Meet our grantees
Wild Animal Initiative funds academic research on high-priority questions in wild animal welfare.
The goal of our grants program is to fund research that deepens scientific knowledge of the welfare of wild animals in order to better understand how to improve the welfare of as many wild animals as possible, regardless of what causes the threats to their well-being.
We showcase our grantees and their projects here and continuously update this page as new projects are added.
Towards welfare-centered prescribed fire
Grantee: Dale Nimmo
Institution: Charles Sturt University, Australia
Project summary
This project will investigate how prescribed burning affects wild animal welfare, and whether welfare state helps determine survival and harm suffered. The team will study bush rats (Rattus fuscipes) in forest blocks scheduled for prescribed burns and in control sites, combining behavioral, body-condition, injury, and non-invasive physiological measures to infer welfare changes. Lightweight telemetry will enable tracking of survival and severe harm, while fire-severity mapping, refuge measurements, and camera traps will help identify the mechanisms involved. The goal is to generate evidence to help burns be planned and implemented in ways that reduce avoidable suffering.
Validating acoustic monitoring as a non-invasive welfare indicator in urban coyotes: Linking vocalizations to health status, social dynamics, and environmental quality
Grantee: Caroline Rowley
Institution: Duke University, United States
Project summary
Urban coyotes face welfare challenges including disease, parasites, habitat degradation, reliance on anthropogenic food sources, and stress from human-wildlife conflict. This project is a pilot study aimed at validating passive acoustic monitoring as a welfare assessment tool. Data will be collected via GPS collars fitted with microphones, autonomous recording units, thermal camera traps and biological sampling. Using models and machine learning, the researchers will test whether vocal features correlate with established welfare indicators and whether individual coyotes can be identified from their howls alone. The aim is to develop a scalable, non-invasive framework for monitoring the welfare of free-ranging animals.
Comparative assessment of capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) welfare in protected, semi-anthropized, and anthropized environments in Argentina
Grantee: Débora Silvia Racciatti
Institution: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Project summary
This project will assess how different levels of human disturbance are associated with behavioral, physiological, and health-related welfare indicators in capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris). Using camera traps, direct observations, non-invasive fecal sampling, and body condition assessments, the team will evaluate a suite of indicators and test not only whether they vary in predicted directions across environments, but how consistently they converge across welfare domains, identifying which measures most reliably discriminate conditions of higher versus lower welfare in free-ranging populations.
An evaluation of effective disturbance mitigation measures for European badgers (Meles meles) occupying setts during forestry operations
Grantee: Stephen McAuliffe
Institution: University of Brighton and Forest Research
Project summary
In order to avoid possible disturbance to European badgers, forestry guidance in England states that activities using heavy machinery should be prohibited within 20 meters of active badger setts. This research aims to validate that the approved noise and vibration mitigation buffer distances intended to prevent disturbance from anthropogenic activities are effective. Observations of badger behavior will be made in woodland habitats, and fecal cortisol metabolites will be collected for analysis. If changes in behavior and increases in cortisol levels are not found following exposure to forestry noise and vibration greater than 20 meters away, robust evidence will be provided to validate that badger welfare is not being adversely impacted by legally sanctioned forestry activities.
The impact of road noise on the welfare of free-living juvenile white-footed mice
Grantee: Michael Sheriff
Institution: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Project summary
This project will examine how road noise impacts the ability of juvenile white-footed mice in Massachusetts to respond to the threat of predation. Preliminary work has shown that experimental manipulation of road noise disrupts the foraging responses of (adult) small mammals to predation risk, possibly by masking their ability to perceive predators’ auditory cues. Perception of predation threat will be experimentally manipulated by auditory playback of owl noises at sites near and far from the highway, paired with controls at the same distances from the highway without auditory playback. Anxiety-related behaviors will be recorded in juveniles in an open field trap, and their feces will be studied to assess physiological stress and nutritional status.