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**Chapter 7**

**Abstract**

**1. Introduction**

Veterinarian's Role in Conservation

The enhanced role of human actions brings new escalating conservation challenges and emerging diseases, which pressure impaired long-term survival of threatened free-ranging and captive wildlife species, while having hazardous effects on ecosystems and public health. Veterinarians have not only a broad education in comparative medicine (not a single-species focus) but also are also highly trained in recognizing, diagnosing and understanding disease impact on public health as well as on individuals, populations and whole ecosystems. Their skills and expertise turns them into valuable key players in planning, implementing and effectively assisting both in-situ and ex-situ conservation projects. In parks and zoological gardens, major goals have now won priority: the conservation of worldwide fauna and flora and the protection of animal welfare. Today, animal welfare can be scientifically assessed to determine the quality of life of individuals, in which behavioral

assessment and behavioral enrichment are fundamental tools.

animal welfare, animal behavior, behavioral enrichment

**Keywords:** veterinary, conservation medicine, zoological institutions,

Current extinction rates are outstandingly high (about 1000 times previously valued ones) and likely to be underestimated once biodiversity statistics are affected by a gap of information on species taxonomy, distribution and status [1]. The enhanced role of human actions brings new escalating conservation challenges and emerging diseases, which pressure impaired long-term survival of threatened free-ranging and captive wildlife species, while having hazardous effects on ecosystems and public health [2–4]. Biodiversity conservation currently requires a broader approach, capable of connecting interdisciplinary bridges between the diversity of social, economic, political and biological variables which influence health issues, so to understand their complex interaction and therefore find new solutions bearing in mind human and animal well-being while preserving ecosystems, in what is designated as the "OneHealth" approach. Zoological and wildlife medicine are acknowledged scientific branches within the veterinary profession, which emerged in the 1990s as a response to increasing concerns regarding wildlife protection, and that now fully integrate the transdisciplinary frame that characterizes Conservation Biology [2]. Wildlife veterinarians and the zoological community have a pivotal role to play in the future of biodiversity conservation as, apart from saving numbers of species and understanding

Medicine and Animal Welfare

*Diana Raquel Neves Fernandes*

*and Maria de Lurdes Ribeiro Pinto*
