A New Life For Two Wolves

Back in the Netherlands after 2 years of working at a restaurant I decided to get a job in a Zoo again. After some applications I got lucky again and found a Zoo who gave me the job as Animal Training Coordinator. I had explained that I had some wolf experience. In my first week I was introduced to a pack of 5 wolves when I arrived at this facility. A male female and their 3 sons. They explained me their challenges and what had happened in the past. I asked them if this pack was their only pack. They answered with no we have 2 females elsewhere. Can we go and see them I asked. 

European Association

Whenever an animal is born, or when a facility wants to send their animals elsewhere because of an exhibit upgrade or for breeding purposes they can add their animals to a list. This list is managed by a bigger zoological organisation such as EAZA European Association of Zoos and Aquariums. This is where facilities who are member of such an organisation can look if animals are available for their facility and request a transfer. This way proper blood lines are maintained and facilities are able to get new species for their facilities. The challenge is when animals are on the list for a long time like the 2 wolves they had at this specific facility. 

Difficult Decisions

They took me to their quarantine area where these 2 females had been living for quite some months now. There were 2 indoor dens which the keepers could enter. The outdoor exhibit wasn’t too big. The wolves couldn’t do much out there. When we arrived at the exhibit, they responded directly with showing us avoidance behaviour. The animals weren’t to relax. The keepers explained to me that this situation is not ok which we all agreed upon. They weren’t able to get the animals come inside or move around in the dens. Which meant they couldn’t really clean the exhibit properly. The keepers explained that euthanasia was an idea just because we could not get rid of them and this situation wasn’t welfare increasing neither.

I was hired to be the animal training coordinator at the park. My role was to create a behaviour program at this facility. Management asked me to challenge the system and see how we could increase the animals welfare by focussing on behaviour. The keepers who took care of the wolves knew my role withing the management and wanted me to push for the euthanasia option just because how the wolves were living wasn’t acceptable anymore. 

I’ve asked the question “did you guys do everything you could to make their lives better?” the reason I asked this question is because I believe that often animal care professionals haven’t tried enough yet. It is often easy to point the fingers instead. These well educated keepers told me that they thought they did, which is completely ok. They didn’t have the same behaviour knowledge as me so I tried to help them out by explaining that we have a couple more options for these wolves to increase their chances. Regardless of the discussions what to do with these 2 we had to do something which we all agreed upon. This is where the training program for these animals was born. 

The start of a solution

We started with counter conditioning. The wolves didn’t have a great relationship with the trainers. We had to fix this first. All we did was propose a reinforcer and make the connection with the trainers. From there we started to think about our further ideas. With the experiences I had with wolves there were some complications. Wolves aren’t the same as other species. We found out along the way that counter conditioning with wolves is a lot harder as it is with other species. We tried everything to make sure that the wolves connected us to pleasant experiences. The challenge is that the experiences the wolves had to endure in the past with the keepers where quite negative. It seems that wolves never forget these and the impact of these experiences is therefore a lot higher than you would think.

This is where Ive discovered that wolves in many zoological facilities especially the city zoos aren’t doing great within the management system that is presented to them. Which often is not based on empowering the wolves to work together with us but the opposite. Chasing them around like if they are hoofstock species. This means that Wolves might not be a species for our facilities although I’d like to discuss the way we manage them instead. Wolves should be managed by focussing on behaviour management and not what might be easy for us. This only creates problems.

First important behaviours needed

After we started to see more trust we had them eating from our tweezers which now we would be able to start reinforcing behaviours we needed. From here we added a target. Then the sedation position. We thought if we can train them for voluntary sedation we are able to move them voluntarily and we are able to do a proper body check. At the same time we were building a new backstage exhibit which was about 10 times bigger then the one they were in. 

The video that gave them a new life

Eventually we moved them to this area with somewhat the success we needed with the sedation. Their life was a lot better in the other area. All of a sudden we had some news that a park might have interest in them which then was thrown of the table again. We decided to keep training them for various behaviours to help us take better care of them. We added enrichment for them to become more curious. We empowered behaviours we liked to see. Then we made a video about what the wolves were able to do. I showed this to our operations manager and he responded with, could you send this video maybe we can send this to various facilities. I changed the video a little and called it the wolf tinder video. 

2 weeks later we had 2 Zoos that were interested in the females. One in Belgium and one in France. The keepers had done a fantastic job with training these animals and keeping faith for these individuals. What training can do. A year or so later we received the beautiful news that the wolves had puppies. An emotional moment for us because we went from 2 animals that would be euthanised to animals that now had their own pack in different facilities. 

The Zoo who housed them before they left has been incredible in giving the opportunity to the keepers. They invested in their staff to find a way to make the lives of these animals better. They believed in our thoughts and actions which made a massive difference for these animals.

Well done!