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center for biological diversity
Trump-GOP Budget Imperils Pollinators Amid Bee Colony Collapse
One scientist asked, "How can the administration make good on its promise to make America healthy again while cutting support for the bees that are essential to producing fruits and vegetables?"
May 16, 2025
Scientists warned Friday that over $300 million in federal funding cuts for bee research proposed in U.S. House Republicans' budget reconciliation package imperils critical conservation efforts amid an ongoing colony collapse crisis afflicting the indispensable pollinators.
The proposed budget, which is backed by President Donald Trump, cancels $307 million in funding for the Ecosystem Management Area, the division of the U.S. Geological Survey that oversees biological research including the USGS Bee Lab. The laboratory is the government's preeminent pollinator research institution and plays a crucial role in efforts to conserve thousands of native U.S. bee species.
The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) noted Friday that "native bees pollinate 75% of flowering plants, including fruit and vegetable crops that are important to a healthy diet. Through crop and wild plant pollination, native bees contribute $3 trillion to the global economy."
"To ensure an abundant supply of food, we have to protect pollinators."
Although the latest quinquennial Census of Agriculture showed the nation's honeybee population hit an all-time high in 2022, researchers forecast a 60-70% decline in U.S. commercial honeybee colonies in 2025, a significant increase from average annual losses of 40-50% over the past decade.
"How can the administration make good on its promise to make America healthy again while cutting support for the bees that are essential to producing fruits and vegetables?" CBD staff scientist Jess Tyler said Friday. "As pollinator population declines get worse, we need to double down on research and protections for bees to ensure a healthy and affordable food supply."
"You can't have an America-first agenda if America can't feed itself," Tyler added. "I implore the Trump administration to reconsider its slashing of the Bee Lab's budget. To ensure an abundant supply of food, we have to protect pollinators."
Earlier this week, the government notified USGS researchers and students that their funding could be frozen and staff terminated as part of the Trump administration's gutting of federal agencies, led by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. While a federal judge earlier this month temporarily blocked Trump's mass layoffs, the administration has appealed the ruling, fueling uncertainty over ongoing and future research.
John Ternest, a scientist who studied pollinators at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's research arm who was laid off in February, toldThe New York Times last month that about 15 bee researchers have already been fired.
"We have so many crops that are going into bloom and rely on pollination right when all of this was happening—the firings, the crisis of honeybees," Ternest said. "What kind of trickle-down effect does that have on, of course, the farmers, but potentially even things like food prices?"
"Somebody has to push back—it's time to speak out."
Sam Droege, a biologist at the USGS Bee Lab, warned this week that the Ecosystems Mission Area—the U.S. Interior Department's biological research arm—"is absolutely, completely targeted" for layoffs by the Trump administration.
"Somebody has to push back—it's time to speak out," Droege said.
Retired senior USGS research official John Organ said earlier this month that "the elimination of funding for the USGS Ecosystems Mission Area will be a generational catastrophe for North American—and global—conservation science and management."
"Who will train the next generation of fish and wildlife managers, scientists, and leaders while conducting actionable science to help ensure future generations will be able to enjoy and benefit from our public trust in wildlife?" Organ wondered.
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'We Will Not Cooperate': Earth Day Puts Focus on Need to Resist Trump's Planet-Destroying Policies
"We are ready to fight for our future with everything we've got. Our generation will not sit back while Trump and fossil fuel billionaires destroy our home," said one climate leader.
Apr 22, 2025
As green groups honor the 55th annual Earth Day on Tuesday, environmental leaders are highlighting the need to fight back against the detrimental climate policies of U.S. President Donald Trump and his "billionaire allies," even as they brace for the possibility of further federal action that could hamper the climate movement.
Since entering office, Trump has signed executive orders aimed at bolstering oil, gas, and coal and installed Cabinet members with ties to the fossil fuel industry. Trump's U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator (EPA) in March announced a sweep of deregulatory actions and his administration has enacted cuts at federal agencies that work on environmental and climate issues, such the EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
For Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, Earth Day is a call to action to resist these moves.
"We are ready to fight for our future with everything we've got. Our generation will not sit back while Trump and fossil fuel billionaires destroy our home," said Shiney-Ajay in a statement on Tuesday. "We will not cooperate with the destruction of our world."
"Donald Trump, backed by fossil fuel billionaires, is waging a full-scale assault on the very lifesaving protections that Earth Day was created to demand," she added.
In addition to actions already taken, Trump is reportedly considering targeting the nonprofit tax-exempt status of green groups, which allows them to forego paying federal income tax. Such a move would likely impact their ability to fundraise because these groups collect tax-exempt donations. It is rumored that such an order could come down on Tuesday, to coincide with Earth Day.
Ashley Nunes, public lands policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity, wrote in an op-ed Tuesday that Trump has worked quickly to "pursue an agenda that puts the profits of his billionaire allies above the well-being of the American people and our environment."
Trump's strategy appears to be to do so much damage that it's impossible to focus on one issue, wrote Nunes, "yet Earth Day reminds us that our public lands, wildlife and, climate are priorities among the flurry of broad and harmful executive actions."
The executive director at the Center for Biological Diversity confirmed last week that the organization was preparing for a potential presidential order aimed at green groups' tax-exempt status.
Anti-billionaire sentiment is influencing the in-person Earth Day actions planned for Tuesday. On Tuesday, the climate group Planet Over Profit and the protestors who organize under the slogan #TeslaTakedown will picket what they say is the New York home of James Murdoch the son of billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch and a Tesla board member. Tesla is the electric vehicle company of Trump's billionaire adviser Elon Musk, who has played a core role in Trump's efforts to slash the size of government.
The electric vehicle company is a target because "Tesla ranks fifth among companies producing toxic air pollution in the country" and "there's no greater threat to our ability to live rich, dignified lives on a safe, stable planet than the Trump/Musk regime," among other reasons, according to the organizers.
According to The Guardian, thousands of people gathered on Saturday in New York City for a march that was endorsed by climate and migrant justice groups. "The two movements converged amid Trump's crackdown on migrants and embrace of fossil fuels—which will drive further climate collapse and forced migration," according to the outlet.
Climate groups are also coordinating Earth Day mobilization under the slogan "All Out on Earth Day"
Meanwhile, EarthDay.org, the global organizer of Earth Day, is featuring Earth Day events around the globe on its website and encouraging people to take part.
"We need to demonstrate to our leaders in government and business that we are still here, we are a witness to their actions, and we will hold them accountable to do right by our planet and its people," wrote Susan Bass, the senior vice president of programs and operations at EarthDay.org, in an opinion piece published Monday.
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Earth Day Massacre? Environmental Groups Fear Trump Ready to Take Aim at Nonprofit Status
"The rumors feel credible because this is the playbook they use," said one environmental funder. "That's why people are taking it very seriously."
Apr 17, 2025
Environmental groups are bracing for the Trump administration to potentially target their tax-exempt status, a move that could come down on Earth Day, this coming Tuesday, according to reporting from multiple outlets published Wednesday.
Rumors about such a move are swirling as the Trump administration is also reportedly considering plans to revoke Harvard University's tax-exempt status, a major escalation against the elite institution that critics said marks just the start of a broader assault on nonprofits that refuse to acquiesce to the administration's demands.
Fears that President Donald Trump will try to revoke environmental groups' tax-exempt status is the "rumor of the day that is flying around D.C.," Brett Hartl, the government affairs director at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, toldE&E News. "There's lots of rumors about what terrible thing [Trump] wants to do on Earth Day, to just give everybody the middle finger."
Sources who spoke to Bloomberg Law on the condition of anonymity told the outlet that multiple conservation and environmental groups are preparing and assembling legal teams in response to the rumors. Per Bloomberg Law, a potential order from Trump could also seize groups' funding and designate them as domestic terrorists.
"We are trying to not panic, because we don't know what it is," Hartl told E&E News, though he added that environmentalists would "rally together and support each other."
Kieran Suckling, executive director for the Center for Biological Diversity, told Bloomberg Law that his organization is preparing for a potential order, and said the group would take legal action if it comes to pass.
501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations, such as the Center for Biological Diversity and Earthjustice, are exempt from federal income tax and can collect tax-deductible donations.
The environmentalist and author Bill McKibben reacted to the reporting by remarking that the threat comes amid the "ongoing decimation of federally funded climate science."
"I know a great many of these people, and I admire their work endlessly; it's an honor to be counted among them, even if I'm only a volunteer," he said of those who work for green groups. "It was perhaps inevitable that Trump and his team would target us; together we've been making life harder for his clients in the fossil fuel industry. And in the new America, if you don't knuckle under you get a knuckle sandwich. Figuratively speaking. One hopes."
Only the Internal Revenue Service can investigate and revoke a tax exemption, and senior executive branch officials are explicitly barred from asking the IRS to conduct or cease an audit of a taxpayer, according to The Washington Post. There are some circumstances under which the IRS may revoke a tax-exempt status.
"Neither the president, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, or the IRS have the ability to revoke the federal tax-exempt status of any entity through executive order or with the mere stroke of a pen," wrote Jeffrey Tenenbaum, a nonprofit attorney, on Thursday.
The procedure for revoking federal tax exemption requires "individual case-by-case IRS audits of each organization, with ample opportunity for the entity to defend itself, and including multiple routes of appeal," he added.
CNN was first to report Wednesday that the IRS—where Trump has installed an ally as interim commissioner—is weighing whether to revoke Harvard's tax exemption, news that came a day after the president suggested on his social media platform Truth Social that "perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting 'Sickness?'"
According to E&E News, this suggestion by Trump in regard to Harvard has heightened environmental groups' concerns that the administration might take action against their tax-exempt status.
"The rumors feel credible because this is playbook they use," one environmental funder, who was granted anonymity, told E&E News. "That's why people are taking it very seriously."
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