Overview

ELIGIBILITY

Primate Conservation, Inc. will grant seed monies or provide matching grants for graduate students, qualified conservationists and primatologists to study rare and endangered primates and their conservation in their natural habitat. Grants have averaged approximately $2,500, with a maximum grant of $5,000. We do not support conferences, travel to scientific meetings, legal actions, tuitions or salaries at institutions, and overhead costs.

SELECTION CRITERIA

Proposals are evaluated on competitive basis. Applications are screened by outside reviewers and the Board of Directors of PCI. All appropriate projects will be considered, but the regions of current interest are Asia and West Africa.

Closing Dates And Notification

Deadlines for all grant application materials to be in our office is February 1st and September 20th. Awards will be given by May 15th and December 15th.

Application Procedure

Grant applicants should fill out the cover sheet and institutional agreement forms (one page each). Proposals are to be submitted typed, double spaced, in English and limited to 20 pages total. Please submit three (3) copies of the complete proposal (All items). Please email a digital copy of the proposal with your last name and country in the file name. (IF we don’t receive a digital copy your proposal it will not be reviewed.) Please send it to nrowe@primate.org in an MS .doc file or RTF. Please DO NOT SEND PDF files as they cannot be copied or pasted. If the cover sheet is scanned as a JPEG to include the signature, then please send another copy without the signature that is a .doc file, and can be copied and pasted. Please send all application material to Primate Conservation, Incorporated at 1411 Shannock Rd Charlestown, RI 02813. Please DO NOT SEND them with a signature required or registered or certified mail as the US Postal Service will not deliver them. (Regular air mail is fine). Please do not fill in the cover sheet with your handwriting. You may have to retype the cover sheet to fill it in with a computer. Please put the cover page, proposal, budget, CV, and institutional Agreement form etc into one file. Please name the file with your last name first then country where you will do your field work and the year you are applying.

Suggested Outline

Please use: 8.5 X 11 inch paper, at least 12 point type, 1.5 spacing, no less than 1/2 inch margins. Be concise, items 1 – 5 should be no longer than 10 pages. Use the enclosed Project Proposal form as a cover sheet for each copy of your proposal. Submit three (3) copies of a complete proposal (The cover sheet and items 1-11). Include the following suggested outline items only if appropriate for your proposal. Be sure to send 3 copies of the signed Institutional Agreement form. We will not award a grant without this form.

Fill In the Cover Sheet with your Abstract

Proposal should consist of the following:

Introduction

• Justification of proposal.
  How project addresses primate conservation.

Background Information

• Prior research.
  Prior conservation action.
  If this is a continuing project funded by PCI , the proposal should include a summary of findings for the prior grant.
  If you are part of an academic program, please clearly state how the project you are asking to be funded fits into this program.

Project description

• Goals.
• Specific aims.
• Project design and implementation.
• Describe how you will prevent disease transmission from you and your assistants to primates. For references that describe this problem and its prevention please see the bottom of this page of the website.

Methods

• Data collection methodology should allow the reviewer to judge that the goals can be accomplished with sufficient data to test hypotheses and include the following information
• Clearly state your hypothesis and how it will be tested and what will be learned from a positive result or a negative result.
• For surveys, specifics on the survey methods to be used, including sampling methods, how often data will be taken, transect length, number of times the transects will be sampled, times of day or night, and how the data will be analyzed. For all projects, indicate work schedule, sampling methods, and expected or minimal target sample sizes.
• All animal handling planned, including: animal immobilization, capture techniques, blood or tissue collection, marking, collaring and radio telemetry devices,
• Local professional development.
• Involvement of local people.
• Education and public information.
• If you have as part of your proposal that you are interviewing people or evaluating conservation educational outcomes (before and after) with a questionnaire, you must include the list of questions you will ask or the questionnaire for the reviewers to evaluate your proposals.

Post-project follow-up

• Dissemination of results.
• Possible post-project conservation action
• Evaluation: how will success be measured?

Timetable

• Budget, include: total budget for proposal, funds already available, institutional support, grants pending from other sources, for pending grants please indicate if alternative to or supplemental to PCI funding request. Please include a budget justification that makes explicit how budget requests were calculated ( e.g. cost/person-day and number of person-days; cost per item and why items are needed). If you receive partial funding from PCI (i.e., one half requested) how much of your proposal will you be able to accomplish. Please note priority is given to proposals with matching grants. The applicant should notify PCI on the progress of pending grants or additional grants applied for after submission of their proposal. One effective method is to prepare a budget with item details as rows and the budget requested from each source as columns to highlight overlapping and supplementary requests.
• Bibliography and a map of the location of the project within the country.
• C.V.’s of principal personnel. Two (2) pages maximum per person.
• Copies of permissions from appropriate governmental agencies (i.e. visa, research permits) or statement that permits and permissions are not needed.
• Completed and signed institution agreement form (page 3).
• Names and addresses of 3 people qualified to review your proposal. N.B. We are not asking for personal references. Please do not include people who are involved in anyway with your project.

The following are publications you might wish to consult to find methods suitable for your project:

• Brockelman WY and R Ali (1987) Methods of surveying and sampling forest primate populations. In (eds. CW Marsh and RA Mittermeier) Primate Conservation in the Tropical Forest. Alan R. Liss: New York, pp. 23-62.
• Defler T and D Pintor (1985) Censusing primates by transects in a forest of known primate density. Int J Primatol 6:243-259.
• Peres CA (1999) General guidelines for standardizing line transect surveys of tropical forest primates. Neotropical Primates 7:11-16.
• Fashing PJ & M Cords (2000) Diurnal primate densities and biomass in the Kakamega Forest: An evaluation of census methods and comparison with other forests. American Journal of Primatology 50:139-152.

Books

Martin P, Bateson P. 1993. Measuring Behavior. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

National Research Council (1981) Techniques for the Study of Primate Population Ecology. Subcommittee on Conservation of Natural Populations. National Research Council. National Academy Press, Washington, DC.

Paterson JD (2001) Primate Behavior: An Exercise Workbook. Waveland Press.

Setchell JM and DJ Curtis (eds.) , 2nd ed. (2011) Field and Laboratory Methods in Primatology. Cambridge University Press.

White L and A Edwards (eds) (2000) Conservation Research in African Rain Forests. Wildlife Conservation Society.