Big Cats Initiative: Apply for a Grant

Apply for a Grant

Join Us: Donate or Apply for a Grant

The Big Cats Initiative seeks to advance our understanding and conservation of the world’s big cat populations, protecting and restoring them and their habitats via an interconnected series of innovative field‐based, action‐oriented, strategic programs. These goals are facilitated via the Big Cats Initiative Grants Program, which is intended to identify, seek, and attempt conservation solutions, whether innovative or traditional, across the globe. Contributing to BCI’s ultimate mission of halting and reversing big cat population decline, the grants program will drive a broad spectrum of conservation, education, development, and scientific ventures.

You can be part of this important work by donating to the Big Cats Initiative or by applying for a grant.

Grant recipients will be field-based conservationists, environmental educators, students, researchers, and advocates for the Initiative’s missions and programs.

Proposals including any of the following criteria are accepted:

Innovative projects with results for saving lions or cheetahs
Anti-poaching programs
Projects that test new technology
Educational projects focused on community
Projects that establish economic incentives for local people to ensure long-term survival of lions or cheetahs
For cheetahs, conservation proposals that seek to fulfill the recommendations from formal regional strategies and national action plans

Please read our grant application guidelines (PDF) for more information before submitting a proposal.

Currently funded programs are helping stem the decline of lions and cheetah in Africa through: increased livestock protection, building partnerships with local communities, conservation education, capacity building, and outreach campaigns. See the list of successful projects the Big Cats Initiative has funded.

To apply for a grant please fill out a pre-application.

You also can email us at bigcatsgrants@ngs.org with questions about the Big Cats Initiative.

Big Cats Initiative Projects

Big Cats of Ruaha

Visiting with Dr. Amy Dickman of the Ruaha Carnivore Project in Tanzania.
Cheetahs of the Kalahari

For the past five years, Gus Mills and his wife have been studying the approximately 350 cheetahs that live in the Kalahari, a highly arid environment consisting primarily of vegetated sand dunes.
Halting Lion Hunting

Grantee Emily Fitzherbert will make the first attempt to halt lion killings among locals who receive economic gain by hunting lions.
Lion Population Survey

Grantee Rudi van Aarde will be gathering data on lion populations along the northern shores of Lake Kariba in Zambia and in the Tete province of Mozambique.
Natural Livestock Enclosures

Laly Lichtenfeld aims to prevent lion-livestock conflict and to improve the lives of lions and people alike.
Human-Big Cat Conflict

This project with grantee Amy Dickman will provide significant local conservation-related education, training, and employment and will also reduce the negative impacts of big cats.
Halting Pesticide Usage

This project, run by Big Cats grantee Paula Kahumbu, Ph.D., aims to address the reason for the lion killings, as well as the use of pesticides.
Livestock Enclosures

This project expands an existing successful project in the Mara that has effectively reduced human-lion conflict by preventing predation through securing livestock enclosures, or “bomas.” Big Cats grantee Anne Kent Taylor is working with the local Masai communities to significantly reduce predation on their livestock and therefore avoid revenge killings of big cats.
National Park Support

Grantee Pricelia Tumenta epse Fobuzie aims to strengthen park management to better protect the Waza National Park and its resources as well as empowering communities to practice good conflict-mitigation methods.
Livestock Insurance

This project, led by J. Weldon "Tico" McNutt, offers farmers insurance for livestock killed by lions. The research team will regularly visit and monitor the farmers at their cattle posts to assist with cattle enclosure construction.

Animals

Steady Hands and Fins

Photographer David Doubilet photographs stingrays, sharks, and more.
Survival Guide: Dodging Locusts

Swarm behaviorist Iain Couzin has a toxic reaction to a locust at the same time his team runs out of food.

From the Magazine

Gannets Pictures

Champion divers but clumsy landers, doting parents but hostile neighbors—northern gannets abound in contradictions.
Estonia's Ural Owls

Photographer Sven Začek provides an intimate view of this large raptor.