Wild Animal Initiative (WAI) is a nonprofit organization focused on supporting and producing academic research on improving wild animal welfare. It is one of three "Top Charities" recommended by

Animal Charity Evaluators Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE), formerly known as Effective Animal Activism (EAA), is a US-based charity evaluator and effective altruism-focused nonprofit founded in 2012. ACE evaluates animal charities and compares the effectiveness of their ...

History

WAI was founded in 2019, as a merger of the organizations Utility Farm (founded in 2016 by Abraham Rowe) and Wild-Animal Suffering Research (founded in 2017 by Persis Eskander). Its stated mission is to "understand and improve the lives of wild animals," by studying natural causes of pain and death for animals, such as natural disasters, disease, and starvation. Abraham Rowe was the Executive Director of WAI until 2019, after which Mal Graham became the leader of the organization. In 2022, Graham took the role of Strategy Director, and Cameron Meyer Shorb became the Executive Director. In 2021, WAI received a grant of $3,500,000 from

Open Philanthropy Open Philanthropy is a research and grantmaking foundation that makes grants based on the doctrine of effective altruism. It was founded as a partnership between GiveWell and Good Ventures. Its current co-chief executive officers are Holden ...

to support research on wild animal welfare. In the same year, WAI launched a research fund for high-impact wild animal welfare research, with the intent to "distribute over $3 million to academic research projects designed to understand and improve the lives of wild animals".

Reception

, which rates the cost-effectiveness of projects that work on improving animal welfare, rated WAI as a "Top Charity" in 2020, meaning that in their view, donating to WAI was one of the most effective ways to help animals. WAI is the only group not working on farmed animal welfare to ever receive that rating. WAI retained its "Top Charity" status in 2021 and 2022.

References

External links

*
November 2021 review
by

Wild Animal Initiative's ''Wildness'' podcast

Wild-Animal Suffering Research

Utility Farm
{{Wild animal suffering, state=uncollapsed 2019 establishments in Minnesota 501(c)(3) organizations Animal welfare organizations based in the United States Non-profit organizations based in Minnesota Organizations established in 2019 Organizations associated with effective altruism Wild animal suffering

History

Reception

See also

References

Further reading

External links