The Trump administration wants to unplug a high-powered U.S. Geological Survey research program whose scientists have helped protect wildlife, manage forests, thwart pests and illuminate nature for over three decades.
Eliminating the biological research branch of the USGS, as called for in President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal, would accelerate the administration’s targeting of scientific experts and studies already shown in layoffs and grant cancellations at the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health.
But the potential scrapping of the USGS program is also goading some scientists out of their labs and into lobbying, as they deploy letters, phone calls, professional advocates, social media messaging, virtual rallies and more in their bid to save a nearly $300 million-a-year program.
“It seems largely political,” Shahid Naeem, a prominent Columbia University professor of ecology, said of the proposed USGS budget slashing in an interview. “And from a scientific point of view, it’s really going to cost the country billions of dollars if we eliminate these programs which keep watch on things like avian influenza, water quality and forest fires.”
Ron Pulliam, an emeritus professor at the University of Georgia, added in an email that elimination of the program is a “terrible idea based on the assumption that if you are unaware of bad news everything will be OK.”
More than 30 years ago, Pulliam was the first head of the biological research program that’s now called the USGS Ecosystem Mission Area.
The Ecosystem Mission Area is one of five designated mission areas within USGS. It received about $293 million for fiscal 2025. Trump’s proposal would drop it to zero in fiscal 2026.
The program includes 16 research centers, from the Great Lakes Science Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to the Western Fisheries Research Center in Seattle.
Scientists in Colorado, for instance, have examined how wildland fire risks and the potential benefits of forest thinning can best be communicated to at-risk communities. Elsewhere, researchers monitor bat populations threatened by wind turbines and fungal disease.
Still other USGS scientists are working to fight quagga mussels, a particularly vexing invasive species. In Alaska, they count loon populations and measure high-altitude snow packs. They keep an eye on sediment tainting Chesapeake Bay and on the Everglades’ altered water flows.
The program helps fund, as well, cooperative research units like one at Oregon State University, where more than 30 scientists, graduate students and assistants study fish and wildlife.
“Losing the EMA means losing many critical partners and projects that promote evidence-based recommendations for conservation of natural resources,” said Selina Heppell, professor and head of the university’s Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Sciences, in an email.
Bipartisan appeal
Last year, then-USGS Director David Applegate promoted a proposed 10 percent budget increase for the Ecosystem Mission Area by citing its work on “migration science for huntable big-game populations.”
The choice to highlight hunting benefits before a House panel stocked with hunting-friendly GOP members could be interpreted as tactical, with Applegate citing “the unique USGS expertise and technical capacity” that helps sustain economies in the West that rely on hunting and tourism, as well as those where people hunt for subsistence.
Applegate is now back in a career position as USGS’s chief scientist. The agency currently has an acting director while Trump’s nominee — geologist Ned Mamula — awaits Senate confirmation.
The Trump administration’s proposed fiscal 2026 budget does not elaborate on the proposal to end the Ecosystem Mission Area’s funding. The proposed budget reports that the USGS employed about 7,870 full-time workers in fiscal 2024. The proposed budget envisions total USGS employment falling to 5,153 in fiscal 2026.
In a budget summary, the USGS cites its intention to eliminate “grants to universities and other work that is duplicative of non-Federal research programs” and that “supports social agendas [like] climate change research.”
The agency cites plans to focus instead on “higher priority energy and minerals activities” and to help “streamline government.”
In response to a request from POLITICO’s E&E News for additional details about personnel numbers, future work and the rationale for eliminating the program, the Interior Department provided a statement.
“Interior proudly supports President Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ — a historic, America First budget that delivers middle-class tax cuts, unleashes American energy, secures our borders, and invests in the infrastructure and security of our public lands,” the statement said.
The genesis of the proposal is unclear, but the notion cropped up in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 policy playbook.
The chapter on the Interior Department was authored by conservative attorney William Perry Pendley, who served as de facto acting director of the Bureau of Land Management in Trump’s first term.
“Abolish the Biological Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey and obtain necessary scientific research about species of concern from universities via competitive requests for proposals,” the Project 2025 Interior Department chapter stated.
The “Biological Resources Division” was formerly the name of what has been called the Ecosystem Mission Area for the last 15 years.
The Project 2025 playbook did not elaborate on the perceived benefits of ending the USGS ecosystem work. Reached by telephone Wednesday, Pendley said, “I’m not going to discuss that right now. I appreciate the call.”
Scientists lobby
Supporters of the USGS research are trying to call attention to the proposed cuts.
The National Wildlife Federation on May 22 convened a “virtual rally” that drew about 2,000 participants to an hour-long program in support of the USGS Ecosystem Mission Area. Naeem, a former president of the 8,000-member Ecological Society of America, ventured onto Capitol Hill in May to discuss the proposal with Democratic congressional offices.
“We’ve been in constant communication with our members to be proactive,” Naeem said. “If our people speak up all across the United States and talk to their senators and members of Congress, that’s probably where we’re going to have the most effect.”
Upwards of 60 science-related organizations, from the American Geophysical Union to the Weed Science Society of America, signed an April 30 letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and a May 9 letter to leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees and both congressional natural resources committees.
An umbrella group called the USGS Coalition, representing more than 85 academic, business and scientific organizations, has likewise weighed in with testimony presented in April to House appropriators.
The director of one cooperative state-and-federal research center, granted anonymity because they had not been authorized to speak publicly about the issue, said, “We are calling our representatives, signing letters and writing editorials for newspapers.”
For the lawmakers, the proposed USGS budget cut is just one of many they will face. Asked on Thursday if he had any thoughts about the proposal, Republican Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, the chair of the House Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, said simply “no.”
A spokesperson for the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation likewise said the organization had no reaction at the proposal at the present time.
The program’s roots stretch back to 1993, when the Clinton administration merged Interior’s scattered biological research work from seven bureaus into a new National Biological Service contained within the department. It was not always a smooth transition, facing both bureaucratic and political resistance.
Conservative lawmakers, in particular, cited alleged threats to private property rights from what had initially been dubbed the National Biological Survey.
“There was a perception that it was a band of environmental activists who would seek to find endangered species on private property, and I would say, in some instances, that probably happened,” then-Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, a moderate Maryland Republican, said in 1995.
In 1996, the National Biological Service was again renamed and transferred into the USGS. In 2010, as part of a larger USGS reorganization. Most of this work was folded into the newly established Ecosystem Mission Area.
Other USGS mission areas, such as Natural Hazards and Water Resources, would get less money but still survive under Trump’s proposed fiscal 2026 budget.
Reporter Garrett Downs also contributed.
