Zoo Best Practices Working Group

The mission of the Zoological Best Practices Working Group is to promote a culture of all hazards contingency planning and preparedness for the managed wildlife community. To that end, the group will research, prepare, review and disseminate documents to assist facilities in drafting their own contingency plans. The Working Group will encourage facilities to work with first responders, local emergency management and other stakeholders to draft useful plans that are integrated into their jurisdictional emergency management infrastructure.

On January 30th, 2013, USDA enacted a final rule change to the Animal Welfare Act. This rule change now requires USDA regulated animal facilities including exhibitors, dealers, handlers, carriers, and research facilities to not only develop a contingency plan for disaster and emergency preparedness but also to train their employees on those plans. All facilities have until July 29, 2013 to develop a contingency plan. Facilities then have until September 27, 2013 to train all employees on their roles and responsibilities in order to implement the plan. Plans do not need to be submitted to USDA APHIS. The plan should, however be available to Animal Care inspectors if requested during a facility inspection. There is no standard format or template to follow in plan development because effective plans must be tailored to the individual facility.

Further information on the final rule may be found on USDA APHIS’ website, found here. A webinar on contingency planning is also available here. Considerable attention must be paid to the challenges of emergency care and treatment, obtaining transportation resources, and arranging alternate housing during disasters when developing a contingency plan. Though not required by the USDA APHIS rule, it is also beneficial for facilities to consider general business contingency planning issues, such as managing staff, financial continuity, data preservation, communications, and recovery.

The documents from the Zoo Best Practices Working Group have been designed as a starting point for basic information on drafting contingency plans. Click the View Documents button and view Zoo Roadmap to get an overview of the plan development process. The Working Group materials contain basic planning recommendations and best practices in a ‘check box’ format.

Emergency planners must remember that emergencies start and end locally. Therefore, many wildlife facilities cannot create an effective plan without the help of the local jurisdictional authorities such as law enforcement and fire departments. These professionals, along with local jurisdictional emergency managers and other stakeholders will assist a facility in drafting plans that can be integrated into the local response structure. They may also assist the facilities that are part of the public sector in determining the best format to use for their written plans.