Ep66 Erna Walraven on writing, inspiring and empowering people in caring for wildlife

Erna Walraven covers the progression of her career in the animal care sector, from caring for stray dogs to successfully becoming former Senior Curator at Taronga Zoo for twenty years. She strives to encourage members of the public and animal care professionals to be active for animals, the planet and the greater good.

As curator, Erna realised her region was lacking animal welfare positions. She created a position for Taronga Zoo which encompassed training the zoo’s staff about what the term ‘animal welfare’ actually means. This enables staff to create goals in what standards they want to achieve and how success can be measured. Part of this includes allowing animals to have negative experiences or “safe negatives”, whilst ensuring their welfare is not compromised, to give them a life that is as close to what the animal would experience in the wild, such as being outdoors in bad weather. This is so that the animals can make the decisions in their own care as they would outside of captivity. It is important to enrich these innate behaviours so that future generations of animals know how to be independent from humans when they have been released into a sustainable habitat.

In this podcast, Erna provides tips on how she landed her first job in a zoo and explains the inspiration behind her contributions to animal welfare. Her books ‘Wild Leadership’, ‘Wild Fathers’ and ‘Care of Australian Wildlife: For Gardeners, Landholders and Wildlife Carers’ are just some examples of how Erna empowers members of the public to save animals in crises. She explains the importance of communication that leaders have with their employees and how this affects successful working relationships. Erna also discusses her exciting upcoming book which focuses on the power that female animals have in their social groups.

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