This piece by Tanvi Dutta Gupta was produced by Bay Nature — a nonprofit, independent media organization that connects the people of the San Francisco Bay Area to the natural world — for its Wild Billions reporting project.
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.
