Deadline: 28-Oct-22

Wild Animal Initiative has announced the 2022 Large Grants Program that is a restricted call focused on two very specific themes with related tracks that seek to address key unanswered questions important for understanding wild animal welfare.

Themes

Wild Animal Initiative is inviting interested groups to prepare a proposal for a project of up to USD $200,000 to explore:

• Theme 1: Density-Dependent Welfare:
  • Track 1: Resource availability and density-dependent welfare.
  • Track 2: Density-dependent mortality.
  • Track 3: Population regulation interventions.
  • Track 4: Avoiding the carrying capacity paradox.
• Theme 2: System Dynamics & Network Effects:
  • Track 1: Modeling community welfare.
  • Track 2: Empirically model network effects on wild animal welfare.
  • Track 3: Network effects of interventions designed to improve wild animal welfare.

Eligible Projects

Wild Animal Initiative provides grants for research projects that help us understand and improve the lives of wild animals. Eligible projects will shed light on one of the following questions:

• What are the subjective experiences of wild animals like?
• What strategies can they use to improve the welfare of wild animals responsibly?

Eligibility Criteria

• This call is open to anyone, but Wild Animal Initiative is especially interested in supporting postdocs and PhD students pursuing a long-term research career in the field of wild animal welfare, and researchers who have not previously included welfare considerations in their work. Wild Animal Initiative particularly encourages applications from communities underrepresented in the sciences, including but not limited to people of color, self-identified women, and non-binary individuals.
• The Wild Animal Initiative is not able to fund researchers resident in nations subject to sanctions by the United States (e.g. Iran, North Korea, Russia). Wild Animal Initiative is also unable to fund work that will be carried out in the United States by a non-US resident. However, outside of these specific limitations, proposals for research by researchers from around the world are welcome. If you are not sure if your project is eligible please contact us.

Selection Criteria

• Impact: How likely is it that this project will lead to an improvement in wild animal welfare now or in the future?
• Engagement: To what extent will this project accelerate or inspire other research or activity in support of wild animal welfare?
• Scope: How many animals could potentially benefit from the results of this project, and by how much?
• Tractability: Does this project have a high probability of being able to be carried out as described and deliver the expected answers or results?
• Neglectedness: How likely is it that this project could be funded by another organization, without reducing its value for wild animal welfare?
• Research ethics: How likely is the execution of this project to cause harm to non-human animals or people?
• Cost-effectiveness: Given two projects of approximately equal overall merit (considering the above criteria), Wild Animal Initiative will give preference to the one with the lower budget.

For more information, visit https://www.wildanimalinitiative.org/call-for-proposals-oct-2022