A nonprofit environmental conservation group in southern Arizona has had to stop some of its work because it lost more than a million federal dollars.
The Borderlands Restoration Network has had $1.2 million frozen. That money was allocated as part of a pair of laws signed by former President Joe Biden, but was paused under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump.
Wyatt Myskow, a Southwest correspondent for Inside Climate News, has written about this and joined The Show to talk about what he found, starting with what the Borderlands Restoration Network is and what kind of work they do.
Full conversation
WYATT MYSKOW: The Borderlands Restoration Network is a conservation group of 25 or so employees as well as a score of part-time employees and volunteers who do, as their name implies, restoration and conservation work in the borderlands of southern Arizona. They do watershed management work, they restore habitat after wildfires. They manage a seed barn and nursery where they supply seeds and native vegetation for both recovery efforts, but also for people to buy and grow in their own backyards or to eat. They grow some really great broccoli. I sampled some all down there, and they're made up of a variety of trained hydrologists, biologists, people who do this type of work for a living and have studied it for years and have been working on this type of work for years if not decades.
MARK BRODIE: How much of their budget is funded by the federal government, like how much of their work is dependent on getting federal money?
MYSKOW: Yeah, so like a lot of nonprofits, they rely on donations and grants from from philanthropies, but also contracts with the federal government, and they had $1.2 million frozen by the federal government when the Trump administration took office via various executive orders that President Donald Trump signed, and those were contracts that the Borderlands Restoration Network had signed over the past year with various federal agencies, mainly the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, to do exactly the type of work they do — restoration work across southern Arizona, also internships for rural youth in the area. And that accounts for about 40% of their operating budget that's now frozen, even though the courts have ordered that funding should be unfrozen.
BRODIE: So what does that mean for their work? I mean, you said it's about 40% of their budget. Are they still able to do some projects that maybe are funded by the other 60% and just not, not execute these contracts?
MYSKOW: Yeah, I mean, essentially they still have some funds, they're still able to do some limited amount of work, but they have not been working on the projects that those federal funds were going towards, I mean, they don't have the money to do it. Essentially, what they told me is that they're operating incredibly slowly, really just waiting to hear back, “Is this funding unfrozen?”
What's really tough about this is that these were contracts that the funding came from congressionally approved bills, and they went to be dedicated to a variety of different things like watershed restoration, restoring habitats after wildfires, etc., and those are signed contracts. Those were signed agreements that have deliverables. That's really concerning for them right now.
The summer is coming. It's going to get hotter. They have deadlines to meet for a lot of these projects, but they can't meet them right now because they don't know if they get reimbursed for it. But also right now the weather's great to be doing that kind of work in the field, and if the funding gets unfrozen, but it's July and it's 110 outside, it means they're going to have to wait even longer.
BRODIE: Are those the kinds of projects that they're not really able to do right now in terms of watershed restoration, invasive species management, that kind of thing?
MYSKOW: Yeah, it's all of those and above. They have their own wildlife preserve and they have more private contracts with say like local ranchers in the area to do some of this work, but a lot of their work was on U.S. Forest Service lands or Bureau of Land Management lands, right? It's operated and owned by the federal government for, you know, the enjoyment of everyone, and they can't do that right now. And that's the vast majority of the work and maybe the most impactful because these are really big contiguous landscapes that are in need of help, and they can't do that work right now.
BRODIE: So what are the folks with the Borderlands Restoration Network saying are the impacts of this? Like what kind of effect is this having on that part of the state?
MYSKOW: Yeah, well, there's a variety. I mean, one, the Borderlands Restoration Network is Patagonia's second largest employer of that town. I mean, it's a small town, but they have around 25 people employed there, and those jobs are kind of on the line right now. I mean, obviously they still have funding. Not everyone's going to lose their job potentially, but there's a real risk. I mean, they have real concern that if by the end of this month some of those funds don't become available again. Some folks will have to lose their jobs, and that's incredibly impactful for a small community where there's limited amounts of jobs in this field in the first place, also in the town obviously given that it's a small town of around 800-ish people. So if someone has to lose their job and they live in the town, I mean, where did they go? That's a big concern.
The other kind of impacts on the ground, I mean, just sticking to conservation and the environment. The Sky Islands where Patagonia is and where they do their work are some of the most biodiverse places in the world. I mean, truly, if you've been down there, you know just how special and unique it is. It's these refuges from the desert heat that allow a variety of wildlife and plants that you wouldn't expect in the desert to live in the desert. But that landscape is changing. It's drier, it's hotter, and there you have the threat of wildfires, invasive species that have been introduced, the landscape is changing rapidly and their work is making a dent in preventing some of that stuff and protecting the environment.
So there's a real risk of some of these places continuing to be degraded. And thirdly and finally, they had internships that they had to cancel for around 15 local southern Arizona youths from these small towns to learn about conservation and learn this work, and they're not able to have that this year because that internship was funded by the U.S. Forest Service and that grant has been frozen and so they had to cancel that.
BRODIE: When you talk to the folks with this organization, what do they say about the scope of organizations like theirs around the country that are in similar situations? Because obviously the Borderlands Restoration Network, this is not the only group that's had funding frozen. So like, how do they sort of see their place in this larger issue?
MYSKOW: Yeah, great question. Across the country, you know, billions of dollars have been frozen by the Trump administration that were passed by Congress under the Biden administration, mainly the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Act and the inflation Reduction Act that, you know, dedicated billions of dollars to doing this type of work to address climate change.
The lack of funding now means that across the country groups cannot do that work, and I think they said it best, the executive director of Borderlands Restoration Network is that you may not believe in climate change, that's OK, but if you live in Arizona, you know about wildfires, you know about drought, and that's really what the work's about is preventing those things that we know are getting worse.
And that's the case across the country, right? And that means all this funding is frozen, and a lot of states cannot access it. A lot of groups like theirs cannot access it. It's not just these small nonprofits. I mean, we're going all the way up to state governments, federal agencies. A big concern of theirs is that at the same time these funds are frozen, federal workers are being laid off in the Bureau of Land and in these corresponding agencies they work with. A big fear they have is maybe the funding gets unfrozen, but your federal counterpart is no longer employed and there's no one there to work with to get this project done. Which means projects that already have begun are being stalled, are being lost, are not going to be able to continue. One, that's wasting funds, but two, it means this work that's to, I mean, help prevent some of these things and recover from things we know are issues like droughts and wildfires cannot continue.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Wyatt Myskow's name.
