Physicist Stephen Volz had been working with colleagues at the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for nearly 10 years to produce a new generation of geostationary satellites — instruments that would provide critical observations about atmospheric conditions, climate patterns and weather. But when Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, this long-term project was thrown into disarray.
“This administration canceled three of the five instruments on that program,” Volz, the assistant administrator for NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, who has been on administrative leave since July 2025, told Mongabay. The cancellations applied to instruments that measured air pollutants, tracked lightning to forecast hurricanes and tornadoes, and monitored ocean color to detect events such as algal blooms, sargassum seaweed surges and salinity changes, according to Volz.
“They said, ‘those are all wasted money, they’re climate alarmist, I don’t need air quality, I don’t need ocean color,’” Volz said about the administration’s decision.
The axing of this project is just one example of what experts describe as a broad, long-term effort by the Trump administration to weaken NOAA.
The long-standing scientific and regulatory agency within the US Department of Commerce has historically been responsible for everything from forecasting the weather and monitoring the climate to managing fisheries and protecting marine mammals. The White House did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment.
As NOAA continues to grapple with staffing cuts implemented last year, along with ongoing budget constraints, the Trump administration has now proposed additional deep cuts in its 2027 budget plan, released in April. Experts are also raising concerns about how already-approved funding is being distributed to the agency, arguing there are delays in disbursement that hinder its ability to carry out its congressionally mandated work.
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When you restore a wetland, you can see the way it was before versus the way it is after. You can see the jobs it creates. You can see the way that a restored wetland or mangroves protect the coastline. So anything that you do for habitat, for nature, and on the conservation front, helps people, too. So why would you take that away?
Rachel Brittin, former deputy director of external affairs, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), an executive office of the president that oversees the distribution of money to federal agencies such as NOAA, told Mongabay there were “no intentional delays” with the distribution of funding, and that “apportionments for NOAA and all of those submitted to OMB have been reviewed and approved in a timely manner.”
At the same time, the spokesperson acknowledged that funding had been apportioned for some programs “over the four fiscal quarters.” Prior to 2025, the OMB normally gave NOAA its annual funding all at the same time.
NOAA itself did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment.
‘Deeper and worse’ cuts
Last year, the Trump administration proposed sweeping cuts to NOAA, including an 18 per cent reduction of its workforce, a roughly US$1.5 billion decrease in budget — which would have lowered the agency’s enacted 2025 budget of about US$6.1 billion by nearly 25 per cent — and a termination of several programs, including those related to climate research.
While Congress pushed back on most of this and managed to preserve the majority of NOAA’s budget, lawmakers raised the alarm about OMB withholding allocated funds. Experts say this issue has persisted. The agency also wasn’t immune from firings as the US government laid off thousands of federal workers after Trump began his second term. Some branches of NOAA, including the National Weather Service, ultimately rehired staff. However, experts interviewed for this story told Mongabay that staff cuts have continued to have a deep impact on NOAA.
The administration’s new proposal for NOAA’s budget for the 2027 fiscal year calls for slashing around US$1.1 billion, or 18 per cent, from the overall US$6.1 billion budget, and terminating or reducing dozens of programs. If enacted, these cuts would eliminate more than 1,000 positions. NOAA’s website states that the agency currently has 12,000 personnel worldwide.
Proposed cuts target numerous programs and grants coordinated by NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), also known as NOAA Fisheries. The budget proposal also recommends cutting climate and weather research programs run through the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, or NOAA Research, and programs focused on coastal zone management, marine sanctuaries, ocean acidification and coral reef conservation, run though the agency’s National Ocean Service — among others.
At the same time, the budget includes proposed funding increases for some parts of the agency’s operations, including the development of deep-sea mining, an industry that critics say could cause widespread and long-lasting damage to the marine environment.
While deep-sea mining has not yet begun, NOAA will act as a regulator for any future seabed mining activities in international waters, and is currently reviewing applications for both mineral exploration and exploitation. The budget proposal also pledges additional support for the seafood sector and the development of a “fleet of autonomous research vessels to enable efficient survey of our coasts, address current data gaps, and propel a stronger ocean economy.”
Neither the White House nor NOAA responded to Mongabay’s questions on these matters.
Jeff Watters, the vice president of external affairs at the Washington, D.C.-based environmental advocacy group the Ocean Conservancy, told Mongabay the proposed budget “looks very similar to the budget that the administration proposed last year,” with many of the same programs put forth for elimination. However, he said some of the cuts, including those for NOAA Fisheries, were “deeper and worse” this year.
‘Extremely concerning’ cuts to NOAA Fisheries
Among the proposed cuts to NOAA Fisheries are the termination of certain fisheries management programs, fisheries surveys and data collection, Pacific coastal salmon recovery efforts, habitat conservation and restoration work, and grants for species recovery.
Andrew Rosenberg, the president of MRAG Americas, a US-based fisheries consultancy, who once served as Northeast regional administrator and later deputy director of NOAA Fisheries, said he found the suggested changes “extremely concerning.” During his time at NOAA in the 1990s, Rosenberg helped implement recovery plans for New England and mid-Atlantic fisheries, as well as marine mammal and endangered-species protections. He continued working with NOAA as an adviser from about 2005 to 2010, and has continued to stay in touch with current NOAA workers, he said.
“Continuing to cut the fisheries programs in terms of the management offices, which are down to skeletal staff, in some cases, is a huge concern, because we’ve made so much progress on fisheries over the last 20 to 30 years,” Rosenberg told Mongabay.
April marked the 50th anniversary of the US Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA), a landmark conservation law that helped prevent the collapse of many US fisheries through sustainable management and environmental protection measures. Experts now worry that staff and budget cuts for NOAA fisheries could reverse this progress.
Rosenberg added that the cuts, along with the Trump administration’s decision to open fishing in marine monuments and sanctuaries, was “foolishness” because of the impact it could have on fish stocks.
Fishing industry representatives have also raised concerns about the past and proposed cuts to NOAA Fisheries. Bob Alverson, manager of the Fishing Vessel Owners Association in Seattle, Washington, told Mongabay in an email that NOAA staffing shortages have slowed the implementation of regulations aimed to improve fishing efficiency, leading some fishers to stop fishing until the rules are approved. Alverson said the cuts have also affected data specialists who process annual stock survey data into usable datasets, as well as stock assessment biologists who rely on those data to evaluate fish populations.
“A lot of institutional memory instantly vanished,” Alverson said.
Another recommendation put forth in the White House budget proposal is to move all Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act functions from the BOAA Fisheries’ Office of Protected Resources to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, a separate agency under the US Department of the Interior. According to the budget proposal, this “would improve coordination and efficiency and streamline implementation of these statutes, reducing regulatory burden on American citizens and industry.”
Rosenberg said this plan didn’t make sense and risked weakening these functions. “The problem with sending protected species, including the marine mammals, over to the Fish and Wildlife Service, is that it becomes completely disconnected from the management of ocean activities,” he said.
Rachel Brittin, who served as NOAA’s deputy director of external affairs from August 2023 to April 2025, when she lost her job during the mass layoffs, said implementing cuts to NOAA Fisheries would be like “turning off your car’s headlights on a dark, winding road.”
“NOAA Fisheries manages more than 500 fish stocks, including popular seafood such as salmon, cod, halibut, and crab, as well as other species that support jobs, food security, and local economies across the country,” Brittin told Mongabay in an email. “In 2023 alone, US commercial and recreational fishing generated US$319 billion in sales and supported nearly 2.1 million American jobs. The proposed cuts would weaken the science, staffing, and enforcement needed to keep fisheries sustainable and coastal economies strong.”
If anything, Brittin said, NOAA Fisheries’ budget should be expanded. “The staff is stretched thin, and especially now after the loss of so many last year,” she said. “Further cuts would force the agency to do less at the exact moment communities need more reliable ocean data, stock assessments, habitat protection, and marine wildlife conservation.”
‘A steady degradation’
NOAA’s challenges extend beyond the proposed cuts. Although Congress ultimately preserved most of the agency’s funding last year, sources say money is being released slowly, rather than provided as a lump sum, disrupting operations and delaying work. The bottlenecks are reflected in federal apportionment documents published by the US government.
Watters of the Ocean Conservancy, who reviewed the documents and said he’d discussed them with former US government staff familiar with these processes, described the funding process as “designed incompetence.”
“It seems like they’re designing things to tie things up,” he said. “Things are taking longer.”
The OMB spokesperson countered this view, arguing that Mongabay’s sources “might call that a ‘delay’ because they want all the funds up front, but that doesn’t make it true.”
Rosenberg said he was aware of the slow release of funds and that it was affecting work across NOAA Fisheries, preventing research from being conducted on schedule and potentially undermining the quality of long-term scientific data.
“You could lose an entire field season, which puts in jeopardy an entire time series,” Rosenberg said. “It’s really, really detrimental to any kind of science enterprise.”
Volz, who worked at NOAA for more than 11 years before being placed on administrative leave (for which he said he was never given a clear reason), also confirmed that funding delays were occurring. He said the combination of slow apportionments and staffing cuts was gradually “starving” the agency, and that in the long term, it could eventually affect the quality of NOAA’s data and scientific output.
“What you’re going to see is a steady degradation across the board of what was once pretty comprehensive data sets,” Volz said. “They’re going to be going dark one at a time. If you think of a big TV screen with a bunch of pixels, you’re going to be losing pixels, and you don’t notice it right away, but over a period of months, in a year, you’ll start to see it going dark in critical areas.”
Volz added that while NOAA was still sharing its weather and Earth observation data with countries around the world, the US has pulled back from international partnerships and support systems that helped developing countries actually use that data effectively.
“The result of those actions is we are not able to help countries use our data, we are not there to translate or interpret or train their users as we have in the past,” Volz said. “So while we can claim we are still providing all the data, we know the capacity to use it well is limited and we are not helping improve that capacity.”
‘The NOAA budget should be double’
The White House’s budget proposal FY2027 budget proposal is only a recommendation. Congress must draft and approve its own spending bills before the budget becomes law — a process that can typically take many months.
And even if Congress once again rejects most of the Trump administration’s proposals, OMB may continue to delay the dispersal of funds to NOAA. If so, lawsuits might ensue, experts told Mongabay.
Despite the mounting challenges, Brittin, the agency’s former deputy director of external affairs, pointed to the resilience of NOAA staff, who continue working hard under tightening constraints. She also emphasised the importance of NOAA’s work, such as the restoration and conservation of wetlands.
“You can actually see the before and after changes — the positive change,” she said. “When you restore a wetland, you can see the way it was before versus the way it is after. You can see the jobs it creates. You can see the way that a restored wetland or mangroves protect the coastline, which means the communities behind it. So anything that you do for habitat, for nature, and on the conservation front, helps people, too. So why would you take that away?”
This story was published with permission from Mongabay.com.
