Animal welfare is something of a vague term that encompasses several different professions including conservation, animal rights, animal management and more.

Before you get to the business of gaining relevant qualifications, you need to know what your career options are:

Animal Behaviourist

Animal behaviourists study the ways animals behave. Through observation, they try to determine what causes behaviours, and what factors provokes change.

Animal behaviourists tend to specialise in a particular area such as marine life, birds or large mammals. They also tend to focus on specific types of behaviour such as hunting or raising young.

Conservationist

A conservationist advocates for the protection and preservation of the environment and wildlife.

Because of the sheer diversity in nature, and the multitude of threats, conservationists tend to focus on a specific area of conservation. This could be natural habitats including forests, grasslands and coastlines, or they focus on a particular species.

Wildlife Management

The role of a wildlife manager is to maintain the number of animals in a habitat at or below the habitat's carrying capacity. This is so no damage is done to the animals or to their habitat, ensuring the habitat is sustainable long term.

Qualified wildlife managers have a variety of practices at their disposal to keep habitats in balance including monitoring herd sizes, breeding patterns, rates of disease and death and habitat consumption.

Animal Behavioural Counsellor

Animal behavioural counsellors deal with animal behaviour problems. This is quite a broad field and can include pet counsellors, equine, large mammals and more.

They observe the behaviour of the animal or animals and identify possible triggers whether that’s a change in diet, an external threat or change to the hierarchy. From there they work to resolve the issue and normalise their behaviour.

Scientific Research

The scientific study of animal behaviour is known as ethology and is an area of study that goes back decades. It concerns itself with the study of how animals communicate, compete for food and mates, hunting, fighting and how they adapt to different environments – to name a few.

It’s an incredibly diverse area of study and well respected in the science community and have even generated some Nobel Prizes.

Humans have an incredible ability to innovate. To think their way around problems that no other species on the planet has been able to come close to.

Our progress has come at a price – namely an unsustainable consumption of natural resources and space.

More people means more housing and it means more businesses, offices, factories and infrastructure. That is the price of progress.

However, it is also coming at the cost of the natural world. Despite the assertions of big business, a certain brand of politician and conspiracy theorists, the denaturalisation of the planet is having a disastrous effect on every aspect of life on this planet.

Not just animals in the wild, but even our own comfortable existence is being threatened. Floods are happening more regularly, summers are getting hotter, but more concerning is the fact that winters are too.

Entire species of animals are being wiped out through deforestation, urbanisation or through the by-product of our rapacious consumerism. Especially in the form of climate change.

The problem is balance is required for everything on the planet to work. While it may not seem to matter that a particular type of bird has died out on the other side of the planet, or that summers are getting warmer, it does.

If the natural predator to malaria-carrying mosquitoes dies out, there is nothing to keep the mosquito population in check. If the air is warmer, then they can survive further north than they can currently. So, malaria-carrying mosquitoes will be able to survive in the Western European climate.

No one in Europe has a natural immunity to malaria, nor is there sufficient treatment available to protect that many people at once. What happens next is obvious.

The role of conservationists is to protect as much of the natural world as possible. To work with governments and communities to farm responsibly, to protect wildlife and limit deforestation.

It’s a difficult task because changing the world always is, but every victory makes a difference.

To take your first step towards a career in conservation, check out our animal behaviour and welfare courses and enrol today.