The day after Donald Trump’s re-election, Ann Willis, the California regional director for American Rivers, sent an email to her staff. “We all have to remember that we have all made a commitment to working on something we love,” she wrote to them. “What we think we can accomplish may shift depending on what’s around us. … Every administration is going to have different priorities.”
In other words: stay the course. The stated priorities of Trump’s presidency have brought up big emotions for area conservationists—and uncertainty regarding the future of federal programs supporting their work. Yet in over a dozen conversations with conservation groups, government agencies, researchers, community-based organizations, and federal funding experts, Bay Nature has heard that in this sea of unknowns, many are focusing on the reliable support they have—like money from non-federal sources, and the relationships they’ve built.
“I’m feeling really hopeful for what we in the Bay Area can do,” says Annie Burke, the executive director of TOGETHER Bay Area, a regional coalition of conservation organizations.
Bay Nature is tracking big federal money for nature in the Bay Area. See stories and maps at the project page; send tips to wildbillions@baynature.org.
Federal forecast: bleak
Trump’s campaign trail promises, if enacted, are a “nightmare scenario” for environmental work, says David Hayes, former Special Assistant to Biden on climate policy. He helped author Biden’s signature climate bills, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, which together authorized over $1.1 trillion in funding for climate and infrastructure work across the country. Bay Nature has documented almost $1.4 billion of that money going to the greater Bay Area for nature.
Trump has pledged to stop the flow. During his campaign, Trump said he would “rescind all unspent funds” from the Inflation Reduction Act. He’s also likely to cut down the Environmental Protection Agency, decimate environmental regulations, and cut federal capacity across the board. One former EPA official said he expects “a huge target” on the back of all environmental justice efforts begun under Biden.
What’s precisely at risk of vanishing? “I don’t think anyone knows yet, really,” says Chad Lord, the senior director for the National Parks Conservation Association’s water program. At the start, in January, experts expect more subtle changes. Money that’s been signed over to organizations will be difficult to claw back. But, sources predicts, some grant programs may be delayed once Trump enters office. Grants without signatures signing them over are most at risk of vanishing. And grantees that have received money should prepare for more audits of how they’ve used the money so far.
Trump’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency, co-led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, will likely throw more sand in the gears, even for processes in motion. In his first administration, Trump tried—unsuccessfully—to gut the San Francisco EPA office along with other regional EPA offices across the country. (Biden’s administration, in turn, beefed it up.) A reprisal of those cuts under a Republican Congress could imperil agencies’ abilities to administer grants at work.
For agencies already on shoestring budgets, more cuts could determine whether their IRA funds achieve their purpose. Layoffs at the National Wildlife Refuges around the Bay—from 35 to 20 staff—have already delayed planned restoration work, says Evyan Borgnis Sloane, the deputy executive officer at the State Coastal Conservancy, including at the BIL-supported Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge in the South Bay. At the U.S. Forest Service—which is struggling to write its own staff’s paychecks—eyes have begun to turn to the hundreds of millions of IRA money for wildfire mitigation work. Though most funding is committed in agreements with partners, “there’s always a chance we could be directed to use some of that for salary,” says Ryan Bauer, a fire management specialist with the Plumas National Forest just north of Tahoe, for which Congress allocated $273 million in IRA funds.
The good news train
The good news is that for many projects the money train has already left the station. Hayes says the race to get all the funding out the door during the Biden–Harris administration began months before the election. In the Bay Area, the EPA’s San Francisco Bay office had already planned to dole out everything at once from one of its BIL-augmented grant programs by next April—not because of the election, simply to make the grant process more efficient to run, Luisa Valiela, lead for the EPA’s SF Bay program, says.
And if federal funding streams slow or even stop, conservationists are taking solace in Californian voters’ recent approval of Proposition 4—a $10 billion bond measure to support a wide range of climate adaptation projects. Combined with other sources of state funding, such as Measure AA—a parcel tax for San Francisco Bay restoration—and other ongoing programs, some projects may progress regardless of what happens in D.C. For landmark projects with looming deadlines, such as shoreline restoration in the Bay planned by 2030, Sloane says the Conservancy and their partners are “dedicated” to making the best use of Prop. 4 to make sure the projects continue.
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Though Prop. 4 feels like very big money to many—especially compared to earlier state climate funding—spending it quickly could ensure conservation momentum continues through the next administration, says David Lewis, executive director of Save the Bay, the Oakland-based nonprofit advocacy group. “It’s going to take years to spend all that money wisely, but if it’s spent over the next three to four years, instead of the next seven to eight years, that would make a huge difference,” he says.
Funding fluctuations are familiar to any nature advocates who’ve been around for a while. Many told Bay Nature they are taking lessons from previous crises, such as the 2008 financial crisis and Trump’s first term, to remain resilient. “I’ve been really intentional about diversifying our portfolio for our research group,” says Carson Jeffres, a University of California Davis fisheries biologist whose work on salmon recently received IRA support. “If we lose IRA money, we will still keep parts of it going.”
In tough times, stick together
People have begun shifting how they approach their work, in part because of recent flushes of IRA money. To prioritize projects, Bay Area organizations have begun to “[come] together differently than they have in the past,” Sloane says. New collaborations and coalitions have formed; old ones have strengthened.
The four years ahead will make these relationships even more essential, Burke says. Nuestra Casa, a small community-based organization that received EPA support for a shoreline cleanup program, for example, has already reached out to collaborators at the much larger San Francisco Estuary Partnership to ask for advice in managing any potential audits. “We don’t need to make up something new today. It’s an ethos in the Bay Area to work together,” says Burke. “It’s time to lean in on that. It’s time to go deeper.”
On a sunny fall Saturday, Nuestra Casa holds its fourth EPA-supported shoreline cleanup at Baylands Nature Park, near East Palo Alto. Clouds of shorebirds startle upwards as the 28 community members—all from nearby underserved neighborhoods, mostly Latinx—explore the park’s trails. Many people have never visited before, even after living nearby for decades. “You don’t see a lot of minorities visiting these spaces,” says Gladys Tovar, an East Palo Alto resident. At the end of the morning, along with the 11.8 pounds of trash they collected, there are also hugs all around, a line of people asking about Nuestra Casa’s next event, and promises from everyone to return and explore the Baylands more. Though she’s visited before, coming with Nuestra Casa helped her understand how valuable the Baylands are for her community, Tovar says, especially when it comes to climate change. These liminal lowlands are the first line of defense against sea-level rise.
The cleanups will continue for the next three years, with the goal of inviting more people into Nuestra Casa’s work—beyond the timescale of one presidential administration. And this community engagement is work for Nuestra Casa—funded across private, local, and federal grants—that does not depend on who’s in the White House. For some, like Burke and Willis, Trump’s election has challenged them to recommit to their mission, and remind themselves to be patient. “The work we’re doing … is for the next hundred-plus years,” says Burke. “Four years in the scheme of a hundred years is a blink.”
