A non-exhaustive list of things that seem like plausible candidates from a scale perspective, but are at varying points in the quality of research (and many are probably not near the certainty level we would need on the overall sign, but could be fairly easily, at least for target effects), and a rough guess at the scale of the number of animals that could be impacted by target effects:
Adapting more humane insecticides (hundreds of trillions?)
Indoor cats outside the US (where it’s mostly successfully been done) (low billions)
Eradicating rabies (mostly done successfully in Europe, very much not done in the US and other parts of the world) (tens of millions)
Rodent fertility control (hundreds of millions)
Other fertility control treatments for “pest” animals (pigeons, etc) (tens of millions)
Bird safe glass (already required by law in many jurisdictions (e.g. New York City for new construction)) (hundreds of millions)
All of these seem feasible in the nearer future, but still are minor compared to the scale of the bigger problems in the space, which I think academic field building is fundamental to address. If I could choose only one, I’d choose doing further academic field building over implementing any of these (though luckily we don’t have to choose between them).
(also, to be clear, WAI’s views might be very different than my own—just trying to give a flavor of what kind of timelines I was thinking about when setting up WAI).
Thanks for laying those out. I’d agree that if even one were executed at scale it could be a major win for animals. However, WAI doesn’t appear to have a pathway for turning any of those into reality. The reason for this seems to be ‘we’re not certain enough yet’, but there isn’t a defined threshold for what ‘certain enough’ means.
Field-building has value, but it shouldn’t be the default answer indefinitely, especially when the projected timelines for impact seem to shift so dramatically (suggesting that the original thesis was off, albeit in a direction that’s good for animals). There also isn’t a clearly defined threshold for how much field building is sufficient.
At some point, the movement ought to have clarity on when possible interventions graduate from speculative ideas to actionable programs.
A non-exhaustive list of things that seem like plausible candidates from a scale perspective, but are at varying points in the quality of research (and many are probably not near the certainty level we would need on the overall sign, but could be fairly easily, at least for target effects), and a rough guess at the scale of the number of animals that could be impacted by target effects:
Adapting more humane insecticides (hundreds of trillions?)
Indoor cats outside the US (where it’s mostly successfully been done) (low billions)
Eradicating rabies (mostly done successfully in Europe, very much not done in the US and other parts of the world) (tens of millions)
Rodent fertility control (hundreds of millions)
Other fertility control treatments for “pest” animals (pigeons, etc) (tens of millions)
Bird safe glass (already required by law in many jurisdictions (e.g. New York City for new construction)) (hundreds of millions)
More effective and humane island predator removal (millions)
Screwworm eradication (tens of billions)
All of these seem feasible in the nearer future, but still are minor compared to the scale of the bigger problems in the space, which I think academic field building is fundamental to address. If I could choose only one, I’d choose doing further academic field building over implementing any of these (though luckily we don’t have to choose between them).
(also, to be clear, WAI’s views might be very different than my own—just trying to give a flavor of what kind of timelines I was thinking about when setting up WAI).
Thanks for laying those out. I’d agree that if even one were executed at scale it could be a major win for animals. However, WAI doesn’t appear to have a pathway for turning any of those into reality. The reason for this seems to be ‘we’re not certain enough yet’, but there isn’t a defined threshold for what ‘certain enough’ means.
Field-building has value, but it shouldn’t be the default answer indefinitely, especially when the projected timelines for impact seem to shift so dramatically (suggesting that the original thesis was off, albeit in a direction that’s good for animals). There also isn’t a clearly defined threshold for how much field building is sufficient.
At some point, the movement ought to have clarity on when possible interventions graduate from speculative ideas to actionable programs.
Let’s see where things stand in a few years.