Native nations push through funding uncertainties to keep protecting the Great Lakes

But federal cuts proposed by the Trump administration could put their work at risk. Experts worry a lapse in federal support poses a significant threat to ecosystems, subsistence fishers and commercial industry.

Since Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began cutting staff across federal agencies in January, entire U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) departments have been eliminated and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) grants have been frozen.

The White House’s “skinny budget” proposal for fiscal year 2026 seeks to cut an additional $200 million from FWS, including $170 million in state, tribal and NGO grants. It also recommends cutting $1.3 billion in research funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as well as eliminating 90% of funding for USGS ecosystems research.

With the appropriations process for FY 2026 well underway, both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have approved legislation addressing USGS, with the House proposing a 5.6% reduction in funding and the Senate suggesting a 2.9% increase over FY 2025 levels. In contrast to the president’s budget proposal, both the House and Senate bills recommend maintaining funding for ecosystems research.

As for NOAA, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed a bill that actually increases funding for the agency’s research and operations activities. The House Appropriations Committee has not yet passed its bill to fund the agency. Once Congress returns in September, the bills will make their way to their respective House or Senate floors for consideration.

“There is a mountain of uncertainty,” said Tom Gorenflo, the biological service director for The Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority (CORA), an intertribal body that oversees management of the 1836 Treaty Fishery for five member nations. He and others said staffing and funding cuts at federal agencies could have major repercussions for the Great Lakes fishery, which adds more than $5 billion to the economy each year.

Without federal funding and enough employees to staff agencies and operate large research vessels, lake research would not be able to continue. Field work is planned months, even years, in advance, and ongoing research is key to good data. Fisheries biologists across the Great Lakes say the back-and-forth has made it hard to plan for the future.

Keeping lake ecosystems in balance Federal research programs provide vital data used to manage lake fish populations. For example, NOAA researches long-term ecosystem changes, while USGS conducts annual surveys that provide critical information about fish spawning, prey fish populations and the prevalence of invasive organisms and their impacts on the food web.

Many Native nations and intertribal organizations like CORA manage the fishery by regulating equipment, catch limits and season closures within their waters. Data also informs sea lamprey control, a job that the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission contracts to FWS in the U.S. and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Canada.

The commission, established by a treaty between the U.S. and Canada, is funded by the two governments. It spends more than $20 million annually to control sea lamprey.

Fisheries biologists are familiar with what happens when sea lamprey control stops. The Great Lakes fishery collapsed in the 1950s, partly due to the growth of the sea lamprey population, leading to the formation of the commission.

After the COVID-19 pandemic paused sea lamprey control in 2020, the number of adult sea lamprey spiked, according to Gorenflo. A lamprey will kill between 20 and 40 pounds of fish in order to grow to adulthood, he said.

More recently, invasive mollusks like zebra and quagga mussels have threatened the bottom of the food chain. They thrive on the lakes’ plankton, outcompeting other species like diporeia, a small crustacean vital to the whitefish population.

Experts fear long term cuts to lake research and staffing will spell ecological disaster.

“We just need that data, that information collection year-to-year, to understand how fish ecosystems are changing,” said fisheries biologist Ian Harding. He works for the Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe in Wisconsin, overseeing the nation’s coaster brook trout rehabilitation program.

“We have a fish hatchery, we raise coaster brook trout, we stock Lake Superior and we do standardized assessments to track their abundance,” he said.

Federal partnerships are key

The Fish and Wildlife Service is a critical partner in that project, helping coordinate these assessments annually. But Harding says the person heading that initiative took an early retirement offer following cuts by DOGE, and the position has remained vacant. “With the layoffs, the early retirements and the hiring freeze, it just dealt a major blow to that entire program,” he said.

The tribe also relies on the FWS Iron River National Fish Hatchery for fertilized fish eggs. “And I’m just told they no longer have capacity to go to the wild to get wild gametes or possibly even maintain a brute stock for us,” Harding said. “That threatens our entire hatchery.”

Proposed cuts to USGS will also have negative downstream effects. According to Harding, the Lake Superior Biological Station in Ashland, Wisconsin, is an important federal partner that has already been the target of staff cuts. Another USGS facility, the Great Lakes Science Center, is facing possible closure.

Jason Smith is a fisheries assessment biologist at the Bay Mills Indian Community in Michigan. The tribe can weather federal funding cuts for the short term, he said, but “if it continues for an extended period of time, it could be devastating.”

Like Harding, Smith works closely with federal partners at FWS, as well as the USGS, where he said a potential closure has felt imminent for months.

“There’s always this upcoming date,” Smith said. “The center director will say, ‘We’ve heard that the big news could be coming in two weeks.’ And so they’ll all fret for two weeks…This has been going on since March — this holding the axe over people’s heads.”

Maintaining operations

Despite looming news of a closure, the USGS Great Lakes Science Center has remained operational. A source at the center said staff remain positive but know they could face a closure at any time. Congress appears poised to continue funding the center through FY 2026 appropriations legislation.

Smith also said travel restrictions on federal employees imposed by DOGE have forced him to do work usually done by his counterparts in the U.S. government.

But his biggest concern is that cuts will reach the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI), a federal program administered by the Environmental Protection Agency. GLRI has invested approximately $4.9 billion in more than 8,000 projects since 2010. “That money from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is in many ways what moved most of the tribes from monitoring the fishery to being really high-level research agencies,” Smith said.

The GLRI is a vital source of funding for Native nations. Without it, many will not be able to continue ongoing research. Smith says baseline funding at Bay Mills is enough to manage and monitor the fishery. “But it never leaves room for an actual project,” he said.

Other tribes like the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians have had other sources of funding rescinded. Erik Olsen is the interim manager of the tribe’s natural resources department. He said a $20 million grant awarded in 2023 was frozen and recently “clawed back” under President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The tribe has formally appealed the termination.

The rescinded funding would have supported rebuilding rural bridges and undersized culverts that impede fish movement. The money would have also prioritized the protection of wetlands and stream restoration. Olsen also noted roughly half of the positions in his department are funded with federal dollars, either directly or indirectly through tribal governments, grants and federal initiatives like the Rights Protection Implementation program under the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

“We’ve been waiting to find out how the new budget will impact our day-to-day salaries and wages and our ability to carry out projects,” he said.

For now, they continue to live with the uncertainty.