conducted in Heilongjiang Northeast Tiger Forestry Garden,Harbin Northern Forestry Zoo,Beijing Zoo,Changchun Botanical Garden and Dalian Forestry Zoo.With the help of Triangular Fuzzy Number Analytic Hierarchy Process,the author got the following results:among the five surveyed zoos,Heilongjiang Northeast Tiger Forestry Garden scores 84.35,which is the highest overall evaluation score of wild animal welfare.The overall evaluation score of Harbin Northern Forestry Zoo is 82.78;Beijing Zoo is 78.68;Changchun Botanical Garden is 78.05.All the above four zoos' grade is good.Dalian Forestry Zoo is medium.The statistics show that the majority of wild animal welfare in the zoo are in good condition,but it is still far from the grade of excellent.So Validation results show that the scores of zoos are in line with their actual welfare situation,and this evaluation system can be introduced and applied.Considering the problem in animal welfare protection and the evaluation results of animal welfare protection in every zoo,the author put forward some specific measures to improve the zoo wild animal welfare protection.Firstly,arousing the public awareness of participating animal welfare;Then cultivating the concept of rational consumption;Thirdly,popularizing the knowledge of animal welfare in relevant professionals;Besides,strengthening supervision and management,paying attention to animal welfare barriers,establishing animal welfare standards system which conforms to the situation in our country,speeding up the legislation on animal welfare and the establishment of professional law enforcement agencies and conducting diplomatic activities about animal welfare and so on,all of which are powerful measures and important gurantee to promote the protection of wild animal welfare.The highlights of this article lie in the fact that the author built a completed zoo wild animal welfare evaluation system,including the construction of wild animal welfare model, index system,calculation approach of weight and so on,which sets a precedent for evaluation study of zoo animal welfare in China.Through this research on this subject,we can conclude that it is a beneficial attempt to provide a preliminarily practical case for the zoo wild animal welfare evaluation,also provided reference for establishing animal welfare standards.