It's not that the products currently available fall short in the sense that we believe they definitely don't work — they do hold a lot of promise. But the results of the pilot projects that have been done so far do not provide sufficient data for us to know exactly how to use them on a wide scale as a replacement for rodenticides, nor is there sufficient data yet about their effects on welfare. So there are still some knowledge gaps that require robust, third-party research to identify the most effective products; the most effective ways to apply them to large, wild populations; and how to measure their effects on welfare. It's possible that the Open Innovation competition will lead to some of those questions being answered for established products, or result in a new product for which some of those questions are answered in the early R&D stages. 

Yes it is; good eye! And thank you; that was me. Photographed about a year ago in northern Georgia. 🙂 

Thanks so much, Ben! We are very excited about what you are doing with the Center for Wild Animal Welfare too. If anyone reading this comment has not heard of that new organization yet, check out their Marginal Funding Week post!

Hi Becca, thanks for your questions.

Research agendas: Essentially, no, we do not plan to manage research universities' agendas directly. We want the field to grow organically beyond our own work, which would mean universities and other groups can  follow their intellectual curiosities and develop their own specializations. But since we are currently the only organization coordinating the growth of the field as a whole, our work immediately introduces new wild animal welfare scientists to the research areas that we see as priorities and emphasizes why those areas are important. We hope this sets the stage for the version of the field we envision to be the one that emerges.

Institutional barriers: Cross-departmental coordination is likely to be a major challenge. For example, researchers in a wild animal welfare research group may represent different departments, but sometimes research must be housed within one particular department, and that has implications for the facilities they have access to, which courses the students in their labs are required to take, etc.

Another challenge, and perhaps a larger one, is the difficulty of just getting a permanent academic position. So as we invest in a fellow in the context of their university, it's likely that they will not stay at that university forever but will move for a permanent position elsewhere. On the one hand, that could be great! Because then they might be able to bring wild animal welfare science to a university where it has not be present before. But this pattern means there is a limited window of opportunity for us to target specific institutions based on the people (fellows) we know there. 

Institutions beyond academia: Influencing policy is an important part of our theory of change, but Wild Animal Initiative itself is unlikely to be directly involved — instead, it would be others advocating for the science our field produces to be used in policy decisions. Sometimes that could mean wild animal welfare scientists working within those kinds of organizations. We do not plan to host fellowships outside of traditional academia right now, but it's definitely possible that fellows we invest in at universities would move on to work at those kinds of institutions and advocate for wild animal welfare there. 

I'll also mention that we have given research grants to some institutions similar to the ones you have mentioned. You can see a list of all the projects we've funded here:
https://www.wildanimalinitiative.org/grantees

Unfortunately we don't have a filter for the type of institution, but if you're interested in this, I can help you find them.