$250,000 Grant Will Establish Wildlife Center

The Museum of Comparative Zoology has received a $250,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to help purchase and maintain a wildlife research center in Concord.

The Museum must raise $150,000 more from private sources to meet the conditions of the Ford grant. Ernst Mayr, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and director of the Museum, hopes to complete the fund drive within, two years.

Biology students and scientists will study animal behavior and the relationship of plants and animals to their environment at the Concord Field Station. This outdoor laboratory will consist of 700 acres in the Estabrook Woods in Concord and a separate tract of 70 acres in Bedford.

Scientists at the Museum have suggested many problems which could be analyzed at the station, such as the following:

* It is known that a pregnant female mouse will abort if exposed to a strange male. Is this a factor in population control?

* How does the mating call of frogs get results?

* Does hibernation really ensure the safety of animals, or do many of them die during hibernation?

Projects like these cold not be undertaken without a tract of unspoiled land under University ownership. The wildlife center not only provides the laboratory, but it will also lure other accomplished biologists to Harvard. There are many people Harvard would like to appoint to the Faculty, Mayr explained, who have not been interested because "we didn't have the facilities for their work."

Although a leader in marine ecology, Harvard has lagged behind in the study of land animals. A number of other universities already have wildlife centers similar to the proposed Concord tract