Enriquecimiento Ambiental: Evaluación Comportamental Y Perspectiva Social (Bioparque La Reserva, Cota – Cundinamarca, Colombia)

Abstract

Illegal wildlife trafficking is a very lucrative business in Colombia, for this reason many animals arrive at zoos or bioparks as a last option for life as they cannot be released back into their natural habitat. Different levels of stress can be generated by moving from one place to another or by captivity, which can be evaluated both physiologically and behaviorally. Therefore, this project consisted of identifying the behavioral differences, response to environmental enrichment and/ or operant conditioning of the individuals of Nasuella olivacea that were in a state of captivity and analyzing the perception of visitors to the Bioparque la Reserva about these procedures. For this, ethograms were used, and different descriptive statistical analyzes and statistical tests (T-Student or U of Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis) were performed with the data collected. Regarding the social perspective, a survey was carried out on visitors, divided into two parts: at the beginning and at the end of the tour of the biopark. The results show significant differences in the behavior of the individuals before and after applying the environmental enrichments. The difference between the individuals who had the operant conditioning training program is noteworthy (Kruskal-Wallis test p= 0.004319). It is concluded that environmental enrichment is an important tool to guarantee animal welfare, reduce stress, and also allows promoting natural behaviors, improving the use of confinement, facilitates handling and veterinary check-ups. Also, it was observed that environmental education plays an important role in the transmission of information, since it was found that concepts associated with conservation, ecology and animal welfare were clarified, in turn the visitors recognized the importance of carrying out any type of enrichment environmental and/or operant conditioning to individuals in captivity.