Award Funds Studies Seeking Humane Solutions for Human-Wildlife Conflicts, Wildlife Research Methodologies
Washington, DC—The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) announced today the winners of its Christine Stevens Wildlife Award. Established in 2006, the Christine Stevens Wildlife Award provides grants of up to $10,000 to help fund studies on innovative and humane strategies for resolving wildlife conflicts and studying wildlife.
“AWI is pleased to support this year’s innovative projects that seek to find more humane methods to manage wild horses, protect bats, prevent predator attacks on livestock, and mitigate the impact of poisons on an endangered fox,” said Cathy Liss, president of AWI. “Since 2006, AWI has allocated over $345,000 in funds to support dozens of humane studies. We look forward to seeing how these 2016 projects lead to positive solutions for wildlife.”
The 2016 Christine Stevens Wildlife Award grant winners are as follows:
- Dr. Karen Herman and Dr. Allen Rutberg of Sky Mountain Wild Horse Sanctuary for developing more humane methods to assess wild horse population size and distribution in order to guide the use of immunocontraception for population management.
- Dr. Brooke Maslo of Rutgers University for evaluating artificial roost structures to minimize the impact on bats evicted from human-occupied dwellings, and for determining which factors contribute to structure use.
- Suzanne Stone of Defenders of Wildlife for testing the E-shepherd collar as a nonlethal deterrent to predators in order to protect sheep in the northwestern United States.
- Dr. Deborah Woollett and Dr. Ngaio Richards of Working Dogs for Conservation for using scent detection dogs to detect the presence of anticoagulant rodenticides and develop mitigation measures to protect the endangered San Joaquin kit fox in California.
The Christine Stevens Wildlife Award is a grant program named in honor of AWI’s late founder and president for over 50 years, to honor her legacy and inspire a new generation of compassionate wildlife scientists, managers, and advocates. For over half a century, Stevens dedicated her life to reducing animal suffering both here and abroad. She founded AWI in 1951 to end the cruel treatment of animals in experimental laboratories. Inevitably, her work expanded to take on other animal welfare causes, including preventing animal extinctions, reforming methods used to raise animals for food, banning steel-jaw leghold traps, ending commercial whaling, and much more.
For more information about the Christine Stevens Wildlife Award and this year’s winners, please visit https://awionline.org/content/christine-stevens-wildlife-awards.
About The Christine Stevens Wildlife Award
The Christine Stevens Wildlife Award is a grant program named in honor of the late founder and president of the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI). The program provides grants of up to $10,000 to spur innovative and humane research to resolve wildlife conflicts and to study wildlife. With this grant program, AWI aims to honor Stevens’ legacy and inspire a new generation of compassionate wildlife scientists, managers, and advocates. For more information on the award, visit https://awionline.org/content/christine-stevens-wildlife-awards.