U.S President Donald Trump and his senior adviser, tech billionaire Elon Musk, recently imposed a 90-day freeze on nearly all USAID projects. USAID is known for funding health and humanitarian projects globally. And as Mongabay’s Ashoka Mukpo reports, the agency also provides significant support for conservation projects, which are now reeling with uncertainty after some of their funding dried up overnight. Of the U.S. government’s $60 billion nonmilitary foreign aid budget in 2023, approximately $375 million went to biodiversity projects. USAID directed much of those funds toward activities like ranger patrols for wildlife security, habitat restoration, and community conservation efforts. Since USAID’s establishment in 1961, its nature conservation funding has enjoyed bipartisan support, with many conservation organizations globally depending on it. Disruption of that funding has left many groups scrambling to plug the gap. For example, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, U.S. foreign aid supports monitoring for critically endangered species including rhinos, tiger, orangutans and elephants. “The biggest impact is on patrols because most of our patrol teams are funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,” Goldman Prize winner Rudi Putra with the Leuser Conservation Forum in Sumatra told Mongabay. “This funding supports orangutans, rhinos and elephants, so with the funding cut, our patrol teams have been reduced.” In the Democratic Republic of Congo, USAID money was used to monitor and protect habitat for roughly one-third of the world’s remaining mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) in Virunga National Park. Matthew Hansen, a remote-sensing scientist with the University of…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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