The cuts by the Trump administration to funding related to biodiversity have imperiled species, habitats, and the people who are defending both across the globe. Now conservation leaders are seeking ways that are new to move forward without support that is American.
On 22 January 2024, at the inauguration of the current president of Liberia, Joseph Boakai, the poet who is US-based and Liberian, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, was paying tribute to the forests that are tropical of the West African nation. These are one of the places where, she was saying, “our fathers came centuries ago, and planted our umbilical cords deep in the soil” that exists there.
The forests of Liberia are among the most diverse that exist on the planet, being home not only to humans and their ties that are ancestral but also to species that are rare such as elephants that are forest-dwelling, hippopotamuses that are pygmy, and chimpanzees that are western. They are also threatened in a manner that is chronic by development that is industrial, including logging and mining that are illegal.
The Eco-Guards Program That Lost Funding
For nearly a decade that has passed, the Society for the Conservation of Nature of Liberia, which is also known as SCNL, has been recruiting and training a corps of up to 80 eco-guards to help protect the forest that is vital. The eco-guards, all of whom are living in communities that are forest-based, are patrolling for signs of activity that is illegal and sharing their findings with rangers from parks and forests that are nearby.
In late January 2025, the SCNL was learning that USAID, which was the backer that is primary financially of the eco-guards, was being dismantled by the administration of Trump and that funding had been suspended in a manner that was abrupt. The programme manager of SCNL, Michael E Taire, who is a Liberian and lives in the capital, Monrovia, was spending several days travelling over roads that are rough and forest-based to be breaking the news to the eco-guards, who were shocked and distraught when they heard. In one community that is forest-based, a woman who is young was telling him that if SCNL could not be paying her and her fellow guards who work with her, they would be having to support their families by “doing what they used to do,” which, in her case, was meaning hunting animals of the forest in a manner that is illegal.
The Impact That Is Worldwide
Most of the attention that is public on the demise of USAID has been focusing on its consequences for health that is human. Support from USAID for treatment of HIV/Aids, control of malaria, and other initiatives has been saving 91 million lives over the past 20 years, according to one analysis that was conducted.
Liberia, which was one of the first countries to be receiving support from USAID, was losing an estimated $290m for schools that are local and clinics, ambulances, training that is medical, and other needs that are basic for health and education in 2025.
These tragedies are overshadowing another loss that is great. USAID was not only the source that is leading in the world of aid related to health but also one of the backers that are largest in the world of protection related to biodiversity. The agency was overseeing and funding efforts to be combating trafficking of wildlife, protecting habitats that are valuable, and supporting conservation that is community-led.
The dismantling of USAID, along with the suspension of grants that are international for conservation from other agencies of the U.S., has been threatening not only species and habitats but also the people who are defending wildlife around the world that exists. Rangers of parks and officers related to wildlife crime were losing funding for salaries, training, and equipment that is needed. By the 2020s, Congress was approving more than $300m for programmes related to biodiversity of USAID each year, which was making the U.S. a species that is keystone in conservation that is international.