Natural Animal Centre

The Natural Animal Centre provides educational courses on animal behaviour, training and management. The NAC courses have been running since 1999 and have trained many animal behaviourists who have gone on to build successful careers in behaviour and training. The NAC is run by a team of industry experts and is an approved UKRS and ABTC provider, offering the highest standard of accredited courses to animal owners and professionals alike. The NAC has its own virtual learning environment that allows students from all over the world to join in with courses, lectures and webinars, ultimately fulfilling the NAC mission statement; “Positively influencing the wellbeing of animals worldwide”. Heather and Ross Simpson founded the NAC in 1997 when they opened the first centre in Sussex. In 2003, they moved to Wales and opened the second centre and they remained there until 2019 when the NAC Sanctuary moved to Chichester after Heather sadly passed away the year before. With a background in animal behaviour, Heather has published her first PhD paper on zebra behaviour working with Professor Christine Nicol of Bristol Vet School. The Natural Animal Centre ran animal behaviour courses for people to come and stay and spend weeks at a time studying the science of animal behaviour, in a centre purpose-built for the animals it was home to. The NAC then developed further and converted the EBQ and CBQ stage 1 courses into online distance learning programmes which pioneered the way that people could learn the science of animal behaviour for these species, in as much depth as they would have done in person, from home. With this step forward came the release of the EBQ Stage 2 and the CBQ Stage 2. As of 2021, the ownership of the Natural Animal Centre changed when Ross chose Alex Le Grand as a successor. Alex brought on board Debbie Busby and Aliyah Woodland to help him develop the NAC further into the future of the animal behaviour industry. The Natural Animal Centre is now managed by the new team and is re-structuring all the courses and developing them further to move in line with the animal behaviour industry becoming more controlled over the coming years. With this, new programmes are undergoing development and in 2022 there will be more courses available for owners, professionals, degree students, etc.