Wild Animal Initiative (WAI) is a nonprofit that works to understand and improve wild animal welfare.

History

WAI was founded in 2019 as a merger of two organizations, Wild-Animal Suffering Research and Utility Farm. Wild-Animal Suffering Research began in 2016 as a project of the Effective Altruism Foundation and was part of Sentience Politics for a year or so until becoming an independent organization (Eskander 2017). Utility Farm launched in 2017 (Rowe 2017).

Evaluation

Animal Charity Evaluators rates WAI a "top charity"—one of the four organizations awarded their highest rating and the only group focused on wild animal welfare ever to be so rated. ACE considers WAI "an excellent giving opportunity because of their strong, cost-effective programs and their thorough strategy." (Animal Charity Evaluators 2020)

Wild-Animal Suffering Research and Utility Farm have both received funding from EA Funds (Bollard 2018; Cargill et al. 2018). In June 2021, WAI was awarded a $3.5 million grant from Open Philanthropy to support projects relevant to the field of welfare biology (Bollard 2021).