In 2025, the Trump Administration cut a quarter of the National Park Service’s employees, and these mass firings sparked public outcry and protests. All the while, the government has been gutting another important public lands agency in a much more under-the-radar fashion. A new report shows that since 2024, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS), which manages 100 million acres of land and 760 million marine acres, has lost 3,624 employees, or 36% of its staff.
The Report
The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental conservation nonprofit, filed a Freedom of Information Act request to ascertain USFWS’s staff rosters from 2024 to 2026. The data showed that since the second Trump Administration began, the agency has dropped from 9,957 to 6,333 total staff. Those who lost their jobs included 1,900 scientists, including fish and wildlife biologists, foresters, and fire managers.
The job losses come from many methods, including early retirements and resignation incentives, as well as firings from the Department of Government Efficiency.
The Center worried about the long-term effects on the agency. “This brain drain will be hard to undo now that the Fish and Wildlife Service has lost so many expert scientists who helped save endangered animals and plants,” Noah Greenwald, the center’s endangered species co-director, said in a press release. “Americans overwhelmingly want to see our wildlife healthy and flourishing, but the Trump administration has made it clear that its goal is the exact opposite.”
The Context
The USFWS serves many important roles, including managing National Wildlife Refuges, marine national monuments, and wetland conservation districts. It is also the agency that administers the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a landmark law that protects threatened species from extinction.
The USFWS is responsible for studying at-risk species and providing scientific evidence for whether a species needs protection, and then coming up with and implementing conservation plans. The law currently protects 1,662 U.S. species and 638 foreign species.
The Trump Administration has repeatedly attempted to weaken the ESA. In July, the Department of the Interior (DOI) issued a rule that stripped habitat protections for endangered species under the ESA. Under this interpretation, it is still illegal to directly harm a listed animal, but not illegal to damage its habitat.
In April, the House of Representatives attempted to pass a bill that would have changed the listing process under the ESA and removed much of its teeth. The bill was pulled from the floor at the last minute after public outcry.
The Center for Biological Diversity expressed concern over the state of the ESA. “More than 400 species are waiting for protection decisions, including hellbenders and monarch [butterflies]. Despite that backlog, the second Trump administration has protected just three species in nearly two years — by far the lowest rate of species protection of any administration,” a press release stated.
GearJunkie reached out to DOI and USFWS for comment, but did not receive a response before publishing.
