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Trump Turmoil Is Already Affecting Bay Area Conservation Work [1]

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Date: 2025-03

Two weeks into President Donald Trump’s presidency, the situation is murky for doing federal-grant-funded conservation work, from fish passage projects to wildfire resilience. (Salmon by Michael Wier, courtesy of California Trout)

A scientist loses sight of recovery for an endangered butterfly he’s spent his career protecting. An environmental justice nonprofit director anticipates possible layoffs. A forest expert watches wildfire risks grow as critical work gets delayed. A fish passage barrier that has blocked steelhead trout migrations for years was set to be removed this summer; now it might stand for years more.

Bay Nature has talked to more than 15 nonprofit leaders, lawyers, scientists, conservation practitioners, and agency staff working with programs receiving BIL or IRA money across the greater San Francisco Bay Area. Since President Trump’s inauguration on January 20, one thing is clear: The raft of memos, executive orders and other Trump administration actions have left environmental work in the Bay Area and beyond in “confusion and chaos,” says Redgie Collins, the legal and policy director for California Trout. Among the onslaught was a freeze on all federal grant programs (swiftly challenged, then blocked by a judge), and a separate freeze on all disbursements of money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden’s signature climate bills (whose investments in nature Bay Nature has tracked since 2023 through our Wild Billions reporting project). The new administration also suspended environmental justice work, notified some 1,100 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency employees that they could be fired immediately, and initiated an ideological review of all grant and loan programs for compliance with the Trump administration’s priorities. Even obligated dollars may be imperiled; some BIL and IRA grantees with binding contracts reportedly found themselves locked out of payment portals. Bay Nature’s analysis of the programs under review shows nature-related grant programs originally funded by IRA or BIL to the tune of $59 billion nationally are included. How much of the $59 billion has been spent is unclear. Bay Nature is tracking big federal money for nature in the Bay Area. See stories and maps at the project page; send tips to [email protected].

In California, state and local funding may provide a limited stopgap, particularly the newly passed Prop. 4, a $10 billion bond measure for climate resilience, and Measure AA, a local wetland restoration tax.

Grantees say that their federal contacts across agencies have provided limited information about how the executive order affects projects already under way. “There’s no official advice. There’s no official to give advice,” says Susan Jane Brown, an environmental lawyer who focuses on federal land management. Multiple people involved with BIL and IRA programs declined to comment for this article because they feared repercussions or because of the lack of clarity on the scope of the administration’s orders.

So grantees have had to come up with their own strategies. Some grantees have told contractors and employees to continue work as normal; others paused projects briefly; still more have completely stopped work until further direction emerges. Jim Wilcox, the executive director of Plumas Corporation, halted work last week on a $6.2 million BIL-funded wildfire project meant to reduce risks in the Plumas National Forest—after he heard about the federal spending freeze on CNN, and not through his federal contact. When that freeze lifted, he restarted the work the next day. Going forward, “we’re going to be cognizant of reading the newspaper every day,” he says.

Other organizations have stopped all IRA-funded work until clarity emerges. Violet Wulf-Saena, the executive director of Climate-Resilient Communities, a Palo Alto-based nonprofit, is figuring out how to support her 15-person staff, including people specifically hired to manage federal grants. They rely on reimbursements for such programs, which include climate risk assessments, youth training programs, and community engagement. “There’s no way we can continue the work when we don’t know we’re going to get paid,” Wulf-Saena says.

Alison Blodorn, the forestry program manager at the Napa Resource Conservation District (RCD), says district staff stopped a time-sensitive, $6 million fish barrier removal project at Sulphur Creek for which they’ve spent months securing permits, and years planning. They were hoping to dismantle the barrier—a bridge that’s been blocking steelhead migrations for years—this summer during the dry season. Now, it’s uncertain when that barrier will come down; the RCD can’t pay for the contractors and construction without the federal support. “We’ve been told [grant managers] can’t process any invoices,” Blodorn says. “A lot of neighboring RCDs are in similar situations.”

Organizations are also tallying sunk costs for BIL- and IRA-supported grant funds they applied for that now seem unlikely to ever arrive. Wulf-Saena says Climate-Resilient Communities had already spent $30,000 and significant staff time to apply for a $20 million BIL-supported grant to build more rain gardens to protect East Palo Alto residents from climate impacts. “Right now, I don’t think anything is going to come out of that effort,” she says. Stu Weiss, of Creekside Science, was all “psyched up,” he says, to get up to $250,000 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for growing Mission blue butterfly host plants to expand its habitat—and, he hoped, downlist the butterfly from endangered to threatened. Now, that money appears to have dissolved into nothing. “We’re in a biodiversity meltdown,” he says. “We don’t have time for these kinds of delays.”

Even beyond the immediate grantees, the work supported by BIL and IRA funds across the Bay Area has in turn supported numerous contractors, construction companies, and consultants. Bay Nature has tallied nearly $1.4 billion in awards just for nature-related programs in the Bay Area, and many program funds were meant to be available through 2026 or beyond. “If these funds are clawed back, it would have a massive impact on California’s economy, not just CalTrout’s bottom line,” says Collins of CalTrout, which has been awarded millions of dollars for BIL- and IRA-funded fish passage and floodplain projects that it is leading in the greater Bay Area.

Some work may be able to continue. Earlier funding crises—including a state bond crisis 15 years ago—taught some organizations, like Plumas Corp., to diversify funding sources. Environmental organizations are now eagerly waiting for Prop. 4 funds, details of which the Legislature is negotiating in the state budget process, to open for applications starting in July. Weiss says he will continue growing host plants for the Mission blue butterfly, with funding coming out of Creekside Science’s pocket if necessary.

The situation is evolving quickly. On Wednesday, Politico reported on an internal EPA memo that promises a detailed list of BIL and IRA programs whose funds will be unfrozen.

Nearly everyone Bay Nature spoke to agrees that the consequences of the BIL and IRA funding freezes for Bay Area nature are only just emerging. “We can always do better and be more efficient,” Brown says. “But taking a sledgehammer to these things is not going to work long-term.”

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[1] Url: https://baynature.org/article/trump-confusion-chaos-impacts-on-san-francisco-bay-area-conservation-work/

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