And so the, and so the emphasis was so much on field conservation that welfare was rather, I wouldn’t say pushed aside, but it was rather a sort of, you know, it was, it wasn’t as important to them as the conservation side. Now that has begun to change now, but because WASA was not that interested or the, the, the governance of WASA were not that interested in doing more in a positive sense, building relationships with the animal welfare lobby, then that, that was actually the reason that I founded wild welfare. And it was quite interesting that about that time I wanted WASA to invite some of the more broad-minded members of the welfare community to, to each of the WASA conferences year by year to, and play a role both in the, in the animal welfare committee and also in, you know, just in good making presentations to waza that they, they might well feel uncomfortable with, but at least could start talking to these people. And there was a lot of, a lot of, a lot of pushback on that, no, no, we don’t want these people now, to be fair, that has now changed a lot and in indeed some, some of the folks that one or two of the folks anyway that were involved ultimately in those from the, the welfare community that were involved in the WAZA meeting are now working with me in wild welfare. So, but, but what is happening now is, well, welfare has now drawn alongside conservation in terms of the importance that zoos are playing and part, it’s partly driven by public opinion, but it’s also I think largely driven by a new generation of zoo scientists who, with others have developed a lot more knowledge, you know, real, really real good scientific knowledge of the welfare needs of animals and all of that together, I would say over it’s fairly, fairly new within the last 10 years probably has brought welfare much more into the limelight as far as importance than, than it had say 20 years ago. So it’s, it’s really critical that all zoos now have to pay for, you know, really, really major attention to the welfare of the animals that keep him.
