Recently, concerns about rearing wild animals at zoos and aquariums are spreading in the worlds. In 2015, World Association of Zoos and Aquariums announced Caring For Wildlife The World Zoo and Aquarium Animal Welfare Strategy. In the strategy, they recommend environmental enrichment and husbandry training as specific efforts to improve animal welfare. Zoos and aquariums in Japan are worked on Environmental enrichment and husbandry training. Many issues such as the aging of captive animals have been raised at zoos in Japan, and it is thought that it will be necessary to develop guidelines for these issues in the future.

　Welfare of an animal means the state of physical and mental health of the animal and the “Five Freedoms” and the “Five-Domain Model” are recognized as welfare fundamentals. In the UK and the USA, NGOs have developed some excellent standards applied to wildlife rehabilitation in general or specific animal groups although the characteristics of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) are considerably different between the two countries. There is also an example that a standard of one experienced rehabilitation facility is adopted as a national standard. However, in Japan, AWA and other related laws don’t cover wildlife rehabilitation enough in addition to the lack of the standards, and many rehabilitation facilities have a hard time keeping the quality of life of animals at a desirable level. Welfare and ethics for animals developed separately but it is now recognized that they are closely intertwined with each other, for example improvements of welfare affect ethics in a good manner and vice versa. Recently, the focus of attention in the ethics is shifting from an individual animals to an ecosystem or biodiversity as a whole, which provides a broader view to the practices of wildlife rehabilitation. Future wildlife rehabilitation is required to address welfare improvements with such a broader view so that achieving good welfare in rehabilitation contributes to conserving biodiversity as well as ensuring the dignity of wild animals under rehabilitation which are originally free-ranging.

　Many endangered birds of prey are brought by various reasons to the Institute for Raptor Biomedicine Japan. In many cases, they are difficult to be returned to the wild. As they are settled as the endangered species by the Japanese law, there is no practical option for euthanasia unless there is a special reason, such as having a serious infectious disease. Although they have been asked to be used as exhibition animals, only few zoos have interested them, as they have apparently sequelae. From the point of view of animal welfare, we strive to keep animals that will be reared for life in good conditions. Unfortunately, no dedicated budget has been provided by the Ministry of the Environment for the management of these animals. In April 2017, the Institute for Raptor Biomedicine Japan decided to procure all costs required for rearing them, in exchange for permission to use those animals, from the business of the Ministry of the Environment. At present, these individuals are used for the development and improvement of accident prevention devices and to be donors for blood transfusion. In 2018, euthanasia of injured endangered animals was positioned as an exemption from law enforcement regulations. Although lethal research and euthanasia were stipulated in the Conservation of Species Act, guidelines to ensure that appropriate evidence-based decisions are made at the operational stage are required, in order to deter the easy killing of endangered species.

　The target species handled by the Japanese Society of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine are vertebrates in general. Each species has a different idea of bioethics, and it is difficult to develop a unified code of ethics for all species. Japanese Society of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine has been enforcing guidelines on animal welfare in wildlife medicine research in 2010. However, it contains some content that does not match recent international trends, so it is an urgent task to revise the field research of guidelines.

　The development of acts and regulations on animal welfare in wildlife is still behind compared to domestic animals and laboratory animals. Japanese Society of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine (JSZWM) repeatedly discussed the current situation and issues of animal welfare and ethics on wildlife medicine, and then published Guidelines for Animal Welfare in Zoo and Wildlife Medicine (2010). However, due to recent changes in international trends on wild animal welfare, the current JSZWM guidelines have been required revision. JSZWM not only targets of various species from fishes to mammals, but also handles wild animals in a variety of situations, including researches, zoos and aquariums, wildlife rehabilitations, education and pet amimals. For these reasons, The Wildlife Conservation and Animal Welfare Committee of JSZWM will formulate general guidelines that are common to target animal species and handling pursues, and then sequentially develop each protocol according to the taxon and handling situations. For the revision of the guidelines, it will be necessary to collaborate with research and education institutions and other related academic societies in Japan and overseas.

　 Eye disorders is a life-threatening for pinnipeds, such as sea lions and seals, that are rely on vision for feeding. It is suspected that such as ultraviolet light, trauma on cornea and water quality may causes of ophthalmological diseases for marine mammals. In this study, we focused on the water quality, to conduct comprehensive analysis of bacteria, to clarify the bacteriological characteristics of each animal pool waters in aquarium and to search for the cause bacteria of eye disease. Bacterial 16s rRNA was investigated using a next-generation sequencer to perform community analysis of pool waters of pinnipeds and cetaceans in Otaru Aquarium. As a result, there were few opportunistic but cause bacteria of eye disease, such as Staphylococcus aureus, Serratia or Welsh bacteria. Other infectious bacteria were not recognized that those are directly cause of some diseases or other bacterial infection in public health. Three bacterial phyla were found in common with the former seawater, such as Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Firmicutes, but Fusobacteria and some non-culturable bacteria were characteristic of animal pool waters. In addition, it was found that the composition of the bacteria is different depending on each animal, so that the bacterial flora may be affected by each animal excretion. So, it is necessary to survey the bacterial flora of pool water, but important to take measures to prevent damage on the cornea of captive marine mammals, which will be an invasion route of bacteria.

　The harbor porpoise is a marine mammal rarely seen in aquariums. The ecology of this species is not well known, and captive breeding is difficult without essential information such as milk composition, amount consumed and frequency nursed per day, and lactation period. At the Otaru Aquarium in Japan, several deliveries of harbor porpoise offspring have occurred, but the calves have not survived. In the present study, we analyzed the colostrum of a harbor porpoise and attempted to hand-rear a calf using artificial milk after the mother denied nursing. The crude fat and crude protein contents of the colostrum were relatively high compared to values for other odontocetes. The present information will be helpful for future efforts to hand-rear harbor porpoises.