On Mar. 16, the White House released the President’s budget blueprint, which gives a preliminary outline of the proposed topline budget for fiscal year 2018 (FY18). In keeping with the administration’s resolve to heavily reduce government spending, deep cuts were seen across non-defense budgets, including the proposed elimination of some programs altogether.

In the “America First” Budget, President Trump states, “There is a $54 billion increase in defense spending in 2018 that is offset by targeted reduction elsewhere. This defense funding is vital to rebuilding and preparing our Armed Forces for the future.”

Agency and department heads, like Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, vowed to fight for their respective budgets, but ultimately received larger proposed cuts than originally expected.

Department of the Interior

At the Department of Interior, targeted reductions are reflected by a 12 percent decrease from FY17 funding levels. Further, the proposed budget would refocus DOI spending toward energy development programs.

The budget proposed an up to 15 percent cut for the U.S.Geological Survey. The budget would prioritize USGS essential science programs — including funding for the Landsat 9 ground system and research and data collection to inform sustainable energy development. The USGS Coalition has requested USGS funding levels of $1.2 billion for FY18 and at least $1.08 billion for FY17. USGS was funded at $1.1 billion in FY16 and the FY17 continuing resolution.

The proposed budget did not mention specific funding levels for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, or Bureau of Land Management, but stated its support for stewardship capacity for land management operations. Funding for federal land acquisition was reduced by more than $120 million which could limit funding for programs like the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

On Mar. 21, a group of Senate Democrats sent a letter to the administration urging Trump to reconsider the proposed cuts to Interior and to revisit infrastructure promises made during his campaign.

Also included in Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill is funding for the U.S. Forest Service (an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture). The proposed budget would fund wildland fire preparedness and suppression activities at the 10-year average level of $2.4 billion while reducing funding for National Forest System activities, including major federal land acquisition.

Department of Agriculture

The USDA has seen a proposed decrease of $4.7 billion, or 21 percent. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, & Forestry, released a statement last week opposing these cuts to the budget and pointing to concerns for negative impacts on voluntary conservation efforts on farmland. The proposed budget may also hinder efforts to expand programs, like Conservation Reserve Program lands, under the 2018 Farm Bill. A reduction in funding for staff at service centers would limit the agency’s ability to effectively administer programs like those provided through the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Environmental Protection Agency

The Environmental Protection Agency’s funding was reduced by 31 percent in the proposed budget. This cut would eliminate funding for regional efforts like the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) and cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay. The GLRI is a bipartisan effort to protect and restore the Great Lakes region. Part of the major focus of the GLRI Action Plan is the prevention and control of invasive species as well as restoration of habitat to protect native species. During a recent hearing discussing innovative control of invasive species, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission Chairman David Ullrich and Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) stressed the importance of funding initiatives in the Great Lakes Region. Ullrich believed that loss of funding would have devastating effects.

Climate Funding

Climate change is not a priority outlined in the proposed budget. In reference to climate change-related programs, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney recently stated, “We are not spending money on that anymore. We consider that to be a waste of your money to go out and do that.”

The proposed budget would follow through on previous discussions to stop U.S. funding to United Nations climate change programs. The U.S. would also discontinue funding to the Green Climate Fund and Climate Investment Funds, thereby eliminating the Global Climate Change Initiative. Funding for efforts like the Clean Power Plan, international climate change programs, and climate change research and partnership programs would also cease in FY18 under the proposed budget.

Initial Reactions

While this is not the final budget for FY18, several members of Congress and other organizations have expressed their initial reactions to the proposed cuts. Both Republicans and Democrats see a need for major negotiations before Congress approves a budget.

In a statement, House Agriculture Chairman K. Michael Conaway (R-TX) discussed the important work of farmers and ranchers, saying, “Agriculture has done more than its fair share. The bottom line is this is the start of a longer, larger process. It is a proposal, not THE budget.”

House Committee on Appropriations Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) reiterated the power of Congress in the federal budget process, “As directed under the Constitution, Congress has the power of the purse.”

Organizations, like the Ecological Society of America, have created streamlined methods to stay up-to-date as the federal budgeting process progresses and to help put the impacts on conservation funding into context.

National Wildlife Federation President and CEO Collin O’Mara released a statement saying, “The massive cuts outlined in this budget would be the opposite of what scientists say is needed to reverse America’s wildlife decline.”

Learn more about the U.S. Federal Budgeting Process in Section 5 of TWS’ Policy Toolkit.

Could birds help keep us sane? Recent research into nature’s impact on mental health gives us reason to believe so.

The opportunity to see a higher number of birds outside is linked to less depression, anxiety and stress, according to a new paper in BioScience.

Researchers from the University of Exeter and the British Trust for Ornithology measured the population and species diversity of birds at morning and lunchtime in a variety of neighborhoods in three towns in southern England. Testing five different nature characteristics in the neighborhoods, they found afternoon bird abundance was positively correlated with less depression, anxiety and stress. Vegetation cover also had a positive correlation.

“One possibility is that the greatest benefits are provided by characteristics that are most visible during the day and so most likely to be experienced by people,” the researchers concluded. The research was part of a broader project on biodiversity and ecosystem services in urban regions.

Between May and June 2013, researchers collected mental health surveys from a representative sample of local residents, taking into account factors that might influence their experience with nature, including gender, age, education, income, personality and attitude toward the natural world.

The results showed that people who spent less time outside than usual in the previous week were more likely to feel depressed or anxious.

“We chose birds because they’re mobile, visible and relatively well-known,” said Daniel Cox, research fellow at the University of Exeter. “They’re components of nature people are more likely to notice in their daily lives.”

Seeing a greater number of species of birds did not appear to be correlated with less depression, he said.

“Species doesn’t matter as much as forming that connection to nature, that well-being feeling people get,” Cox said.

“Being able to regularly experience nature is important,” he said. “With the intense urban environments we have, nature allows you to unwind, focus and recover from directed-attention fatigue [mental exhaustion].”

Further studies are needed to understand why bird abundance and human mental well-being are positively associated, Cox said.

A group of biologists is calling for a network of remote cameras to share images of animal behavior around the world.

Sixteen authors published a paper published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment calling for an expansion of remote cameras ­­— or camera traps — and a standardized system to share data from them.

“There is a pressing need for increased coordination of remote-camera surveys to effectively monitor global biodiversity,” they wrote.

The paper stemmed from a workshop at a 2014 meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology in Missoula, Mont., said TWS member Robin Steenweg, the lead author of the paper. The workshop brought together biologists who were working on networks of remote cameras to discuss their experiences.

Those networks included Parks Canada, which deploys hundreds of remote cameras throughout its nine national parks; the Smithsonian’s eMammal project, which shares camera trap data from scientists and citizen scientists at sites around the world and Tropical Ecology and Monitoring Network, which gathers data from monitoring sites in 16 tropical forests in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

“There are tens of thousands of cameras — probably hundreds of thousands — that are already collecting data,” Steenweg said. “We just need to bring that data together.”

Steenweg, a recent PhD graduate from the University of Montana who now works as a species at risk biologist for Alberta Environment and Parks, imagines a system similar to weather stations that could coordinate information gathered by scientists and citizen scientists around the world to paint a picture of factors that influence wildlife and biodiversity at a larger, global scale.

“A lot of the drivers of biodiversity loss — climate change, but also habitat destruction and fragmentation — are common across ecosystems,” Steenweg said. “We want to match the scales of data collection and analysis with the scales of the drivers of biodiversity loss.”

Remote cameras are effective, Steenweg said, because they’re inexpensive, they can monitor wildlife without interrupting their behavior, and they often capture multiple and often under-studied species.

“In Parks Canada, we’ve been putting up cameras to monitor grizzly bears,” he said, “but we’ve gotten amazing photos of, for example, wolverines.”

Steenweg and his co-authors urged this network to help countries that signed on to the Convention on Biological Diversity’s 2011-2020 strategic plan monitor global biodiversity trends.

“We envision a global network of remote cameras that not only provides real-time biodiversity data but also serves to connect people with nature,” they wrote.

The expansion of remote cameras in wild areas has raised privacy concerns, Steenweg said. Parks Canada has addressed it by placing information signs at all trailhead and having a policy to immediately delete all images of humans.

“I understand the change in perspective of how ‘wilderness-y’ a place is if there’s a camera up,” he said, “That’s why we take these privacy concerns seriously because we don’t want to lose access to this important tool for monitoring, and for collecting wildlife images that really resonate with people”