December 10, 2021

December is a pivotal time for us at Wild Animal Initiative. Our strategic direction for the next year is clearer than ever before, but it’s still an open question whether we can afford everything we hope to achieve. After the giving season ends and the new year begins, we can determine which projects we can afford and recalibrate our plans to fit the funding we have received.

This post highlights some of the ways we are expecting to grow in 2022. Fortunately, we’ve already funded the continuation of our existing projects and the addition of some new ones. The question now is how much more progress we’ll be able to make next year.

This is far from a comprehensive list of our plans, and we’re likely to make changes as we continue to evaluate our strategy. But it’s a snapshot of our current thinking so you can share our excitement about what’s to come. If you think these plans show promise for the future of wild animal welfare, then please consider chipping in to make them possible.

Grants

Our Grants Program funds academic research on high-priority questions in wild animal welfare. We’re grateful to Open Philanthropy for fully funding the first two years of the program (i.e., until mid 2023). At the same time as that provides for the growth plans below, it also increases our need for funding in the rest of our work, which isn’t eligible for funding from Open Philanthropy. Offering grants has helped us reach many more scientists than ever before, which in turn increases the urgency to support them with our Services Program and guide strategy with our Research Program (see below for more).

Calls for proposals

We plan to regrant most of our current research funds through calls for proposals (CFPs) on important, neglected, tractable research areas within wild animal welfare. In July, we launched our inaugural CFP, on the theme of welfare and ecology of juvenile wild animals. Two hundred ninety-seven research teams submitted expressions of interest, 50 made it to the second round, and around 10 will win grants that will be announced in February 2022.

As vast a topic as juvenile welfare is, it offers answers to only a small proportion of questions about how to improve animals’ lives in the wild. That’s why we’re ramping up our grantmaking next year. By expanding our team and streamlining our processes, we hope to reach a point where we can run calls on at least four topics each year, each representing a different branch of wild animal welfare science.

Postdoctoral fellows

In addition to funding promising projects, we plan to support promising people. We’re especially interested in funding postdoctoral scientists, because they are at a critical career stage: they have the expertise to conduct high-quality research independently, and they are also at an opportune point to build new skills and try new directions. By granting postdoctoral fellowships, we aim to help our fellows develop the skills they need to pursue wild animal welfare work for the rest of their career, while simultaneously helping them complete an impactful, wild animal welfare project that would not be attractive to other funders.

Services

A productive scientific career requires more than just research funding. Our Services Program exists to fill those gaps by supporting the other professional needs of researchers pursuing wild animal welfare research.

Networking database

Wild Animal Initiative has always facilitated connections between scientists, and our planned networking database will dramatically streamline the process. Academics of all career stages and research disciplines will have the option to join a members-only contact database where they can quickly find and be found by precisely the type of person they want to work with: research collaborators, doctoral advisors, peer reviewers, funders, or even just thought partners.

Technical training

When we ask scientists what’s stopping them from acting on their interest in wild animal welfare, one of the most common answers we get is “I don’t have the skills to do that kind of research.” The inherently interdisciplinary nature of the field regularly pulls even highly trained scientists outside their previous domains of expertise. In addition to facilitating collaboration through our networking database, we plan to provide educational resources empowering researchers to overcome key technical skill bottlenecks. 

At its most basic, that would mean curating existing resources housed across various institutions and platforms. But with enough funding and person-power, we could develop our own manuals or online courses tailored specifically to wild animal welfare. For example, we often talk to PhD candidates who are uncomfortable with the effects their research has on the animals they study (similar to Executive Director Michelle Graham’s experience). We could meet this need with a reference manual listing lower-impact alternatives to common data-collection techniques, a webinar series exploring study designs that avoid or reduce the need for animal handling, and an in-person workshop providing hands-on experience in recommended field techniques.

Seminar and workshop series

We plan to host a series of virtual seminars and workshops in which invited guests share their research and skills as they pertain to wild animal welfare. The seminars will offer curious scientists an unusually low-effort way to participate in unusually high-detail conversations about the latest developments in the field. The workshops will provide opportunities for ecologists to learn more about animal welfare science, and to learn techniques they can apply in their work. With more funding, we’ll be able to host more events, attract higher-profile researchers, and invest in more thorough follow-up with attendees.

Research

We have far more questions about wild animal welfare than any one team could answer alone. That’s why so much of our work is focused on empowering other researchers rather than simply doing research ourselves. But engaging and supporting those scientists requires a deep understanding of the subject matter itself, which is why we have a Research Program: producing original research to guide our own priorities and to invite further investigation of key questions.

Deep dives

To expand upon our forthcoming list of research priorities for the field, we will write a series of detailed guides exploring selected areas. Each “deep dive” will introduce a topic’s relevance to understanding and improving the lives of wild animals, review the current state of the science, and outline promising next steps for researchers. They will be brief enough for non-experts to quickly get up to speed while still being detailed enough for experts to see exactly which papers to read next or which researchers to contact about collaborations.

Conference sessions

2022 will bring more in-person events and more sophisticated virtual conferences. We’re especially looking forward to hosting collaborative sessions at international conferences that give multiple speakers opportunities to present their work on areas relevant to wild animal welfare. These opportunities will be particularly effective at reaching a diverse and inclusive network, generating discussion, and encouraging people to follow up with us. We’ve already begun work on two such sessions: the first featuring presentations and discussions on how existing wildlife contraception methods can be used in new ways to maximize welfare, and the second offering training for ecologists wishing to integrate wild animal welfare into their existing research.

Policy opportunities

While our work to date has focused on field-building in the natural sciences, we’re increasingly optimistic about the potential for our research to inform law and policy. Advocates can work in parallel with scientists, building the institutional mechanisms and the political will that will be necessary to adopt whichever interventions turn out to be most effective. For example, government agencies currently obligated to consider animal welfare could develop more rigorous standards to account for the complexity of wild animal welfare.

To understand how our science could better inform law and policy, we’ve launched a broad scoping project evaluating potential avenues for advocacy and which actors are best placed to advance them. Thanks to an anonymous donor, the first phases of that research have been fully funded. But we don’t know yet what further research or outreach may be required, or whether we’ll have funding to make the most of those findings in 2022.