Hi Siobhan, I think the key question is how morally valuable an objective you consider improving wild animal welfare to be, and why. “Why” because if someone only cares about reducing the most obvious negative human impacts on wild animals, then field-building is probably not worth the effort. However, if they want to prevent animals dying from botulism in heatwaves, regulate wild animal populations via fertility rather than mortality, or do anything for wild fish and invertebrates, then the cost of building a scientific field is likely unavoidable. To your suggestion that WAI’s field-building is limitless, I will just link back to my reply from last December: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kizAAxyNkDtwShEJ2/wild-animal-initiative-when-does-research-become-impact?commentId=WHsgMhniyfKJNtrmM.
I think my post addresses a lot of your specific criticisms here. It not only acknowledges, but explains why “most funded projects have not yet published results” (all but the earliest-funded projects are ongoing) and why “projects have rarely built on one another” (we chose to fund projects on a wide variety of taxa, welfare issues and assessment methods early on to prioritize learning and establishing the field). If you disagree with those explanations or the choices involved, I’d be happy to consider alternatives.
Similarly, re: “Phase 3 appears designed to correct weaknesses in the previous approach.”—that is true, but in the sense that every approach has its weaknesses and its strengths. Our theory of change has always involved multiple phases, and it makes sense that our tactics would change with those phases. If we had launched in 2019 with the kind of posture we’re adopting in ‘phase 3’, we might have more short-term, small-scale interventions to show for it, but we would have been less successful at building a respected field, and we would not have connected with most of the people who are now spearheading WAWS academic institutions and beginning to bring some mainstream funding to WAWS. We would not have received that invitation to curate a special issue of ICB seven years ago, or even three years ago (when the earliest of the grants featured in Figure 1 were awarded). This is the sort of signal and opportunity that has caused our tactics and emphases to evolve through the phases outlined in this post.
Thanks, Vasco! In the long-term, I absolutely agree that accounting for impacts on all sentient animals is important. That is what we’re trying to work towards, but we need to approach it gradually for strategic and practical reasons. WAWS needs to advance a lot on several dimensions before we will be able to meaningfully account for soil invertebrates, for example, in welfare impact assessments.
Sentience/moral weights: As you suggest in that linked post, research on animal sentience and cross-species comparisons of welfare will be important. These more philosophical questions are not a priority for WAI (partially because others like Rethink Priorities and Heather Browning are working on them), but we do share relevant work and discuss them with scientists in our network.
Welfare assessment methods for invertebrates: Assessing welfare for any animal is a challenge, especially in the wild, and there is still mainstream misunderstanding and skepticism over what it means to assess animal welfare and whether it is even within the domain of science. Practice and proof of concept, starting with better understood species, should eventually make it easier and more acceptable for more neglected species. This is a high priority for WAI.
Population and community welfare dynamics: This requires welfare assessment methods for multiple species, plus an understanding of how welfare is impacted by ecological and demographic processes in those species. It makes sense to prioritize the species that are easiest to study, with the best understood relationships and needs. But again, this should widen with practice to account for more species. This is also a high priority for WAI.
A much more detailed understanding would be required for every problem and potential intervention (e.g., what invertebrate species consume the crumbs left by rats after consuming contraceptive bait?).
Considering indirect effects and non-anthropogenic issues: This is an ethical/political challenge. People generally seem to be more open to intervening for the welfare of wild animals in relation to human impacts. Indirect effects are already harder to get people to care about, so it makes sense to start normalizing that in relation to species they already care about or at least can see.
Allowing research and even limited interventions to go ahead without answering all of these questions should allow us to learn more, attract more interest to WAWS, and help normalize the ethics of considering all the animals who we aren’t clueless about. In the meantime, we’ll be working to reduce cluelessness about the most numerous and otherwise overlooked animals.