2013
has been a harrowing year for all researchers working at long-term field sites
in primatology due to changes in government funding priorities. In the heyday
of long-term field research in primatology, both NIH and NSF were the primary
supporters of such research. Several years ago, NIH stopped funding research on
healthy animals in their natural environments in order to focus more
exclusively on biomedical models of human diseases, but until recently, NSF’s
Animal Behavior, Biological Anthropology and Long-Term Research in
Environmental Biology programs were viable sources of funding for projects such
as ours.
This
year, for the first time, NSF is explicitly discouraging proposals to do
long-term research on questions of development, behavioral mechanisms, adaptive
value, physiological processes, and evolutionary history of behavior in
animals. New proposals must be short-term (i.e. completely executed in a 1-3
year time frame), and explicitly NOT for the purpose of continuing long-term
studies.
Some
private foundations, such as the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation and National
Geographic Society, remain highly sympathetic to supporting long-term studies
of wild primates, but these organizations have small budgets, and their grants
cannot realistically provide enough money to completely support a typical field
site even for one year. They have traditionally been invaluable as sources of
support for graduate student research and for bridging funds between larger
government grants.
What
this means is that many long-term sites will have to vastly reduce the scope
and quality of their research, unless they succeed in obtaining private funds.
Many long-term projects are forming non-profit organizations such as this one
in an attempt to continue agendas of basic research, education and conservation
on their study populations. Due to these changes at NSF, many long-term field
sites will probably have to shut down in the next year or two. Private support
is more important than ever, and we hope that anyone who is passionate about
wildlife research and the conservation of natural habitats will consider
donating to nonprofit organizations such as this one.