The Department of Interior will likely cut another 2,000 jobs from the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Geological Survey, Department officials announced Monday in a court filing.
The planned cuts were announced in the middle of a government shutdown, but according to sources familiar with the situation, the reduction in force, as it’s called, has been planned for months. A U.S. District Court judge ruled last week that the layoffs could not proceed during the shutdown. But even if the Department waits for the shutdown to end, people within Interior who spoke with Outdoor Life anticipate the layoffs will begin immediately after the government reopens.
“We’re going to lose scientific capacity to inform habitat management projects and to manage harvest and the impacts of human disturbances like energy development,” says Ed Arnett, CEO of The Wildlife Society. “And we not only lose capacity, but we might lose some of these programs forever.”
Scientific research and communications, particularly within the USGS, will be hit particularly hard. The USGS Great Lakes Science Center, for example, will lose 79% of its staff. The science center is responsible for restoring, enhancing, managing and protecting species living in the Great Lakes basin, according to its website. Biologists and specialists there also monitor harmful algal blooms and invasive species.
The Bureau of Land Management, which manages about 245 million acres of land, primarily in the West, will also be decimated. Interior plans to cut between 18% and 31% of the workforce at the southeast, pacific west and northeast regional offices along with the Denver Service Center and regional support. Cuts will also hit BLM state offices in Utah, California, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Colorado. The BLM cuts come at a time of renewed efforts to sell public lands while also dramatically increasing oil and gas drilling, and mining.
These anticipated layoffs would pile on top of a series of layoffs in February that shed thousands of jobs from agencies within Interior and the U.S. Forest Service, which falls under the Department of Agriculture.
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“In general, there will be serious impacts to public lands,” says Chris Tollefson, a former communications specialist who spent 20 years with the Fish and Wildlife Service and another seven years with the BLM. “BLM already had a pretty lean workforce, and losing not just the number of people but the institutional knowledge and expertise will have enormous impacts.”
In the short term, there will be fewer rangers on the ground managing visitation and preventing natural and cultural resource damage. In the long term, the cuts mean fewer people permitting oil and gas, approving grazing leases, inspecting habitat projects and monitoring species like sage grouse.
“There is talk of shifting resources, but you can’t take someone who is an outdoor recreation planner and make them a petroleum engineer,” Tollefson says.
Some programs, like the Migratory Bird Program, are being targeted specifically. The program could lose 35 of its 269 employees. What, exactly, the cuts will look like on the ground is too soon to tell, Arnett says. Depending on who is cut, it could mean an end to the century-old bird banding program which has been critical for managing waterfowl.
“It’s unknown how many fewer acres of habitat treatments will occur. It’s unknown how much monitoring will be lost,” Arnett says. “But unfortunately, in a year or two we will know more exactly what was lost.”
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