Trump Administration Sued for Freezing Funds That Help Protect Vulnerable Species Like Rhinos and Elephants

Environmentalists are urging the Trump administration to reverse a decision to freeze funding for important conservation work aimed at protecting iconic at-risk species, which includes anti-poaching patrols for vulnerable elephants and rhinos.

The Center for Biological Diversity sent a notice of intent to sue to the administration on Wednesday over the funding cuts.

“The Trump administration’s funding freeze for anti-poaching patrols and other international conservation work is maddening, heartbreaking, and very illegal,” said Sarah Uhlemann, the Center for Biological Diversity’s international program director, in a press release from the nonprofit environmental organization. “These Fish and Wildlife Service funds help protect elephants, rhinos and other animals across the globe that Americans love. No one voted to sacrifice the world’s most iconic wildlife to satisfy some unelected billionaire’s reckless power trip.”

The funds, administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), support projects like scientific research on the decline of elephants, anti-poaching patrols for rhinos and fighting trafficking of threatened turtle populations in countries without the resources to protect them. The funds are provided by Americans through the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) with the intent of keeping the animals from going extinct.

“This insanity has to stop or some of the world’s most endangered animals will die,” Uhlemann said.

USFWS has stopped the flow of tens of millions in foreign conservation funding, in addition to ordering grant recipients to halt work under their contracts.

The abrupt funding freeze has left a number of nonprofits in disarray globally, forced to lay off staff members and not knowing how they will keep up their vital conservation work.

The legal notice makes it clear that the suspension of funds by USFWS without consideration of the harm it would cause threatened species violates the ESA. It also violates laws that require rational decision-making by agencies, as well as the constitutional separation of powers.

A similar freeze of USAID funds by the Trump administration was found to be illegal by several courts, which ordered the restart of payments. When funding was not resumed by the administration, an order for compliance was set by one court last week. However, that deadline has since been paused by the Supreme Court, which is considering the matter.

“Trump and his unelected cronies are gleefully tearing apart the federal government without care for whom or what it harms. It’s careless, callous, and a violation of the laws that protect us all,” Uhlemann said.