Impacts of land-use on social networks in mixed-species bird flocks, with implications for the short-term and long-term welfare of Himalayan birds

Grantee: Akshay Bharadwaj

Institutions: Indian Institute of Science, India

Grant amount: $15,000

Grant type: Small grants

Focal species: Multi-species birds

Conservation status: Least concern

Disciplines: Ornithology, physiology, community ecology, infections disease, population ecology

Research location: India

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Project summary

This project will use mist-netting and bird-banding, followed by standardized observations of behavior and body condition, to examine the relationship between individual-level social behavior, bird health, and survival within mixed-species bird flocks (MSFs) in Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary, Arunachal Pradesh, India. Feather corticosterone level, ectoparasite load, and other morphological parameters will be used to measure the health of each banded individual. The researcher will also take advantage of a long-term bird-banding dataset, spanning 12 years, to examine the linkages between inter-individual differences in social behavior and the survival of each individual, comparing survival rates and reproductive success in primary and logged forest. 

Why we funded this project

Understanding the importance of multi-species flocking behavior in birds is relevant to our research priority of understanding indirect welfare effects in ecological systems, which this project approaches in a cost-effective way. We were especially impressed by the quality of the proposal for this project, particularly as it is led by a beginning graduate student in India. Funding this project serves to increase the geographic diversity of our grantee community and therefore of the nascent field of wild animal welfare research.

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Mapping welfare for conservation management

Grantee: Lisa Olivier

Institutions: Game Rangers International, Zambia

Grant amount: $29,791

Grant type: Small grants

Focal species: African elephant (Loxodonta)

Conservation status: Endangered

Disciplines: Animal behavior, animal welfare science, wildlife management

Research location: Zambia

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Project summary

To effectively steward wild animal welfare, leading indicators are needed that predict the future rather than summarizing the past.  These must be easy to measure, respond quickly to ecosystem changes and highlight potential detrimental impacts that need addressing, including anthropogenic activities. This project aims to test the approach of mapping wild animals’ perception of their environment by monitoring an array of behavioral and physiological parameters in African elephants over a year as they navigate the landscape. These measures will be aggregated to define a scale representing the animals’ perceptions of threat that can be estimated for a given time and place. The researchers will then project these data onto maps to identify areas of high and low welfare, where animals may be feeling alternatively secure or fearful. The researchers intend for the project to help conservation practitioners create better management plans to protect wild animal populations by providing a head start in assessing changes in their surroundings.

Why we funded this project

We are excited by this project’s analysis of a long-term longitudinal dataset because of the importance of understanding how wild animals’ welfare varies with demographic factors such as age and sex, as these groups often face different challenges and have different ecological and behavioral requirements, and negative welfare impacts that fall on young individuals may also have ripple effects throughout their lives. We also appreciate this project’s holistic approach. The long-term monitoring means it is possible to consider not only the usual downstream welfare indicators based on health and behavior, but also upstream factors that might influence them, such as social interactions and exposure to predators.

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Every breath you take, I‘ll be watching you: Automated measurement of breath rate from mobile phone videos as a severity assessment parameter in wild great tits

Grantee: Caroline Deimel

Institutions: Max Planck Institute, Germany

Grant amount: $19,200

Grant type: Small grants

Focal species: Great tits (Parus major)

Conservation status: Least concern

Disciplines: Animal behavior, animal welfare science, physiology

Research location: Germany

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Project summary

Breath rate (BR) is increasingly used as a non-invasive proxy of stress that is fast, cheap, and field-friendly. However, BR has not been evaluated in a bird welfare context, and it is unclear how it relates to established physiological proxies of stress, like glucocorticoid measurements in blood. Also, the currently used protocols to measure BR lack standardization, scalability, and validation. This project aims to provide a validated, non-invasive reference tool for standardizing BR measurements following capture and physical sampling protocols in wild birds by implementing computer vision capabilities and other improvements in software the researchers have recently developed to estimate BR metrics from mobile phone videos. This will allow the research community to gather objective, reproducible, and comparable data, and provide institutions tasked to oversee animal welfare with objective and feasible monitoring requirements. The project will also evaluate BR as a welfare indicator in great tits (Parus major), a songbird extensively used in wild animal research across Europe, by analyzing an existing, five-year dataset to test whether BR corresponds to simultaneous glucocorticoid measurements from free-living great tits. These data will provide reliable baselines and ranges for glucocorticoids and BR, and benchmarks for video recording lengths. 

Why we funded this project

We are generally interested in developing non-invasive ways of measuring indicators of wild animal welfare. One of the key advantages to non-invasive measurement, besides the obvious of not causing unnecessary fear or pain to animals, is that stress induced by the measurement process can obscure the animal’s baseline stress levels if the method is too invasive or not carried out properly. We also tentatively believe that instilling a norm of minimizing animal harm within welfare biology research will increase the likelihood that researchers act as scientist-advocates for implementation of wild animal welfare interventions. This project’s focus on making breath rate easy and inexpensive to measure in a consistent way also fits well with our desire for a greater volume and accessibility of welfare data collection.

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City living – assessing the welfare costs of urban living in spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta)

Grantee: Emma Stone

Institutions: Carnivore Research Malawi and University of the West of England, United Kingdom

Grant amount: $30,000

Grant type: Small grants

Focal species: Spotted hyaena (Crocuta crocuta)

Conservation status: Least concern

Disciplines: Human-wildlife conflict, physiology, animal welfare science, animal behavior, infections disease

Research location: Malawi

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Project summary

Lilongwe City (the capital of Malawi, central Africa) has a good network of green spaces and river corridors, supporting a population of urban spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta). However, human-wildlife conflict (HWC) is frequent, often resulting in persecution of these animals. Using non-invasive techniques, this project will measure and compare the fecal and hair cortisol levels (as a proxy of stress), mean body condition, tooth ware, hematological parameters, and disease (toxoplasmosis and rabies) in spotted hyena between urban (Lilongwe district) and rural (Kasungu National Park) populations. Behavioral experiments (exposure to novel objects and threatening scents) will also be used to assess individual boldness in urban and rural populations as a risk factor, which may increase propensity for HWC and therefore mortality and stress. Results will be used to inform policies to reduce HWC and implement welfare considerations as part of the population’s conservation management plan.

Why we funded this project

Interactions between people and wildlife are increasing as urban areas expand. This is of particular concern with carnivores, as even small species can be perceived as threatening. Despite the fact that the developing world has the highest rate of urbanization, urban carnivore studies have generally focused on European and Asian cities, with research on African cities being relatively neglected. Although HWC is a traditional issue in conservation, we have encountered few projects that effectively address the more neglected question of how HWC interacts with non-anthropogenic welfare impacts. By considering a variety of welfare indicators/factors, including disease transmission and social dynamics, this project will help us understand that interaction, producing results that can be translated into more abundant urban species. Additionally, by funding at least some projects on endangered species, we increase the likelihood of our welfare-focused message reaching conservation practitioners, potentially leading to a greater emphasis on and interest in welfare within that community.

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From rehabilitation centers to the wild: Evaluating brown bear stress using blood and scat parameters

Grantee: Morteza Naderi

Institution: Koç University, Turkey

Grant amount: $29,955

Grant type: Small grants

Focal species: Brown bear (Ursus arctos)

Conservation status: Least concern

Disciplines: Population ecology, animal welfare science, human-wildlife conflict

Research location: Turkey

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Project summary

Brown bears play a prominent role in the ecosystems of northern and eastern Turkey. However, there are serious long-term threats to their welfare and viability that are common to other large omnivores, such as habitat fragmentation and increasing contact with humans. For example, open garbage dumps are located across the bear’s distribution and affect behavioral patterns in bears, including seasonal migration habits, whereby the bears would normally move into different areas to exploit seasonal resources. This project will involve a collaboration with KuzeyDoga, one of the only nature conservation NGOs in Turkey, to monitor the behavior and stress physiology of individual free-living bears using GPS collars, camera traps, and blood and fecal glucocorticoids (GCs). The location and behavior data will allow them to document what stimuli individual bears have been exposed to (e.g. use of garbage dumps, proximity to roads), and when. This information can then be paired with the GC results to better understand the welfare implications of those exposures. The study of wild bears will also be complemented by the same physiological measurements on bears residing at a rehabilitation center in the region, which come from a similar genetic and early-life background to the free-living bears.

Why we funded this project

This project addresses our objective of validating non-invasive physiological welfare indicators (e.g. fecal GCs) against behavior and known environmental stressors. The pairing of wild and captive (rescued/rehabilitated) individuals is also notable because the captive individuals can serve as a sort of control group due to their controlled environment at the rehabilitation center. Although brown bears in Turkey are not as numerous as some other species we tend to prioritize research on, they and the threats they face are ecologically similar to those faced by most bears worldwide, especially North American black bears, who number many hundreds of thousands. Therefore, we expect the findings of this project to be at least partially generalizable to more than one million potentially long-lived individuals.

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Investigating ways to assess and improve the welfare of leopards captured in response to conflict, in Nepal

Grantee: Jessica Bodgener

Institution: University of Kent and Wildlife Vets International, United Kingdom

Grant amount: $16,850

Grant type: Small grants

Focal species: Leopard (Panthera pardus)

Conservation status: Vulnerable

Disciplines: Wildlife rehabilitation, animal welfare science

Research location: Nepal, United Kingdom

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Project summary

Leopards are the most widespread and adaptable of the world’s big cats, occupying a wide variety of habitats ranging from remote rainforests to busy urban centers. In Nepal, the successful recovery of tiger populations is displacing leopards from protected parks and forcing them into more populated areas. Low densities of natural prey in these areas, coupled with an abundance of easily hunted feral dogs around settlements, have resulted in leopards colonizing urban and suburban environments. This has caused an increase in conflict with people, including the predation of farmed animals and occasional human attacks. Organizations responding to conflict events have limited resources and must attempt to balance animal welfare and conservation aims with public safety and sociopolitical demands. This has resulted in an ad hoc approach, with frequent interventions, but little to no opportunity to reflect and evaluate the impact or success of these actions. This project will focus on validating entirely non-invasive post-release monitoring techniques, including photogrammetric assessment of body condition and measurement of hair cortisol from fecal samples, to monitor the impact of translocation of leopards away from conflict areas on their health and welfare. 

Why we funded this project

We funded this project because it addresses two of our research priorities by seeking to validate non-invasive monitoring techniques, including hair cortisol as a measurement of chronic stress (which may be more informative of welfare than short-term measures of stress physiology). Although it focuses on leopards, the validation of these methods should be transferable to other species. The researcher, Jess Bodgener, also seems to have a long-term interest in wild animal welfare, and has genuine partnerships in place to build capacity and regard for wild animal welfare in Nepal.

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WellSeal: Non-invasive quantification of welfare in lactating harbour seals

Grantee: Jess Harvey-Carroll

Institution: University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Grant amount: $30,000

Grant type: Small grants

Focal species: Harbour seal (Phoca vitulina)

Conservation status: Least concern

Disciplines: Population ecology, animal behavior, animal welfare science

Research location: Sweden

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Project summary

Harbor seals require locations protected from adverse weather and other disturbances during the birthing season, when vulnerable pups are left on land while mothers forage. The limited availability of such sites leads to high intraspecific competition, in which larger seals are likely to dominate more desirable locations due both to their physical strength and their lower need to forage. Mothers must choose when and for how long to forage, leading to trade-offs between maternal and offspring welfare which may lay the foundation for the welfare of younger generations. Currently, little information is available on time spent foraging during the lactation period. As harbor seals are facing unprecedented stress from overfishing, seals are swimming increasingly large distances to obtain food. It is not known how this change affects the trade-off between maternal foraging and offspring care, and the resulting welfare of the pups. This project will use camera trap footage and state-of-the-art 3D modeling to non-invasively assess the influence of maternal welfare on the time spent away from the pups. Pup welfare during periods of maternal absence will also be assessed. Welfare will be assessed in terms of the Five Domains framework, based on individual body condition (health), an index of the optimality of their haul-out position (environment), and a record of positive and negative interactions (behavior). Such welfare assessment will be aggregated at a colony level to compare welfare between colonies with more and less access to food.

Why we funded this project

We funded this project because it seeks to evaluate welfare impacts of population density — likely a common cause of welfare issues — in a relatively abundant species, using a robust approach that is only possible thanks to the species-specific knowledge of the PI and her collaborators. For example, we value their use of image analyses to identify haul-out site suitability and welfare impacts on a fine spatial scale that takes into account both environmental and social factors. We also valued the focus on juvenile welfare and the conflict of interest that may arise between parent and offspring. Improving our understanding of the fundamental relationships between population density, parental care, and juvenile welfare will allow the results of this project to extend to other contexts.

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Pre- and Post-release Welfare Indicators for Recovery Programs

Grantee: Laney Hayward Nute

Institution: University of Mississippi, United States

Grant amount: $30,000

Grant type: Small grants

Focal species: Attwater's Prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus cupido attwateri)

Conservation status: Endangered

Disciplines: Wildlife rehabilitation, animal behavior, ornithology

Research location: United States

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Project summary

Captive-raised animals translocated to the wild often suffer high mortality; for example, Attwater’s prairie chickens have had a survival rate of only 17-18% post-release in recent years. The focus of many translocation programs is on investing resources to produce more individuals rather than to improve the welfare of released animals. This project seeks to reduce the stress and suffering of released Attwater's prairie chicken by identifying a set of pre- and post-release indicators of welfare to target individuals for management interventions. Pre-release, the coping styles of individual birds will be identified during routine cage transfers and handling. Following release, the fine-scale movements of released birds will be traced using customized data loggers. By investigating the association of pre- and post-release behaviors with the body condition, daily environment changes, and ultimate survival of these individuals, it will be possible to identify which birds from future releases will need special attention to aid their survival. The researchers hypothesize that individuals with a more proactive (“bold”) personality will disperse further post-release and suffer higher mortality rates compared to more reactive individuals. 

Why we funded this project

Understanding of associations between coping style/personality and welfare outcomes/challenges could be used to predict at-risk individuals in need of interventions such as supplemental feeding, translocation, or medical treatment. For wildlife rehabilitation or “headstarting” programs, coping style associations could also be used to inform rearing protocols to promote resilient styles that result in improved individual welfare in the wild.

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Introducing a novel tool to compare stress levels in captive and wild Macaca fascicularis

Grantee: Vets4welfare

Institution: Vets4welfare Foundation, Netherlands

Grant amount: $20,000

Grant type: Small grants

Focal species: Crab-eating macaque (Macaca fascicularis)

Conservation status: Endangered

Disciplines: Physiology, wildlife rehabilitation, human-wildlife conflict

Research location: Indonesia, Netherlands

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Project summary

This project will compare cortisol concentrations in the hair of Indonesian monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) from three groups: a group whose members have spent their whole lives in the wild, a group that has been kept in captivity for the entertainment industry, and a group that are in the process of rehabilitation following rescue from the entertainment industry. Hair measurements can reflect welfare over a long period, as they integrate cortisol as they slowly grow. The concentration of cortisol in a segment of a hair is thought to reflect the activity of the animal’s physiological stress response at the time that segment was produced. On that premise, the project aims to compare the stress response of M. fascicularis under wild, poor-welfare captive (entertainment), and high-welfare captive (rehabilitation) environments. The hair cortisol data will be compared with veterinary and forensic records and other welfare-relevant observations (e.g., of infections or injuries) where possible. The researchers also intend to determine whether mistreatment in captivity leaves a signal in hair cortisol that could be detected after the fact and used to identify monkeys that have been illegally trafficked. 

Why we funded this project

Although this project focuses narrowly on anthropogenic harms in a particular threatened species, we funded it because their approach is interesting and very similar to one we have been interested in applying to study the welfare of stocked fish (i.e., fish raised in a hatchery and then released into the wild) using biological aging methods, another category of putative welfare indicators that integrate stress over time. Between these two funded studies, we are interested to see 1) how welfare indicators for wild and captive environments of varying quality compare and 2) whether hair cortisol from individuals whose environment changed is consistent (at the corresponding points in time) with that of individuals who were only exposed to one environment or the other. We anticipate that the relationship for the latter question is more complex than described, but investigating it will help us learn more about the validity of hair cortisol measurements and the importance of prior experiences in shaping animals’ stress responses.

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Improving the welfare of translocated individuals - European mink as a case study

Grantee: Maria Diez Leon

Institution: University of London, United Kingdom

Grant amount: $28,965

Grant type: Small grants

Focal species: European mink (Mustela lutreola)

Conservation status: Critically endangered

Disciplines: Wildlife rehabilitation, animal welfare science

Research location: Spain

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Project summary

Conservation breeding programs do not proactively consider or even assess welfare across all stages, nor track the welfare of released individuals. We therefore lack data on how individual welfare state pre-release might affect welfare post-release. This project aims to fill the gap by assessing how levels of two behaviors thought to track positive and negative welfare states — play behaviors and abnormal repetitive behaviors — influence post-release welfare metrics in two on-going reintroduction programs for the European mink, and compare the welfare of released minks to individuals in an established “benchmark” wild population. Fecal glucocorticoid metabolite levels will also be measured to validate these behavioral indicators pre- and post-release. By differentially raising mink in conditions known to improve welfare, the researchers will investigate whether captive environments that promote play and decrease abnormal repetitive behaviors improve pre-release and post-release welfare, whether individual welfare state pre-release correlates with post-release welfare outcomes, and how the welfare of captive-born individuals differs from that of wild-born individuals. 

Why we funded this project

We are interested in the comparison of long-term welfare outcomes between individuals born and protected in captivity and individuals born in the wild, which can help us understand how welfare issues differ between captive and wild environments and how much early-life experiences influence long-term welfare. The project’s objective of identifying improvements for the early-life care of animals who are to be released into the wild also helps us assess “headstarting,” a practice in which juveniles of a species are reared in captivity before being released at a less dangerous life stage, as a near-term intervention for improving the lifetime welfare of animals who have vulnerable juvenile stages but are relatively long-lived as adults. Finally, the applicant has a background in conservation but has demonstrated a long-term interest in wild animal welfare, such as attending an April 2022 workshop on animal sentience (LSE/Rethink Priorities).

Find Maria’s other project, studying American minks and Eurasian otters, here.

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