National wildlife refuges have played an important role in American conservation efforts for over a century. 

Late last month, as many people were winding down for the holidays, the Trump administration quietly announced a “comprehensive review” of both the National Wildlife Refuge System and the National Fish Hatchery System. 

In his Dec. 16 directive, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Director Brian Nesvik ordered two top agency officials to, among other things, “look for refuges or hatcheries established for a purpose that no longer aligns with the mission” of the agency, and for “opportunities to achieve efficiencies in the areas of governance, oversight, and span of control.”

He said this was to ensure the agency “is directing its resources (e.g., staff, funds, and assets) to best meet our highest mission priorities.”

The directive was posted online but not announced by the agency, and few details of the review have been released. Some advocates fear the administration could be trying to eliminate or significantly scale back wildlife preservation sites. 

Maine is home to six national wildlife refuges that encompass tens of thousands of acres and safeguard diverse wetlands, forests and critical habitat for birds and other imperiled wildlife.

Those sites include the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in southern Maine, Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge in Washington County and the Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge Complex. There are also two national fish hatcheries, Craig Brook in Orland and Green Lake in Ellsworth, which work to conserve and recover populations of Atlantic salmon. 

Whether any of the Maine sites will see changes remains to be seen. Nesvik gave Fish and Wildlife Service leadership a Jan. 5 deadline to complete an “initial summary of organizational change recommendations” and until Feb. 15 to finalize their review. FWS did not respond to The Maine Monitor’s questions about the initial recommendations that were due earlier this week. 

Nick Lund, the advocacy and outreach manager at Maine Audubon, told The Maine Monitor that while he struggles to understand the motivations behind the administrative review, he is confident that every refuge in Maine meets the mission of the Fish and Wildlife Service. 

“The six national wildlife refuge units in Maine are beloved,” he said. “They do an incredible job of protecting important wildlife habitat. They benefit Mainers and the American public in many ways. I have no idea what they are really looking for, if there are any ulterior motives. You can imagine that even proposing this review means there is some sort of ulterior motive, but we can say with certainty that the refuges in Maine are absolutely necessary, absolutely beneficial to the mission of the Fish and Wildlife Service, which is to conserve and protect and enhance fish and wildlife and plants and their habitat. Any review we are confident would find just that.” 

The fast-tracked refuge review comes as the Trump administration advances efforts to cut staff across FWS and other land management agencies and to boost extractive development across federal lands. In a Dec. 18 letter to Nesvik and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, 20 Democratic senators warned the current “staffing crisis” at FWS is “causing particular harm to the National Wildlife Refuge System.”

“A startling amount of staff and expertise needed to manage the Refuge System and protect America’s wildlife have been lost due to the administration’s firings, early retirement programs, and other efforts to push staff out of FWS,” the lawmakers wrote. “The agency is losing the capacity to manage America’s wildlife refuges and struggling to even keep them open.” 

The letter goes on to note that “almost 60 percent of the nation’s wildlife refuges lack the resources and staff needed to fulfill their missions” and that FWS “has experienced a staggering 29 percent loss of employees who work for the Refuge System.”

Bill Durkin, the longtime president of Friends of Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, a nonprofit that supports the 9,100-acre refuge in southern Maine through a variety of conservation, restoration and species recovery efforts, said the administrative review and its timing over the holidays is “adding a tremendous workload on short staffed refuges.” 

“The administration seems to be looking for details and answers that they already have,” he said in an email. “Each refuge is required by law to give annual updates to their regional offices, sometimes this happens on a monthly/quarterly basis. Maybe the current administration is educating themselves on the workings and the efficiencies of the US Fish and Wildlife System and its National Wildlife Refuge System. But if they are looking for ways to eliminate refuges and hatcheries then that is a different story.”

Durkin remains “cautiously optimistic,” he said — optimistic that the administration will find that the Rachel Carson refuge aligns with the mission of the refuge system, but cautious about federal funding that keeps it going. 

Barbara Mogel, board chair of the Friends of Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge, an all-volunteer nonprofit that supports the restoration of seabird colonies on Maine islands, said refuge “friends” organizations around the country have been “deeply concerned with the steady decline of funding over the past decade.”

The Trump administration’s 2026 budget request, which proposed a 22 percent cut in funding for the National Wildlife Refuge System, would make things more difficult for many refuge units, she said. 

As for the current refuge review, Mogel called it “chaotic.” Her nonprofit compiled a document affirming the refuge aligns with the agency’s mission, sought and obtained letters of support from several partner organizations, and submitted all of it to the federal agency before the deadline earlier this week. 

In an email to The Maine Monitor, Mogel said the volunteers at her organization have a “deep respect” for the work the refuge staff has done to protect seabirds. “Their primary focus has been the restoration of seabird colonies to Maine’s islands, with the unintended but positive consequence of fostering a ‘Puffin Economy’ in this region — a tourism sector now estimated to be worth $10M/year along midcoast and down east Maine,” she wrote. 

Nationwide, there are more than 570 national wildlife refuges, encompassing approximately 96 million acres of land and 760 million acres of water. There are another 71 national fish hatcheries, which stock more than 120 million fish annually. 

In a letter to Nesvik this week, seven retired FWS employees, including four former deputy directors of the agency, voiced support for “a thorough and honest analysis of the staffing and funding needs of national wildlife refuges and the national fish hatcheries,” but said they are concerned about the fast-tracked timeline of the review and the order’s directive that FWS identify units that no longer align with the agency’s mission. 

“Such a large and important analysis should certainly be given more time and resources to develop a thoughtful and useful product,” they wrote. 

Lund, of Maine Audubon, stressed that while refuges don’t get the attention that national parks and some other public lands get, they are vital for protecting wildlife: “These are places set aside as refuges — just like it says — refuges for the wildlife that sort of defines us as a state.”  

This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit civic news organization. To get regular coverage from The Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.