Post from Sam / lab closure
Hollis Woodard
Hi everyone,
Full disclosure, I have been in full meltdown mode since first reading the article shared in Sam’s post. I need time to process my thoughts (maybe more than some) and there is just no time for that. So I’ve been stunned into near-silence. I deeply appreciate Erika & Neil putting together the bulleted list for folks to use to advocate for the Bee Lab. So well said and helpful to put this info together and share it.
If the info in the article Sam shared is to be taken as fact -and there are additional, outside reasons to believe it should- then this means that not only the Bee Lab is in imminent danger, but also literally all of the USGS scientists across the US whose jobs it is to monitor and protect bees, bats, birds, fish - everything. Their works keeps food on our tables, our water and air clean - everything about how we live and what we value is tied up in their work. The idea that in less than a week they could be no longer doing these things is incomprehensible. The idea that outside of the situation next week, we have already lost so many important people, and that there are more losses further on the horizon, is also something that makes me feel a terror that I can’t even put into words.
So, the point of this post - a thank you to Erika & Neil for giving me something to help bring me out of my stupor and start putting my thoughts together, and also a plea to please consider also writing letters and otherwise advocating for the additional DOI (and beyond) scientists and resources that are being impacted by this.
Hollis
Neil S Cobb
Neil S. Cobb,
Biodiversity Outreach Network Business Office: 285 W Rome Way, Paulden, AZ86334; Operations Office: 11 W Silver Spruce Ave, Flagstaff, AZ 86001-3541 ID 84-2609936
Mobile Office - Text & WhatsApp: 928-607-4075
Zoom Office: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81630476460
ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6155-9444
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Ai Wen
Senator Ernst,
My name is Ai and I am a constituent living in Cedar Falls.
I am writing today to express my deepest concerns over the proposed lay-off and budget cut to the USGS, which is on page 30 of the proposed budget released on May 2, 2025. Because of the budget cut, USGS will eliminate its Ecosystem Mission Area (EMA) branch. The consequences of this can be catastrophic to not only the country’s environment, but also to its economic prosperity and national security. I sincerely hope you can use your leadership and influence to prevent unfathomable consequences that will come with the elimination of these services provided by the USGS scientists.
Personally, as a wild bee biologist, I have worked very closely with a number of scientists from the EMA branch of USGS. They conduct research on a wide range of topics such as wild bee pollinators, the white nose syndrome of bats, Miller moths that benefit the agroecosystem in the Rocky Mountains, and the Conservation Reserve Program’s agricultural ecosystem services in areas affected by drought conditions. There are hundreds of other areas that USGS ecosystem scientists study which I am not familiar with, but they are critical to the country’s agricultural production and economic success. These unique areas are not covered by any other government agencies and these scientists’ expertise cannot be easily replaced by any other agencies without at least a few decades of training.
If the proposed budget cut and mass lay-off takes place, what will most likely to happen is the immediate disappearance of the monitoring and prevention of hundreds of wildlife and plant pathogens and pests, resulting in rampaging of diseases that cause agricultural and ecosystem failures, which can easily cause tens of billions of economic losses (for example, the white-nose syndrome in bats alone was estimated to cost U.S. agriculture $495 million each year). The budget cut estimated the elimination of the USGS reduction will save the government 564million dollars—it is a very small number compared to the potential economic losses when all the scientific monitoring and practices suddenly disappear due to the budget cut.
National security is another area that is tightly associated with the EMA, as many of the scientists closely monitor various invasive species, such as the Asian carp from China that is causing devastating damages to the native fishery, and the invasive and poisonous brown tree-snakes that are threatening military infrastructure and personnel safety in Guam and other U.S. military bases in the Western Pacific. These invasive species cause us billions of dollars to control every year because they bring detrimental impact to food production, water resources, human and animal health as well as infrastructure safety, and hence threaten the economy, energy and military readiness of the U.S. Novel technologies such as environmental DNA has been adopted by the USGS scientists to effectively detect these species invasion, and significantly strengthen the national security.
I strongly urge you to preserve the EMA of USGS and its critical contribution to this country. The unplanned, thoughtless chain-sawing of this critical branch of USGS will not increase the government efficiency, nor will it save taxpayer money because of these very possible economic losses that come with the cut. I appreciate your leadership role in the senate and I thank you for your attention in this urgent issue.
Sincerely, --Ai Wen
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Harpur, Brock Alexander
For reference:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/15/13641920/trump-resist-congress
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/us/politics/heres-why-you-should-call-not-email-your-legislators.html
Sent: Monday, May 19, 2025 4:26 PM
To: hollis....@ucr.edu <hollis....@ucr.edu>
Cc: beemonitoring <beemon...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [Beemonitoring] Post from Sam / lab closure
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Ellen Silva
If the proposed budget cut and mass lay-off takes place, what will most likely to happen is the immediate disappearance of the monitoring and prevention of hundreds of wildlife and plant pathogens and pests, resulting in rampaging of diseases that cause agricultural and ecosystem failures, which can easily cause tens of billions of economic losses (for example, the white-nose syndrome in bats alone was estimated to cost U.S. agriculture $495 million each year). The budget cut estimated the elimination of the USGS reduction will save the government 564million dollars—it is a very small number compared to the potential economic losses when all the scientific monitoring and practices suddenly disappear due to the budget cut.
John Purdy
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beemonitoring/3DADD3CE-C3AB-403C-B154-93A1CB7FA207%40comcast.net.