1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

I urge you to ensure full funding and staffing for the U.S. Geological Survey's Bird Banding Lab and Breeding Bird Survey in the upcoming budget. These programs are essential to understanding how our environment is changing, which species are declining, and where conservation action is most needed. The Bird Banding Lab, a 105-year-old program based at the Patuxent Research Refuge in Maryland, distributes over one million uniquely numbered bird bands annually and maintains a database of more than 79 million bands deployed since the early 1900s. The lab is the sole authority for issuing permits that allow scientists to conduct bird banding and bird-in-hand research in the United States, as handling wild birds is otherwise prohibited by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Without these permits, all dependent research would immediately halt. Bird banding data enables researchers to track population trends, migration patterns, disease spread, and habitat preferences. This information directly supports practical applications: public land managers assess environmental hazards, conservationists determine habitat protection priorities, and game agencies set hunting regulations based on banded bird harvest rates. These programs have contributed to the understanding and protection of countless species, including Prothonotary Warblers, Piping Plovers, and Peregrine Falcons. The 2026 budget request proposes eliminating the entire Ecosystems Mission Area of USGS, which comprises $307 million of the agency's $1.6 billion budget. Proposed layoffs could eliminate all or most of the Bird Banding Lab's dozen staff members. The potential closure has already caused disruptions, with biologists stockpiling bands and researchers backing up hundreds of gigabytes of data privately. Without the lab, banding stations would close, research requiring handling wild birds would cease, and university students would need to abandon their research. The loss would undermine public trust in wildlife management decisions and could take years or decades to recover from, with potentially irreversible costs to birds and biodiversity. I ask that you protect funding for these critical scientific programs.