I’m a worst case scenario person. I envision terrible things happening to people and animals that I love. So enrichment safety is something that I’m pretty passionate about.

Dress rehearsing disaster isn’t fun and sometimes it’s paralyzing.

I had an enrichment horror story happen when I first started in the field. An enrichment item the animal had been using for months ended up killing her. I’ve seen the headlines at other zoos and now the “warnings” on social media about these accidents happening with our pets at home too.

At the same time making enrichment hard to do doesn’t benefit our animals. Long lists of approved and not approved items are confusing and difficult to navigate. Approval systems can be even more cumbersome, one poor person flooded with requests and they can’t keep up. How can we keep enrichment safety in mind and still make enrichment easy and fun.

I created this acronym to help simply a complex approved/supervised/not approved enrichment system. It’s a play on my fatalistic brain but I hope it will help animals and keepers evaluate items for safety and make great choices for their animals.

So download our infographic to keep enrichment safety top of mind!