The Trump administration intends to clip the wings of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s migratory bird program as part of its employee-culling plan that could just be getting started.
According to a not necessarily complete Interior Department plan made public Monday in a court filing, the FWS migratory bird program will lose 35 of its current 269 staffers. The program’s losses account for about one-quarter of all Fish and Wildlife Service personnel cuts enumerated in the plan.
“We’ve lost 3 billion birds since 1970, yet the administration is slashing funding for migratory birds,” said Tara Zuardo, a senior campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This is just really sad and troubling.”
The migratory bird program cuts are but one part of Interior’s overall reduction-in-force plans that will crimp nearly every component of the sprawling department, though the hits are not evenly distributed. The Fish and Wildlife Service’s Office of Law Enforcement, for instance, is slated to lose only one of its current 246 positions.
