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.
How do human activities impair the welfare of highly social fish?
Grantee: Joachim Frommen
Institution: Manchester Metropolitan University
Project summary
This project will investigate the welfare of a common fish species in Lake Tanganyika, the princess cichlid, as they are exposed to varying levels of human activity. Across eight populations representing a range of distances to human settlements and shipping routes, the researchers will monitor behaviors indicative of stress or aggression and measure body condition and the brain tissue expression of five genes involved in stress physiology (glucocorticoid response pathway; crf, cyp11b, gr1, gr2, mr). These welfare indicators will be compared with environmental characteristics including boat noise, water visibility (sedimentary and algal load), human fishing intensity, temperature stress, and structural complexity of the local environment.
Mapping welfare for conservation management
Grantee: Lisa Olivier
Institution: Game Rangers International
Project summary
This project will monitor behavioral and physiological parameters in African elephants over one year to map their perception of their environment. The aim is to test this approach’s potential as a leading indicator that is easy to measure, responds quickly to ecosystem changes, and highlights potential detrimental impacts. These measures will be aggregated to define a scale representing the animals’ perceptions of threat that can be estimated for a given time and place. The researchers will then project this data onto maps to identify areas of high and low welfare. The project will help conservation practitioners create management plans to protect wild animals by providing a head start in assessing changes in their surroundings.