They’re Coming For Your Wildlife Refuges
The Fish and Wildlife Service’s over-holiday review, and what it means for 850 million acres of public land and water
The week before Christmas, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service quietly posted notice that it was conducting a review in order to, “look for refuges or hatcheries established for a purpose that no longer aligns with the mission.” Initial recommendations are due Jan 5. Remember, it was a similar “review” during the first Trump administration that led to the largest reduction in public land protections ever.
USFWS is an agency within the Department of the Interior responsible for conserving wildlife and managing wildlife refuges. It’s the mission of the Wildlife Refuge System, “to administer a national network of lands and waters for the conservation, management and, where appropriate, restoration of the fish, wildlife and plant resources and their habitats within the United States for the benefit of present and future generations of Americans.”
Of all our public acres, it’s wildlife refuges that rely most on conservation rather than preservation. The system was conceived by the Boone and Crocket Club, an early advocate for what’s now known as the North American Model for Wildlife Conservation. Club member, and President, Teddy Roosevelt established the first refuge—Pelican Island—in 1903, and went on to create 50 more during his two terms.
Now, there’s more than 570 national wildlife refuges spread across all 50 states, covering 96 million acres of land and 760 million marine acres. That’s a full ten times the total acreage protected by the National Park Service, but the Wildlife Refuge System operates on an annual budget of only about $1 billion, less than one-third of that required by NPS.
Part of the reason for that is hunters provide a significant portion of the funding for wildlife refuges. Money raised through sales of the federal duck stamp—an annual permit for hunting migratory waterfowl—makes up fully 5 percent of the budget in wildlife refuges, and pays for the acquisition and restoration of wetlands in refuges. 96 percent of all bird species in North America rely on wetland habitat for their survival.
Like other land management agencies, USFWS and the refuges it manages are both under assault by the Trump administration, and used as a tool to spread disinformation. 90 percent of the land acres in wildlife refuges are open to hunters, but it’s still common to see press releases from Trump’s DOI make sweeping claims about opening up more.
“The Department of the Interior today announced 42 new hunting and sport fishing opportunities across more than 87,000 acres within the National Wildlife Refuge System and National Fish Hatchery System, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,” reads a release from August. “This final update more than triples the number of opportunities and quintuples the number of units opened or expanded compared to the previous administration, underscoring a strong national commitment to outdoor recreation and conservation.”
Like all good lies, this one begins with a glimmer of truth. Small, administrative changes were made to regulations like the exact dates or hours in which hunting and fishing seasons are open, or to clarify the often complex language in regulations that can be further obfuscated by the passage of overlapping laws. Similarly, the exact boundaries of areas open to hunting and fishing may also have been clarified. In total, those changes may have incrementally altered regulations applicable to 87,000 acres, but they added no substantial new hunting and fishing opportunities or acreage.
At the same time as the administration uses the Wildlife Refuge System to melt the brains of hunters and anglers, it’s actually working against their interests. In a letter to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum sent on December 18, Adam Schiff and other Senate Democrats warn that a “staffing crisis,” is, “causing particular harm to the National Wildlife Refuge System.”
“A startling amount of staff and expertise needed to manage the Refuge System and protect America’s wildlife have been lost due to the administration’s firings, early retirement programs, and other efforts to push staff out of FWS,” reads the letter. “The agency is losing the capacity to manage America’s wildlife refuges and struggling to even keep them open.”
Further points from the letter include:
“Every dollar that is invested in the Refuge System generates $3.12 in U.S. economic activity, a tremendous return on investment for the American taxpayer.”
“60 percent of the nation’s wildlife refuges lack the resources and staff needed to fulfill their missions.”
“FWS has experienced a staggering 29 percent loss of employees who work for the Refuge System.”
“The President’s Fiscal Year 26 budget request slashed funding for FWS’s overall Resource Management account, which included a proposed 22 percent cut to the National Wildlife Refuge System.”
“FWS’s internal estimates indicate that 9 percent of wildlife refuges are now classified as ‘shuttered.’”
“The collapse of staffing capacity within the Refuge System leaves refuges open to damage, vandalism, flooding, fire, and loss of protection and conservation measures for threatened and endangered wildlife species who rely on these refuges for survival. FWS staffing losses also hurt resilience because FWS employees carry out projects to control flooding and prevent catastrophic wildfires.”
That’s where the Refuge System stood before the review. Its recommendations could make the situation even worse.
E&E News, which covers developments in environmental policy, describes the order as, “a top-to-bottom review of the nation’s wildlife refuges,” that will be, “ both wide-ranging and fast-moving.” But the order initiating the review contains few other details.
Given its timing—the order was issued on December 16 and initial results are due on January 5th, neatly coinciding with the holidays—that vagueness is not encouraging. What are administration officials trying to hide?
One potential conclusion is a land transfer with SpaceX—owned by on-again Trump paramour Elon Musk. The New York Times reports that FWS is considering giving SpaceX 775 acres of the Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge adjacent to its rocket launch facility in return for 692 acres elsewhere.
The problem there is that not all acreage is created equal, especially when it comes to wildlife habitat. One area that may be home to thriving populations of a given species does not equal an area identified only as potential habitat for that species.
“With SpaceX present in this place, we have a very explosive force nestled in among all of these really fragile habitats,” Defenders of Wildlife told The Times.
Similar swaps are already in progress in other refuges, including for the purposes of building a controversial road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in southwest Alaska. And, the administration has decided to again attempt to open up sensitive polar bear denning habitat in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, something it failed to achieve during season one.
But all three of those examples are already in progress, and none require an agency-wide review. So what gives?
One former federal employee tells me, “this very likely seems like coded language for identifying refuges and hatcheries to eliminate.”
The timing seems right for that. DOI is one of the federal departments whose FY2026 budget is still up in the air, as Congress works to resolve long-term appropriations post-shut down, with an end-of-January deadline. Could a provision for a sell-off of hatcheries and refuges be included in that, in the hope that lawmakers will be desperate enough to avoid another funding lapse to vote for it?
Given how fundamentally fish hatcheries and wildlife refuges are tied in with the angling and hunting communities, it seems unlikely that such a measure will pass without public pushback. And it’s pressure from those worlds on Republican lawmakers that ended the last few attempts to steal land from the American public.
Even Steven Rinella—a prominent hunting influencer—is already speaking out against it. That seems significant given not only the holiday timing, but also the fact that Rinella has been a prominent public supporter of fascism, and has worked to help repair the public image of Ryan Zinke (R-Santa Barbara), the most transparently corrupt member of Congress. It was Zinke, after all, who ordered the 2017 review of National Monument designations, and then the massive reductions in protected areas for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. Despite support for anti-public lands measures, Zinke is trying to re-cast his image as a public lands champion—something Rinella is helping him achieve.
If this review is already attracting attention from advocates for public land as reluctant as Rinella, then signs that this will go as the administration hopes are not looking good.
We should get an idea of which way this is going next Monday. I’ll update you as soon as I hear anything.
Top photo: USFWS
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Thanks Wes….. Christ😫🤬
Thanks for this article! Keep up the great work!