The Trump administration’s ax whacked without warning scientists at the Institute for Bird Populations in California.
One moment, the nonprofit group’s 22 full-time staffers were going about their work of monitoring birds in some of the nation’s iconic parks and other public lands. Then the emails starting arriving on Sept. 23, one after another, each unceremoniously informing the organization that nine federal contracts were being canceled.
Sent with no warning and minimal explanation, the grant cancellations will cost the Petaluma-based Institute for Bird Populations roughly $1 million in snatched-away federal funding. It will hinder, if not stop altogether, the avian monitoring work at parks including Yosemite and Sequoia national parks, and it will cost individual scientists their jobs.
“Everybody was very happy with the work that we were doing,” Meredith Walker, the organization’s spokesperson, said in an interview. “It just blindsided us.”
