Thanks for replying! It’s encouraging to hear about these projects in the pipeline, even if attention isn’t as high as it should be generally. You’ve certainly given me plenty of reading by linking the MAF studies. I’d also be very interested in seeing your former staff’s work when public!
As for lobbying states for funding, it is something that crossed my mind but I didn’t comment on it due to my unfamiliarity with the space. My security-adjacent background and cynicism makes me think you’d be more likely to have success if you sought funding on the basis of zoonotic risk. Maybe my time would be well spent looking for a precedent on this topic. An animal welfare issue that attracts the attention of states with the same scope. Would you happen to have any ideas regarding that? That being said, failing interventions at scale, I still think that smaller welfare projects are worthwhile considering the relatively low cost.
Also, I agree that the k-strategist vs r-strategist divide is perhaps the defining issue of this field. I only hope that we survive long enough as a species with the sufficient technological and moral development to address it. But despite that, I’m inclined to say death by gradual fungal infection is a worse fate than a life lived in the wild. Accepting the former as kinder seems as if it would risk slipping into some anti-natalist thinking which I staunchly oppose. I have similar thinking when comparing insect predation to death by chytridiomycosis. If somebody has research I can read to the contrary I would love to read it. I’m still pretty new to this issue and the field at large.
I agree with most folks here that this is a pretty poor allocation of resources. However, ignoring all that and thinking about the task, I would say that the ‘indomitable human spirit’ trend from a while back is probably the best example of what is being looked for. If you’re going to be forcing a meme it’s probably best to just rehash that.