Fish and Wildlife's Own Budget Cuts a Quarter of the Refuge Workforce in Two Years

The National Wildlife Refuge System is 573 refuges and 38 wetland management districts, run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for hunting, fishing, birdwatching, and habitat that Congress has designated a conservation priority since 1997.▸ The Service's own FY2027 budget justification records nearly 71 million visits in FY2025 — an increase of more than 50% since FY2011. The same document, published in April 2026, records what has happened to the workforce that runs the System over that same stretch: it has been cut, budget cycle after budget cycle, in every program but one.

The FY2027 request funds the National Wildlife Refuge System at $416,988,000 — the Service's own figure, exact to the dollar, in the "National Wildlife Refuge System" summary table of its FY2027 Budget Justification.▸ Every sub-activity in that total is smaller than its FY2025 funding level except one.

Refuge Maintenance's $113.2 million includes $22.368 million earmarked for deferred maintenance — down from $40.368 million in both FY2025 and FY2026, a 44.6% cut to the one line built specifically to work down a backlog the Service's own accounting puts at $2.9 billion for the Refuge System alone (83% of the Service's entire $3.5 billion deferred-maintenance-and-repair estimate).▸ At the FY2027 request's funding rate, clearing that backlog — if no new deferred maintenance accrued in the meantime, which it will — would take on the order of 130 years.

The FTE cut is not a single-year event.▸ In its FY2026 request, the Service originally proposed a 22% cut to Refuge System funding, down to $412,135,000; Congress restored most of it, enacting $522,035,000 instead — but staffing had already fallen from 2,204 FTE in FY2025 to 1,948 FTE in the FY2026 enacted level, a loss of 256 positions on a budget that moved barely 1%. The FY2027 request now proposes cutting a further 276 FTE and $105,047,000 from that FY2026 enacted base, bringing the System to 1,672 FTE and $416,988,000 if enacted as requested. Net across both cycles: 532 fewer positions than FY2025, a 24.1% reduction, against a visitor count that rose in the opposite direction.

Wildlife and habitat management — the biologists, water managers, and invasive-species crews who do the System's core conservation work — falls from 1,144 to 795 FTE, down 349 positions (-30%).▸ Refuge maintenance falls 99 positions (-22%), visitor services 92 (-23%), conservation planning 7 (-41%). The FY2027 request also zeroes out two smaller programs entirely: the Urban Wildlife Conservation Program ($7.0 million in FY2026) and Youth and Careers in Nature ($2.5 million in FY2026) both go to $0.

Refuge Law Enforcement moves the other way at every step: 185 FTE in FY2025, 195 FTE in the FY2026 enacted level, 200 FTE in the FY2027 request — the Service's own budget justification describes the FY2027 change as "a program change of +$3,000,000 and +5 FTE from the 2026 Enacted."▸ It is the only sub-activity funded above its FY2025 level in every column of the table.

The Service's justification ties the growth directly to two 2025 executive orders — Imposing Duties to Address the Situation at Our Southern Border (E.O. 14194) and Progress on the Situation at Our Southern Border (E.O. 14198) — writing that Federal Wildlife Officers "work cooperatively with other law enforcement to combat drug trafficking and address border security issues."▸ The same officers also serve, in the Service's description, as hunter safety instructors and youth hunting and fishing event leaders — the System's traditional recreational-access mission, now funded alongside a border-security one, while the biologists and maintenance crews who keep the underlying refuges functioning lose positions in the same document.

FY2025 figures are the Service's own reported actuals and FY2026 figures are enacted appropriations, both drawn from the FY2027 Budget Justification; FY2027 figures are a budget request, not an enacted appropriation, and Congress may fund the System differently before the fiscal year begins. The 130-year backlog estimate is a simple calculation — backlog divided by the FY2027 deferred-maintenance line — not a Service projection, and does not account for new deferred maintenance accruing on aging infrastructure in the meantime.