President Donald Trump says he wants the US to have the cleanest air and water on the planet — a desire, unsurprisingly, shared by all Americans.
Those resources don’t just appear. They come from nature. Freshwater mussels, clams, and aquatic vegetation, for example, filter rivers and streams and provide clean places to swim and habitat for fish to thrive. They also lower water treatment costs. On larger scales, forests and grasslands absorb air pollutants and regulate rain cycles, which helps clean the air.
It’s a bit strange, then, that the Trump administration has fired hundreds of employees at the already short-staffed US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) — the only government agency whose main goal is to conserve animals, ecosystems, and the life-supporting services they provide. Late last week, the Service terminated around 420 employees who were newly hired or recently promoted, amounting to about 5 percent of the agency’s workforce, as part of a sprawling government purge.
“In his first term, President Trump proved that environmental stewardship and economic greatness can go hand-in-hand,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told Vox. “He will continue to protect America’s abundant natural resources while streamlining federal agencies to better serve the American people.”
During his first term, however, Trump did roll back a long list of protections for natural resources that were designed, in part, to keep Americans safe. The terminated Fish and Wildlife Service employees, meanwhile, worked to protect those very resources in a wide range of positions. They include scientists who help conserve imperiled animals, such as freshwater mussels, and workers who help farmers with issues like erosion and runoff that can pollute water.
“My sadness — true sadness — is I don’t think they’ve bothered to ask and really understand what the Fish and Wildlife Service does,” Martha Williams, who led the FWS under the Biden administration, said of Trump administration officials. “If they did, they’d realize we’re functioning in a way that’s critical to rural and urban communities across the country. The Fish and Wildlife Service exists to protect the natural world.”
Williams acknowledges that the conservation community, including FWS, has not done a good enough job at linking its work to the everyday lives of Americans. Many people don’t even know what the FWS does, so they gravity of this loss may not sink in.
I wanted to let her explain. Our conversation, below, has been edited for length and clarity.
What’s keeping you up at night right now?
What keeps me up at night is the wholesale decimation of expertise and of our approach to conservation. Our superpower was that we collaborated with states, with tribes, with local governments, with NGOs. We never had a big enough budget to do anything on our own. Everything the Fish and Wildlife Service does was working with communities — was building community. And so coming in and slashing this work hurts people. It hurts communities. It hurts nature. It took decades and decades to build this collaborative approach that can be decimated in the blink of an eye.
For those of us who aren’t familiar with the Fish and Wildlife Service, or have never heard of it, what exactly does this agency do?
Congress knew and passed laws that recognize that nature is essential to our own survival as a species. We require clean air, clean water. Congress charged the US Fish and Wildlife Service specifically to conserve, protect, and enhance animals, plants, and habitat, so that we would be able to survive.
In the history of this country, we’ve had these crises, where, for example, migratory birds were completely decimated to make hats using their plumage. Congress passed a law, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, acknowledging that we’re about to lose all of these birds that are so important to us. The Fish and Wildlife Service implemented the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Congress also saw that we were losing species before our very eyes. As a response to that crisis, it passed the Endangered Species Act and asked the Fish and Wildlife Service to make sure these species are around into the future. The role of federal employees — the role of the Fish and Wildlife Service — is to do what Congress told us to do, and that’s to implement these laws.
That includes laws that created the National Wildlife Refuge System. The National Park System is so incredibly important. The Forest Service is important. But there are also more than 570 wildlife refuges across the country. Congress created this system specifically to conserve nature and to make sure species persist. The refuge system is different from these other systems of public lands because it’s so community based. A lot of the Refuge System lands are open to fishing and hunting. So many people get their food from refuges, in addition to seeking solace.
The Fish and Wildlife Service protects endangered species, and some of these plants and animals are so rare that most people will never see them. So why should average Americans care about that work?
First of all, the Fish and Wildlife Service does so much more than implement the Endangered Species Act. I want people to realize how much the Service does across the country — and did internationally — to make sure nature can not just exist but try to thrive.
As a part of that, Congress requires the Service to look into these crazy, fascinating, endangered species that people may never see. Congress charges the Service with ensuring that these species don’t blink out because they may be key, for example, to medical breakthroughs. There’s the Madagascar periwinkle plant that’s only in Madagascar. Without us working internationally, we may never have gotten to understand the qualities this plant has to help prevent cancer. There are all these species that are hardly charismatic, but they’re critical to our own survival.
I also think of these unknown pollinators — or the pollinators we know, like the monarch butterfly. They’re critical to food production in this country. Who knew in our lifetime that monarch butterflies could disappear?
It’s hard not to find awe in endangered wildlife. I think it is universal. If you want to have a release or a break, you go watch animal videos, right? To see a condor released and flying free. Or a cute little charismatic black-footed ferret that represents something much bigger than just the ferret: It represents the health of the prairie ecosystem. These endangered species are part of a web of life. And when a species blinks out, it collapses a whole system of nature that works together.
The Service’s role is more wide-ranging than most people realize. And I don’t think a lot of us are connecting the dots between saving something like a rare butterfly and putting food on the table. Do you think the Trump administration knows about the Fish and Wildlife Service?
I think that Elon Musk knows about the Endangered Species Act because his previous work with his companies has put some species in the crosshairs. But no, I don’t think that the Fish and Wildlife Service has been top of mind for them. I think the firing was indiscriminate. They’re looking to cut people where it is most convenient, hence going after “probational” employees — the new employees, or employees who have just been promoted to different positions.
They don’t know what the agencies do. They don’t know what these people do. They don’t have the scientific expertise to understand why, for example, deep sea sponges might be important and might be critical to the next innovation. They’re cutting innovation because they have this complete lack of curiosity.
If I could get President Trump, Elon Musk, and some of the DOGE people out on a trip in nature, would they think the same? Once you’re exposed to the awe of nature you realize it’s bigger than we are.
How will losing roughly 5 percent of the Fish and Wildlife Service affect the work it does — conservation — and what will that mean for Americans?
This administration is cutting off our nose to spite our face.
The Fish and Wildlife Service was already so lean that we could hardly manage the National Wildlife Refuge System that we already have. The cuts focus on this next generation of leaders. This whole probationary cut means we’re losing people who are leaders in collaborative community conservation. They’re extraordinary. So they’ve just cut the very people who live and breathe serving people in the United States, serving their communities, and making sure that nature sticks around for the benefit of everyone.
It’s not only heartbreaking. It hurts our national security. It hurts infrastructure. It makes people less safe. The Fish and Wildlife Service has an Office of Law Enforcement that has focused on international wildlife trafficking. Wildlife trafficking is absolutely linked to international criminal syndicates, so by cutting that work, we are letting international criminal syndicates that trade in people and drugs and wildlife go scot-free.
It cuts so little in the budget compared to the impact these people make. The Fish and Wildlife Services leverages its money. We get a tiny budget and work with everyone else to get work done on the ground, to prevent flooding, to prevent wildfires. Here’s an example: My understanding is they cut employees as they were going out to start prescribed fires in the South. If you don’t do prescribed fire, you risk catastrophic wildfires.
Will those push some endangered species closer to the edge?
My understanding is that a number of the biologists hired to work on Hawaiian forest birds were fired. These are species about to blink out, and you can’t believe how incredible they are. In Hawaii, the birds are these people’s ancestors. They don’t separate the birds from their community and ancestors, and you have a responsibility to take care of them. We have solutions, and this administration just yanked them and said, “I guess we’re going to give up on them and have them be gone forever.”
The Fish and Wildlife Service is facing other impacts from the new administration. For example, it froze funding for work it supports overseas. Why is FWS funding international conservation?
Congress passed the Endangered Species Act, which includes international species. The Fish and Wild Service still believes in the law. That includes working on international species to make sure they do not go extinct. Further, the US is a party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). As a party to CITES and as the agency that implements CITES for the United States, that necessarily includes international species. Science also tells us that nature is essential for our very own existence. That includes these small [and lesser-known] species that are critical to nature and also to medical research. And that’s across the world.
There’s a system of laws in place, and the Fish and Wildlife Service has learned to be excellent at what we are asked to do. We are like the golden retriever of agencies: We work with everybody, and we want to be the very best and come back and say, “Okay, what can we do next? Throw the ball again, because we’re right here and we believe in this work, and we’re going to serve this country the very best we can.”
The Trump administration weakened the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Endangered Species Act in its first term, effectively making it easier to harm wildlife without recourse. Do you expect more of the same or will this time be different?
I don’t think I can answer that because the administration is so unpredictable. So I don’t know. Do I worry? Yes, based on the first administration. I worry for the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. I’m worried for the Endangered Species Act. But again, I’m used to a world where those changes have to happen through Congress, and I don’t know whether this administration is going to follow the traditional system of laws. So I think it’s up in the air.
I know that the Fish and Wildlife Service employees will always do the best with what they are tasked with doing. I know they have learned to work with others and work within the communities where they live. That gives me hope.
What’s your message at this moment for people who voted Donald Trump into power?
You may have voted for Trump to slash the federal government, but DOGE is picking on the wrong people.
It’s slashing the people who are actually doing a really good job, and are really important to you. Give the Fish and Wildlife Service a chance, because we’re not the bad, evil people. These are people who live in your community, who are there to serve you and the American people. I have a hard time believing that the people who voted for Trump meant to dismantle this work that is built on helping your community.
What can people who really care about wildlife and nature do right now?
Go to your members of Congress and tell them that this work matters. Be engaged. Pay attention. Try to learn the facts.
