Animal Welfare Careers
Do you have a passion for animals? Do you want to help improve animal welfare? By choosing a career with SPCA, you'll be helping to advance animal welfare and prevent cruelty in New Zealand!
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BUT… did you know that there are heaps of different careers that you can choose that will allow you to help animals in need when you leave school?!
You may be familiar with our animal carer roles and uniformed inspectors, but SPCA also offers careers in the areas of Marketing, Fundraising, Science, Education and all fields of Administration. Everyone works together to help achieve our mission: to create a better life for New Zealand’s animals.
It can be hard to know exactly what career you want to pursue, so we have provided lots of examples below so that you can learn all about some of the different roles at SPCA, as well as read interesting interviews from our very own amazing staff explaining why they love what they do!
After reviewing the roles, if you have any more questions, be sure to ask our SPCA expert here.
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Get a head start - volunteer for SPCA!
Do you already know that you want a career helping animals in need? Not quite sure where to start? A great way to gain valuable animal welfare experience is to volunteer at your local SPCA Centre.
Volunteering not only gives you an insight into animal-related careers, but it will also allow you to gain practical experience and talk to people already in the jobs you may be interested in.
Though you need to be 16 years of age to volunteer on-site at an SPCA Centre (18 at some centres), there are still heaps of other ways to get involved if you’re under 16. You can learn more about how you can get involved here. If you’re the right age to volunteer, you can learn more and apply for volunteer vacancies online here.
Another way you can get involved to get involved at any age is by fostering animals as a family. When someone fosters an animal for SPCA, they are providing that animal with a temporary home.
Many of the animals that come into SPCA need additional care, treatment, and/or socialization before finding their forever home. Volunteer foster families help these animal recover from surgery, give them medicine, or work with them to improve their behaviour. Sometimes animals need additional care for several weeks or a couple of months depending on their circumstances.
SPCA provides foster volunteers with everything they need to care for the animal!
Once a foster animal has made a full recovery and are ready for their forever home, foster families return them to SPCA where they are put up for adoption. You can learn more about becoming a foster family here.
Remember - animal welfare is a rapidly growing field, with new, evidence-based research emerging all of the time. This research helps us to better understand animals, their needs, and ways we can ensure they live healthy, enriched lives that are worth living. That’s why it’s important to never stop learning because new information is constantly being discovered! So keep reading, listening, watching, helping, and asking questions!
Our shared homes
From seals and dolphins, to birds, bats, insects and reptiles – many fascinating animals can be found in New Zealand.
All over our country, animals have made their homes in rivers, caves, bushes, trees, and the mountains of Aotearoa. Whether these animals have arrived well before or after us, they are all living, feeling creatures that all deserve kindness and compassion. This planet is just as much theirs as it is ours, so we owe it to them to do our best to protect their welfare, as well as be considerate and respectful of their homes and their lives!
Over the years, humans have made massive changes to the habitats in which these animals live. As our towns and cities get bigger, sadly, forests, wetlands and other habitats get smaller. When a habitat is destroyed, it makes it harder (or sometimes impossible) for the plants, animals, and organisms to continue living there.
This can be a frightening experience for animals, especially if these areas are bare and unfamiliar. Since we humans have caused these significant changes to these natural environments, we have a responsibility to step up as animal guardians to protect our wildlife in a kind and compassionate way.
These environments are these animals’ homes and are made up of living things that depend on one another, if one of these elements were to disappear, it would greatly and most often negatively affect the rest of the environment – this is why it’s so important for us to protect and promote these areas so that both animals and humans can enjoy them for decades to come.
Explore these extraordinary habitats and the animals that live there below!
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