Wild Animal Initiative: EOY Funding Update and Plans for 2025

By Casey Darnley @ 2024-12-19T21:01 (+4)

Summary

Since our last update on November 19, Wild Animal Initiative has progressed towards our annual fundraising goals and is still looking to raise additional funds by the end of the year to reach our goal. 

So far, we've raised $190,000 of our $240,000 goal from donors giving $10,000 or less. We hope to raise an additional $50,000 by December 31. As stated in our August 6 EA Forum post, our organizational strategy is responsive to the total amount raised and how many people donate, so smaller donors will have an exceptionally high impact this year.

With that in mind, we would like to share an update regarding our plans for 2025.

Plans for 2025

In 2025, Wild Animal Initiative will continue pursuing its work to build an academic field dedicated to wild animal welfare science, advancing its three programs: Research, Outreach, and Grants. Within each program, we’ve highlighted some specific ways our team intends to use current and new funding below. Although we will unlikely accomplish every one of these goals within the year, we will explore and pursue as many as our resources and capacity allow.

Research

Starting new research projects and publishing new papers

• Long-term biologging data: Reanalyzing an existing data set to determine whether certain situations that might have been stressful for the tagged animals are associated with behavioral changes that indicate poor welfare. We are looking for a dataset and collaborators.
• Wild insect welfare: Conducting an analysis of agricultural pest control to better understand the best targets for welfare interventions — first identifying scientific gaps and then developing research plans to help fill them.
• Academics’ beliefs and values: Conducting a survey to learn about academics’ beliefs and values pertaining to different aspects of wild animal welfare.
• Reproductive buffering adaptations: Examining behaviors and traits that develop to protect and stabilize animals’ reproductive success in the midst of environmental or physiological challenges, we will investigate how these adaptations could relate to welfare.
• Urban ecology: A study of the overlap between the field of urban ecology and the field of wild animal welfare science.

Continuing ongoing research projects

• House sparrow research: Our house sparrow welfare research project will continue with the collection and analysis of field data. See here for an introduction to the project, and here for a December 2024 update.
• Challenges for behavioral ecologists: We have surveyed behavioral ecologists to find out why it’s challenging for them to integrate the study of welfare into their work. We will finalize this social study and produce a related paper with the findings.
• Contraception modeling: We are developing a model to show how wildlife contraception and density dependence can interact.

Publishing new review papers

• Historical interventions: Such as New World screwworm eradication or wildlife vaccination programs
• Captive animal welfare science: How its insights can be applied to the field of wild animal welfare science
• Wild fish welfare

Presenting our research at conferences

• European Vertebrate Management Conference, pending acceptance of the submitted abstract about the contraception modeling paper
• Ecological Society of America, pending acceptance of our proposal for a symposium with WAI grantees presenting their work
• Various other academic conferences. 

Outreach

Collaborations

• With veterinarians and veterinary students: Working on establishing a formal affiliation with UniLaSalle’s veterinary school so that we can contribute to publications and mentor students.
• With wildlife management organizations: Scoping the value of working with these kinds of groups to introduce them to wild animal welfare concepts. Although we are highly confident this will ultimately be a necessary step for applying wild animal welfare science, we are uncertain whether now is the right time, since the field is still in its “emerging” phase. 

Resources and support for researchers

• Wild animal welfare science curriculum: Planning and developing an online course to introduce students and early-career researchers to key concepts in wild animal welfare science.
• Networking events: Like in 2024, hosting virtual coffee hours and in-person meetups to help our grantees and other wild animal welfare researchers connect socially and professionally.
• Workshop: Delivering an updated iteration of the Methods Workshop we offered in 2023. 

Grants

Since launching our Grants Program in 2021, we’ve posted one or two calls for proposals per year. Each CFP has had a theme and offered grants within a specific dollar range, whether relatively large or relatively small.

In 2025, we are updating the way we distribute grants. Each CFP will now be more flexible, accepting proposals for research projects on a variety of topics, and offering grants of all sizes up to $100,000 each time. We’ll soon announce our first cohort of grantees with this new structure.

Conclusion & Call to Action

As we look ahead to 2025, we're not just focusing on the total amount we raise but also on building a more resilient and diverse funding base. This approach means your support, especially if you're not a multi-million-dollar foundation, will significantly impact our strategic decisions for the coming year.

After reflecting on the lessons learned from the unexpected OP phase-out of WAW, we are committed to reducing our reliance on any single funder. This is why every donation, regardless of its size, plays a vital role in helping us build a stronger, more sustainable foundation for our work.

So, whether you're considering a gift of $10 or $10,000, know that your contribution will significantly influence our ability to pursue groundbreaking research, expand our outreach, and fund innovative projects in the field of wild animal welfare. Your support now will help us build a stronger, more diversified organization ready to tackle the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in 2025 and beyond.