Interior Secretary Doug Burgum spent Earth Day fielding questions from U.S. Senators as he defended deep cuts proposed by his agency to vast swaths of America’s public lands.
President Trump’s proposed budget for 2027, released this month, includes many of the same cuts his office requested last year, like defunding the U.S. Geological Survey’s Ecosystems Mission Area that currently invests almost $700 million in university cooperative fish and wildlife units, and zeroing out the USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service.
The proposed budget, if enacted by Congress, would take those staffing shortages to a whole different level, public land and wildlife advocates say.
The 2027 budget proposal also calls for:
- Cutting funding for the National Wildlife Refuge System by $105 million.
- Decreasing staff at the Bureau of Land Management by another 27 percent, which would translate to a loss of 2,148 full-time positions including 307 positions that focus on wildlife habitat management and aquatic resources and 142 who work in recreation management.
- Zeroing BLM’s wilderness management budget to focus on energy production and “land-use optimization.”
- Eliminating the entire forest and rangelands research arm of the U.S. Forest Service.
- Reducing the North American Wetlands Conservation Act from $49 million to $10 million.
- Cutting USFWS funding for state and tribal wildlife grants from $73.8 million to zero.
- Cutting funding for migratory bird management by $11 million.
- Slashing the National Park Service budget by another 25 percent at a time when visitation continues to increase.
Senators questioned Burgum Wednesday on how he planned to offset some of the proposed cuts to wildlife research, in particular. The budget includes, for example, closing the Upper Midwest Environmental Science Center where more than 80 people work to combat invasive carp in the upper Missouri River and protect a fishery worth billions of dollars, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) noted in the hearing. The proposed budget doesn’t just reduce staffing there, it closes the center completely, suggesting the work could be taken over by states and universities.
When Baldwin asked Burgum on Wednesday which states or universities had agreed to assume responsibility for the research, he said, “Those conversations haven’t been initiated.”
He went on to add that, “If there was support from this body to do that or suggestions on who we might partner with even in your state we would be happy to conduct those.”
At the same time the White House is proposing cuts to public lands and wildlife, an increasing number of surveys show rural American voters are concerned. A University of Montana poll released Wednesday showed most voters believe recent firings and funding cuts to public land agencies “will negatively impact,” everything from wildfire management to hunting and fishing access.
“This is a continuation of the defunding and dismantling of our public lands,” says Land Tawney, co-chair of American Hunters and Anglers who spent the day in Washington D.C. listening to Burgum’s testimony. “Our public land agencies are in really bad shape. We’re already down twenty five percent as far as workforce across public lands, and it’s only going to get worse.”
Presidential budgets, regardless of who occupies the White House, are often wishlists of priorities, many of which Congress can and will ignore. In fact, Trump’s 2027 budget mirrors many of the same public-land cuts he proposed for 2026, and yet when Congress passed the 2026 budget it maintained similar funding levels for many of the popular programs like the cooperative fish and wildlife units and the NRCS.
Even so, wildlife managers and public land advocates are on edge. Last week the Wildlife Society, a wildlife management association, noted that the ongoing “staff departures, hiring freezes and restructuring efforts that include the closure of regional offices” are worrisome.
“Federal institutions and scientists have long contributed to the extraordinary success of our American system of wildlife conservation,” says Wildlife Society CEO Ed Arnett, who is also in D.C. this week. “We remain deeply concerned about continued budget cuts and lost capacity to deliver the science that informs wildlife population and habitat management decisions and policy for both public and private lands.”
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Because if Congress agrees with the cuts, on top of the past year of massive upheaval, Tawney and others say the result could be catastrophic for America’s public lands, water and wildlife.
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