The Daily Caller News Foundation learned that the Department of the Interior (DOI) cancelled 79 grants to environmental organizations on Tuesday, totaling around $14 million.
Under the Trump administration, the DOI has been cutting back expenses in line with President Donald Trump’s March executive order directing agencies to eliminate waste and save taxpayer dollars. The DOI cancelled numerous grant awards on Tuesday with several groups that also happened to proclaim diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) values, which Trump has regularly critiqued.
The DOI cancelled numerous grants to the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies on Tuesday, which in its 2023 to 2028 strategic plan states that “we are recruiting, hiring, training and investing in staff and the organization to increase engagement, diversity, accessibility and inclusivity across the communities we live and work.”
The grants were cut as part of the DOI’s effort to cut costs and save taxpayer dollars, according to the agency. Several of the groups that were receiving the taxpayer-funded grants also happened to affirm DEI values, which Trump has worked to expel from the administration in favor of traditional meritocracy.
In addition to the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, several other environmental groups tapping the taxpayer spigot publicly endorsed DEI values in recent years.
The DOI is cancelling millions in grants for the Institute For Applied Ecology, which outlined a DEI action plan in 2021, noting that the organization affirms that “diversity makes us strong and equality is in our nature. We are passionate about inclusion across gender, race, age, religion, identity, and experience.”
The Institute For Applied Ecology centers its work on “conserving native species and habitats through restoration, research and education,” according to its website.
Another environmental group known as the Lomakatsi Restoration Project features a land acknowledgment on its website and is losing millions in DOI funds.
“We acknowledge that Lomakatsi operates programs across the ancestral lands of aboriginal peoples who lived and live in the watersheds of the Willamette River, Rogue River, Klamath River, Umpqua River, and Pit River, in what is now called Oregon and California,” the group’s website states. “From sagebrush hillsides and mixed conifer forests, to oak woodlands and riverine systems, we offer our respect, recognition, and gratitude to the original past, present, and future inhabitants of these landscapes, to whom we dedicate this work.”
California Trout, INC., which focuses on keeping “strongholds and wild trout waters intact and protected” and had numerous awards cut from the DOI on Tuesday, previously affirmed DEI on its website, though it wiped the endorsement from its site in September 2024.
“In September 2024, California Trout made the intentional decision to temporarily remove our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice statement, originally drafted in 2021. Over the past three years, our organization has grown and evolved, deepening our understanding of what it means to meaningfully uphold these commitments,” the group’s website states. “Our decision to revisit this statement was not influenced by recent current federal actions on DEI, but rather by our ongoing commitment to thoughtful, meaningful progress within our organization.”
The agency also cut awards for a few other environmental groups including the Institute For Bird Populations, the Mid Klamath Watershed Council, which primarily work to conserve wildlife and restore ecosystems and were receiving several DOI grants.
The DOI moved to cut “DEI programs and gender ideology extremism” in January and has centered its focus on unleashing American energy and land management under Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. In contrast, the Biden administration went all-in on DEI initiatives, utilizing several agencies designed to safeguard the environment like the DOI and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to bolster former President Joe Biden’s agenda.
The Institute For Applied Ecology, Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, California Trout, INC. and the Lomakatsi Restoration Project did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
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