The symposium brought together breeders and population mangers from commercial and conservation backgrounds to share ideas and techniques. The meeting gave delegates the opportunity to hear first-hand about current practices, lessons learned, the reality of implementation and future developments and meet new people and potential collaborators.
Day one of the symposium was a ‘Meet the Scientists’ day at Chester Zoo. We ran a guided tour around the zoo stopping at various enclosures to hear from our staff and students undertaking conservation breeding work. We told the speakers and delegates about our work including conservation breeding of black rhinos, our work with orangutans in their new enclosure in Islands and how we use contraception.
The two days of the symposium itself were held at Chester Racecourse and we were very excited to welcome a number of international speakers who flew in especially for the event.
Have a look through the gallery below to see the full story of the symposium:
For our science to be useful, successful techniques and results must be translated into animal management by communicating with academics, captive animal managers, wild population managers and funders to have a positive real-world impact on species conservation.
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