Rohan Cleave

 

Position: Shape—Australasia Committee Member

 

Rohan Cleave began his zoo keeping career at Melbourne Zoo, Australia in 1996.  His career has encompassed working with a diverse variety of animals and husbandry teams.  Working with native animals, ungulates, elephants, carnivores, reptiles and invertebrates have given him the opportunity to experience different zoo keeping philosophies. The benefits of an environmental enrichment program for each species became obvious early on and warranted expansions of these enrichment programs. Enrichment mirrored alongside training and conditioning programs for certain species has proved very rewarding. Enrichment programs have become part of the daily routine to improve animal husbandry for each animal species at Zoos Victoria where applicable. 

 

Rohan co-organised and ran the 1st Australasian Regional Environmental Conference (REEC) held at Melbourne Zoo in November 2006. This event proved the strength of enthusiasm and expertise in this field throughout the region. The conference was extremely well supported from many zoos and non-zoo based organisations and an historic event to share ideas on Environmental Enrichment. These conferences have now become a great meeting place to share ideas and fundamentals in this field. 

 

Rohan also assisted in the implementation of “A Richer Life” advertising program at Zoos Victoria. This idea sprang from an endeavour to better educate zoo visitors on Environmental Enrichment and provide them with bright, inviting, detailed moveable signage to the three properties as required.

 

In partnership with Sheila Roe, the following papers have been presented at International Conferences for Environmental Enrichment (ICEE’s).

 “You can lead a tiger to water, but can you call this enrichment?” was presented at the Johannesburg conference, 2003.

“Are we just feeding carnivores or are we providing enrichment as well?” presented at the New York conference, 2005.

 

Rohan’s current focus is working with the Invertebrate Department on the Lord Howe Island Stick Insect Recovery Project. This currently takes up most of his time but he continues to be highly driven, passionate and very interested in enrichment practises both locally and globally.

 

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