Chris Hales
Chris is a level 2 Instructor for SHAPE, having run 33 Student Environmental Enrichment Courses in the UK, and 8 SHAPE keeper workshops in Brazil, India, the USA and UK. He worked as a wild animal keeper, filling numerous roles including departmental head and deputy head, between 1998-2020. He has specialised in carnivores and hoofstock, but has experience across a wide range of taxa.
Chris specialises in designing, developing, and constructing complex but user friendly enrichment devices, taking the practical viewpoint that to be functional they must also work for the keepers operating them in order to advance animal care. His passion is sharing these designs and skills both online and through practical conference presentations, as well as the various workshops and team builds he teaches. He has presented talks and posters at several national and international conferences, winning titles for best presentation at two of these conferences, along with being an invited speaker at the Brazilian Regional Environmental Enrichment Conference. He has been a co-author on 4 published papers and over the last few years has been heavily involved in team training, co-founding Team Building with BITE.