Final signature count: 396

396 signatures toward our 30,000 goal

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages more than 560 national wildlife refuges, enforces federal wildlife crime laws, and administers the Endangered Species Act. Every one of those responsibilities requires trained people to carry it out. Since January 2025, the agency has lost nearly 20 percent of its workforce — cuts driven by federal downsizing that have gutted refuges, field offices, and scientific divisions alike.⁴ The damage is not theoretical. It is happening now, in the field, to real ecosystems and real animals.

Refuges Without the Staff to Run Them

In California, refuge managers are stretched to the point where basic ecological work — monitoring water systems, controlling invasive species, keeping habitat infrastructure functional — is simply not getting done.¹ Proposed budget cuts would not trim operational capacity at refuges; they would eliminate it outright.⁵ The effects are already visible: wetlands that once supported healthy populations of migratory birds have gone unmanaged, water systems have failed, and bird populations in those areas have declined.² Wildlife does not wait for budget disputes to resolve.

Endangered Species Protections at a Standstill

The Endangered Species Act requires regular reviews and listing decisions. That process depends on biologists, researchers, and legal staff — exactly the people who have been cut. The result: new protections for threatened species have fallen to a record low, with zero listings in the current term.³ Species that qualified for review sit in a queue that no one is moving. Conservation organizations have warned that backlogs of this kind take years to clear even after funding is restored, meaning the delay itself causes harm that cannot be undone quickly.⁶

Enforcement and Habitat Work Don't Run Themselves

Wildlife crime investigations, permit oversight, and habitat restoration all require agents and scientists working in real places with real resources. The Center for Biological Diversity has urged Congress to fully restore the agency's workforce and funding, pointing out that the legal obligations the Fish and Wildlife Service carries under federal law do not pause because staffing was cut.⁷ A fifth of the people responsible for those obligations are gone. The animals, wetlands, and ecosystems they managed face immediate pressure with no institutional capacity to respond.

Scientific Capacity, Once Lost, Is Not Quickly Rebuilt

The Fish and Wildlife Service is not a discretionary program. It is the legal and ecological infrastructure that keeps federal wildlife law functioning. Decades of accumulated expertise — field knowledge, monitoring data, enforcement networks, interagency relationships — cannot be restored by simply rehiring. Every month without adequate staffing widens the gap between what the law requires and what the agency can actually do.

The Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Secretary of the Interior have the authority to push back on these cuts and restore the agency's capacity to protect wildlife. Sign the petition now and demand they use it.