WTF is DOGE Doing to the US Fish & Wildlife Service?
The DOGE website shows 25 terminated leases at USFWS offices across the country.
DOGE is on an all-out rampage, and it seems no government agency is safe. The website for Elon Musk’s merciless “government efficiency” tool is exactly what you’d expect from a billionaire technocrat. It’s weirdly vague on details, but it brags about dollar amounts “saved” on thousands of canceled contracts, grants, and real estate leases—describing the actions with cryptic phrasing like “Terminated via Mass Mod.” Looking through this website might be cathartic for someone who’s amped up about slashing unnecessary government waste, but it quickly becomes a nightmare for anyone interested in the continued existence of our already underfunded and understaffed public land agencies—and the wildlife these agencies protect.
All told, there are 25 terminated leases for US Fish & Wildlife offices across the country; I also counted 22 for the National Park Service. I’ve called several Fish and Wildlife offices in cities and towns listed on the DOGE site, but most of those phone calls went unanswered. And the few people that actually picked up—a USFWS agent in Great Falls, Montana for example—said they were under strict orders to say nothing about their office’s inclusion on the DOGE termination list.
Recent reports put the number of USFWS staffers fired during the Valentine’s Day Massacre at around 400 individuals. Like many of the 3,400 public land workers that Elon axed over at the Forest Service (USDA), a lot of these people were in great standing with their employer—the Department of Interior. And, in fact, the erroneous “poor performance” marks used by DOGE to justify their firing was cited by a federal judge who recently deemed much of the firings illegal. Whether or not fired workers at USFWS and other government agencies will get their hard-earned jobs back after as the results of the court ruling remains to be seen.
Local reports out of Montana say that two US Fish & Wildlife Agency offices in Bozeman will be shuttered, and the Centre Daily Times is reporting on the closure of a USFWS office in State College, Pennsylvania.
Musk marked an office in Madison, Wisconsin and one in Broken Bow, Oklahoma as “True Termination—Agency Closed Office.” According to the Broken Bow Chamber of Commerce, the area is home to the 14,200-acre Little River National Wildlife Refuge which preserves the state’s largest remaining swath of bottomland hardwood forests for migratory birds and waterfowl on the Central Flyway.
Other towns with USFWS facilities listed on the DOGE site include: Fallmouth, Maine; Grand Junction, Colorado; Bismarck, North Dakota; Tucson, Arizona; Atlanta, Georgia; Manhattan, Kansas; Hadley, Mass.; Columbia, Missouri; Gahanna, Ohio; Daphne, Alabama; Doral, Florida; Jackson, Miss.; Arcata, California; Littleton, Colorado; Indianola, Iowa; Derby, Kansas; Minot, North Dakota; Loredo, Texas; West Valley City, Utah; and Baltimore, Maryland.
If you have information about how the USFWS is being impacted in any of the above communities and would like to share it with the public please email landslost406@gmail.com