Leaked emails show the nation’s leading wildlife agency has halted critical funding for conservation

The US Fish and Wildlife Service, the nation’s only government agency dedicated to conserving plants and animals, has frozen its vast portfolio of international conservation grants, Vox has learned. The agency, which supports wildlife protection in the US and overseas, ordered many of the organizations it funds to stop work related to their grants and cut its communication with them. According to USFWS internal communication shared anonymously with Vox, the agency has frozen grants for international projects that amount to tens of millions of dollars. The freeze jeopardizes dozens of projects to conserve wildlife around the world, from imperiled sea turtles in Central America to elephants in Africa. Grant programs from the federal government protect species whose habitats straddle borders, and they also benefit Americans, such as by reducing the risk of pathogens like coronaviruses from spilling into human populations. Send us a tip Do you have information to share about the Fish and Wildlife Agency or government efforts to protect biodiversity? Reach out to Benji Jones on Signal at 641-919-7862 or at benjijones@protonmail.com. On January 20, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for a three-month pause on “foreign development assistance.” The effort suspended funding under the US Agency for International Development, the nation’s humanitarian and development agency, as part of a broader effort to dismantle the agency (which does literal life-saving work). USAID also funds biodiversity conservation overseas, on the scale of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Some of those funds support grants for international conservation under the US Fish and Wildlife Service, making a pause on its grants somewhat expected. (On February 13, a federal judge temporarily lifted the pause, which should soon allow foreign aid money to flow again. It’s not clear whether this means the Service will lift its freeze on grants.) But the Fish and Wildlife Service funding freeze goes well beyond conservation projects supported by USAID. Numerous other projects are supported directly by the Fish and Wildlife Service and, according to some of their recipients, could not accurately be described as foreign development assistance — and thus shouldn’t be impacted by Trump’s pause. In other words, money should still be flowing to organizations that work to conserve wildlife overseas with support from the Fish and Wildlife Service. Instead, the agency has put all of those projects on ice. The sudden suspension of Fish and Wildlife Service grants reveals how government agencies are scrambling to fall in line behind new leadership, often lacking clarity on how to carry out the Trump administration’s orders. Legally, the Service may still be able to fund many of its international grantees, though experts I spoke to said the funding falls into a gray area. One Fish and Wildlife Service Employee familiar with the agency’s international efforts said they think agency leadership thought it would appear better if they halted funding for all international projects. The employee spoke with Vox on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak with the press. The employee told Vox they fear the Trump administration will be hostile towards international conservation efforts. In his first term, President Trump’s administration moved to weaken the Endangered Species Act — the nation’s strongest wildlife protection law, implemented by the Fish and Wildlife Service — and other environmental regulations meant to protect threatened animals and their ecosystems. “I hope that most people care about wildlife, even if I fear they do not,” they told me. This week, further inflaming concerns about wildlife protections, the Department of Interior laid off more than 2,000 employees as part of broader government job cuts. The Fish and Wildlife Service is part of the Interior Department. International conservation is a little-known part of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s remit. The agency, which had a budget of about $4 billion in 2024, works to protect some of the world’s most endangered and globally recognized animals including elephants, rhinos, and primates. Many of them live in poor regions of the world that lack funding for conservation, making US government support essential. Animals, such as migratory birds, also move and live across borders, so conserving them requires working internationally. Americans benefit from curbing threats to wildlife overseas, such as deforestation — which, among other things, can make it easier for zoonotic diseases to spill over into human populations. As the world’s largest economy, the US has precipitated the declines of animals abroad. Mining rare earth metals for our smartphones, for example, has helped destroy forests in Africa’s Congo Basin, whereas US carbon emissions fuel global climate change. Scientists say that with more climate warming more species will likely go extinct. Several nonprofit organizations that receive funding from the Fish and Wildlife Service confirmed with Vox that they received stop-work orders. Any costs associated with their grants would be “temporarily disallowed,” they were told, according to two emails reviewed by Vox. The grants range from under $100,000 to a few million. In an email from agency leadership, Fish and Wildlife Service staff were directed on what to say in response to questions from grantees about funding: “The Department of the Interior continues to review funding decisions to be consistent with the President’s Executive Orders. The Department’s ongoing review of funding complies with all applicable laws, rules, regulations and orders.” Funding from the Service supports most of the world’s major conservation groups, such as the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS). Peyton West, the FZS US executive director, said that money — at least some of which is now on pause — goes a long way. It helps support, among other things, anti-poaching efforts in a game reserve in southern Tanzania that have helped elephant populations rebound. “Less poaching means less illegal wildlife trade and all the illegal activity that goes along with it,” West said. “The grants from USFWS Species Funds are probably the most efficient grant funds we have because they’re so targeted,” she told Vox. “The goal is to do one thing — protect the world’s most iconic but vulnerable species — and the focus is on the basic core needs to make that happen.” Several other organizations that receive funding from the Fish and Wildlife Service declined to go on the record, in fear that drawing attention to themselves may put their funding from the federal government at risk. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants from the Fish and Wildlife Service, did not respond to a request for comment. The National Audubon Society, which also has grant funding from the Service, directed Vox to a February 6 statement from the organization. “Audubon is prepared to work with the new administration, Congress, and our partners to meet the challenges ahead and secure a future where birds and people thrive,” Audubon CEO Elizabeth Gray said in the statement. The Fish and Wildlife Service spends an almost invisible fraction of taxpayer money, compared to other government efforts. What it does, however, is vital and cannot be overlooked, environmental advocates told me. “There are so many issues with efficiency in our government, but I think it’s fair to say that the USFWS species conservation funds are managed very well in that respect,” West said. “They are also probably the best bang for buck of any of our grants because they focus on critical core activities, they leverage other funding, and they bring law and security into some of the most remote areas in the world.”