Through proposed layoffs and budget cuts, the administration has taken multiple actions that threaten an obscure division of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS): the Ecosystems Mission Area, or EMA, which houses almost all federal biological research.
Eliminating the division was prescribed by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 agenda, despite the amount of research EMA provides. The 1,200 biologists and staff who work there document contamination in private and public wells, study the effects of wildfire and drought, and track wildlife disease outbreaks, including avian influenza.
They perform long-term monitoring of native and invasive species from avocets to zebra mussels—enabling management agencies to, for example, set sustainable waterfowl hunting limits, manage livestock predators, and keep waterways healthy. They also inventory, track, or study every known native bee species in the country, along with other pollinators.
Efforts to dismantle federal biological research show “a fundamental misunderstanding of what ecology is and does,” said Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. “I don’t believe Americans voted for the end of being able to gather native blueberries, or for the end of wildflower meadows.”
“I don’t believe Americans voted for the end of being able to gather native blueberries, or for the end of wildflower meadows.”
The White House claims that getting rid of EMA would eliminate duplicative programs and stop federal work on “social agendas” like climate change, while trimming about $300 million from USGS’ $1.6 billion budget. Though unspoken, historical records show the proposal also fits a much older, far-right vision of upholding private property rights by eroding the awareness and protection of imperiled species.
But biologists and conservationists nationwide say these cuts would actually dismantle irreplaceable, largely uncontroversial programs and drive out experts whose work is key not only to the government’s ability to manage natural resources, but also to a broad swath of work led by states and nonprofits.
In 2015, the Obama administration announced measures to protect bees, as beekeepers like Steve Corniffe (above), pictured at the time in Homestead, Florida, grappled with colony declines. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Importantly, dismantling EMA would mean the elimination of the USGS Bee Lab—a tiny, two-person office in Maryland that is a linchpin for the study and protection of all U.S. native bees. “Every bee researcher, possibly every pollinator researcher in the U.S. has at some point worked with the USGS Bee Lab,” said Rosemary Malfi, the conservation policy director at the nonprofit Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.
With a vast collection of high-resolution photographs, more than 700,000 specimens, and the unrivaled expertise of the lab’s director, biologist Sam Droege, the lab is the only U.S. entity with the resources to identify the nation’s more than 4,000 native bee species. Distinguishing different bees can be exceptionally difficult—but is essential for understanding their health, distribution, and needs.
This makes their work as important for preventing needless endangered-species petitions for bees that are simply hard to find, as it is for protecting the genuinely at-risk ones, Droege told Civil Eats. A federal biologist since 1978, Droege has risked his job to speak in defense of EMA.
“There’s a lot of inappropriately analyzed data out there saying there’s a bee apocalypse, that all bees are declining, but it’s more nuanced than that,” he said. “Wouldn’t you want someone to point that out that has scientific credibility? That’s what we do.”
