The Trump admin cut funding to a conservation nonprofit. The group has no idea why.

On Aug. 7, Department of the Interior officials quietly canceled more than 130 National Park Service projects, pulling nearly $26 million in funding that would have otherwise supported everything from wildfire mitigation and trail maintenance to invasive species management and cultural resource preservation in parks across the country. 

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Nearly half of that funding would have supported projects overseen by the Great Basin Institute, a nonprofit based in Reno, Nevada, that has gotten more than 7,500 workers outdoors and raised more than $200 million for public land conservation since 1998. Many of its programs involve youths, early career professionals and veterans, and today, GBI alums are employed across land management agencies through hiring agreements with the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and the Park Service.

It was a surprise, then, to see just how many of its projects were canceled with no explanation, Peter Woodruff, the organization’s executive director, said. 

“Our work is really about preparing the next generation of resource managers, and we’ve always been a staunch partner across administrations,” Woodruff said. “It’s very bewildering to see these cuts at a time when public interest and love for public lands is at an all-time high.”

Of the 133 cancellations, roughly half were GBI projects, amounting to $12.7 million in lost funds and 184 personnel whose positions have now disappeared. The national parks most affected by the cuts to the GBI include Joshua Tree, Death Valley, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Zion and Mount Rainier, with each park losing at least $250,000. 

Roughly half of the money was going toward new projects, Woodruff told SFGATE, but the rest was funding appropriated for the continuation of existing projects, leaving their status uncertain. It’s also unclear whether the funds will be used for anything else. They had been appropriated for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1, but had not yet been released. 

What is clear, Woodruff said, is the impact the loss of funding will have on public lands. Without the money, important work will remain undone at a time when staffing for national parks has cratered and deferred maintenance costs sit at around $24.2 billion.

The majority of the canceled projects were split between cultural resource management — tasks like inventorying museum collections and carrying out cultural and archaeological surveys out on the land — and youth and veteran conservation corps work. 

In the latter, seasonal workers are deployed to projects based on a park’s particular needs while also accounting for the fact that landscapes need to be managed at the scale of whole ecosystems. “GBI plays the role of a hub where multiple parties come together,” Woodruff said. “Our work is magnified because we’re not working in isolation. We’re spanning and bridging really complex landscape-scale issues.”

Canceled projects across Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, for example, would have sent workers out to monitor wildlife, protect native plants and map forests for pre- and post-fire monitoring. Work in Joshua Tree similarly focused on helping the land recover from wildfires by removing invasive species and collecting native seeds.

“It’s going to cost more to resume this work after it’s been paused,” Woodruff told SFGATE. “And of course, there’s also the human element: These are truly public safety and resource protection projects, so the public is going to be affected and the resources are going to be affected. Gateway communities will not see these salaries spent in their neighborhoods.”

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The reasons for GBI’s sudden dismissal aren’t entirely clear, and the DOI did not respond to questions seeking clarification prior to this article’s publication. There’s no obvious through line linking the organizations that received the bulk of the cancellations, Woodruff said, which also include the Desert Research Institute, the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and the National Experienced Workforce Solutions, a Virginia-based nonprofit that provides staffing for federal agencies.

Woodruff told SFGATE that DOI officials never reached out to the GBI directly to explain their reasoning and that he only learned of the cancellations after partner organizations tipped them off. Shortly after, on Aug. 13, the organization sent a letter to the department asking for clarification. That letter has not been acknowledged, Woodruff said.

Previously, Interior spokesperson Aubrie Spady told the Washington Post that the department “disapproved a number of partnership agreements with groups actively working against the best interests of the American people and the priorities of this administration,” but did not elaborate other than to note that the decision was meant to ensure that “taxpayer dollars are being used in alignment with the administration’s objectives to make life more affordable for Americans, unleash domestic energy production and expand access to our public lands.”

If that was the case, Woodruff told SFGATE that canceling the GBI’s contracts feels antithetical. In addition to providing opportunities for hundreds of people to get out onto public lands each year, he noted that it is among the few nonprofits that provide benefits for seasonal workers while also helping them secure housing.

“The dollar amount for deploying these projects is higher in part because we provide a suite of health benefits,” he said. “We are ensuring wages that allow people to live in these remote and often costly gateway communities.”

More recently, at a Sept. 25 event in Moab, Utah, officials with the Bureau of Land Management unveiled a new initiative called All Americans Outside, which is aimed at increasing opportunities for youths, veterans and people with disabilities to access public lands. During that meeting, SFGATE discussed the cancellations with BLM Director Stevan Pearce, who disputed the characterization that the DOI was intentionally targeting certain groups.

“It’s not directed at a single person, it’s that we need to broaden out into more opportunities,” he told SFGATE, noting that in some cases, states were spending roughly 80% of their funding with the same organization. “We want to have more groups involved.” 

Terry Christopher, the senior director of operations at the GBI who attended the event, felt differently. “It’s hard not to take it personally,” he said, adding that it’s unclear how the DOI’s review process will impact GBI moving forward. “No matter what, we’ll weather this out, but it’s definitely a blow to us and to the lands we work on.”