The wolf population is in decline for the first time since the species returned to the state. In southwestern Washington they’ve been wiped out

Exposed position: The status of wolves in Washington, like these juvenile gray wolves in Mount Rainier National Park, is anything but secure. File photo: Ron Reznick/VWPics via AP Images

By Dawn Stover. May 1, 2025. This year’s report on gray wolves from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife had bad news for the species—and for efforts to relax wolf protections.

The number of wolves counted in Washington dropped for the first time since wolves returned to the state in 2008.

The count of successful breeding pairs also declined significantly, despite a slight increase in the number of wolf packs.

Human-caused wolf mortalities have risen significantly over the past several years.

Southwest Washington once again has no known wolves. Three of the four wolves that the wildlife department documented in the region in recent years have been killed illegally, and the fourth wolf has not been seen in more than a year.

Two of those wolves had formed a pair that did not have time to produce any pups before they were killed.

The poachings have cast doubt on the state’s strategy for species recovery, which anticipated that wolves would disperse naturally to the southwestern third of the state and successfully reproduce there.

Since 2008, when the first resident pack was documented in northeast Washington, the number of wolves and wolf packs in the state grew by an average of 20% every year. Until last year.

As of Dec. 31, 2024, the state wildlife agency and the Tribes that manage wolves on tribal lands in the eastern third of Washington counted 230 wolves in 43 packs—of which 18 packs had successful breeding pairs. That total includes an estimate for lone and dispersing wolves that are difficult to count.

The previous year’s count, after correcting for an error in counting wolves on the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, was 254 wolves in 42 packs and 24 breeding pairs.

The bottom line: Washington’s wolf count dropped by 9% last year, and the number of wolf packs with successful breeding pairs dropped by 25%.

Precarious population

Wildlife populations can fluctuate naturally from year to year. However, wolf advocates point to rising human-caused mortalities as the most likely explanation for the 2024 falloff.

The new count “vindicates the concerns that we’ve voiced about the wolf population and the levels of human-caused mortality,” said Fran Santiago-Ávila, science and conservation director at Washington Wildlife First, a nonprofit group critical of the state’s management of fish and wildlife.

After being shot, one wolf died after dragging itself to a water source without the use of its back legs.

“We’re dealing with a very small and precarious population,” said Santiago-Ávila. “Two hundred and thirty animals isn’t really that much.”

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) documented 37 wolf mortalities last year—35 of them were caused by humans.

More than half of those mortalities were wolves legally harvested by tribal hunters from the Colville Reservation in northeastern Washington.

A step backward for species recovery

Washington is divided into three wolf recovery regions.

To meet the state’s minimum goals for species recovery, each region needs at least four successful breeding pairs.

Known wolf packs and single wolf territories in Washington as of Dec. 31, 2024, not including unconfirmed or suspected packs or border packs from other states and provinces. Map: WDFW

Wolves from established packs in the state’s eastern and northern regions began dispersing into the southwestern region, known as the Southern Cascades and Northwest Coast, a few years ago. That region’s first resident wolf pack was confirmed two years ago—a male and female that traveled together through the winter and were dubbed the Big Muddy Pack.

However, the female went missing before the pair could start a family. She was not wearing one of the radio collars that wildlife officials use to track wolf movements.

By last fall, her collared partner, as well as two other collared male wolves that dispersed into the region in the past two years, had all been illegally killed.

One of the three collared wolves was found dead in the fall of 2023 in a federally protected wildlife area.

A second wolf was killed near Goldendale, Wash., in late September or early October 2024. According to a press release from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service the wolf “died from a gunshot wound that led to its starvation over the course of days or possibly weeks after it dragged itself to a water source without the use of its back legs.”

The third male died northeast of Trout Lake, Wash., in December 2024. That wolf was the only remaining member of the Big Muddy Pack.

All three of the illegal killings occurred in Klickitat County, where Sheriff Bob Songer has stoked anti-wolf sentiment.

The killings left the southwest region of the state without any wolves by the end of 2024.

Rewards but no prosecutions

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and WDFW are investigating the deaths.

In both 2024 cases, the federal government has offered a $10,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest, criminal conviction or civil penalty assessment. The nonprofit organizations Washington Wildlife First, Conservation Northwest and the Center for Biological Diversity have offered an additional $30,000 in reward money.

Rewards rarely lead to convictions, though. In Oregon, cash rewards of more than $130,000 have gone unclaimed.

Oregon’s wolf count rose 14% in 2024. However, as in Washington, poaching and other human-caused mortalities are rising in Oregon.

In Washington, humans were responsible for the deaths of 128 wolves reported in the past four years, compared with 58 in the prior four years. Much of that increase is attributable to legal harvesting by Colville tribal hunters.

Before 2020, the Colville Tribes typically harvested six to eight wolves per year. Since then, the Tribes have allowed more wolf hunting and trapping, taking an average of 19 wolves per year.

Path to delisting

About one in every six of Washington’s wolves lives within the Colville Reservation.

Wildlife advocates are concerned that increased hunting on the reservation, coupled with rising mortality from other human causes including WDFW removals in response to wolf-livestock conflict, is creating vacancies for wolves that would otherwise migrate out of the area.

“With more and more wolves being killed in eastern Washington, this results in fewer wolves available to disperse from their packs and head further west,” according to a Center for Biological Diversity press release about the drop in Washington’s wolf population.

Frozen movement: Depletion of wolf populations in Washington mean fewer wolves migrating to other areas, like this gray wolf captured on a remote camera in Wallowa County, Ore. Photo: WDFW

The state’s recovery plan for gray wolves relies on dispersal to colonize southwest Washington.

But reduced pressure to disperse, and illegal killings of wolves that do disperse, may thwart that plan.

That’s bad news for efforts to remove wolves from the state’s endangered species list.

Last year, WDFW proposed reclassifying wolves throughout the state from “endangered” to “sensitive” status. After the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission decided to retain the endangered status, state legislators proposed HB 1311, a bill that would require WDFW to manage wolves as a sensitive species.

That bill did not make it out of the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. However, President Donald Trump removed gray wolves from the federal endangered species list during the final months of his first term—a decision that was reversed by a court ruling two years later. It seems likely that he will try again.

If wolves were to be federally delisted, the state of Washington could follow suit.

The post Human killings of wolves are on the rise in Washington appeared first on Columbia Insight.

In the rural Methow Valley in northeast Washington state, parents have few options for child care. There are only two licensed programs in the community — one of which is a Head Start center. About 40 miles northeast in the town of Okanogan, 30 percent of the town’s limited child care spots are provided by the local Head Start center.

Nationwide, Head Start has long played an outsized role in the rural child care landscape, existing in 86 percent of rural counties. If the federal program is eliminated, as President Donald Trump has reportedly proposed in his forthcoming budget, there will be massive consequences in many of the rural communities that voted for the Republican ticket. About 46 percent of all funded Head Start slots are in rural congressional districts, compared to 22 percent in urban districts. In some states, 1 in 3 rural child care centers are operated by Head Start.

In this swath of the Evergreen State, nestled just south of the Canadian border and east of the Cascade Mountains, Head Start fills a critical child care void: Even with the federal program, there is only enough licensed care for about 1 in 3 children under the age of 5. The program also provides vital services that many in the rural region might lack otherwise. Enrolled families can receive developmental screenings, home visiting programs, mental health services, parent support programs and dental care, all part of the federally funded program’s wraparound service model.

“Those federal grant funds make a huge difference in places where other programs cannot afford to operate,” said Katie Hamm, former deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development at the Administration for Children and Families. “If Head Start closes, it’s not like [families] have another option.”

Several of the congressional districts that stand to lose the most Head Start spots if the program is eliminated are rural districts that helped put Trump in office, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

Since its launch in 1965, Head Start has served more than 40 million low-income children through a free preschool program and a counterpart for infants and toddlers, known as Early Head Start. 

While Head Start quality varies, research has found positive benefits from the program. Children who have attended Head Start are more likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college and are less likely to experience poor health. Head Start has been found to have a positive impact on self-control and self-esteem and on parenting practices.

The program’s two-generation approach of helping children and their parents is invaluable in rural communities, said Jodi DeCesari, executive director of Washington’s Okanogan County Child Development Association, which runs nine Head Start centers for more than 200 children. “We’re helping families get employment, we’re helping families get their GED. … We’re helping families lift themselves out of poverty and become more self-sufficient,” said DeCesari. “In the long term, that benefits our community.”

Although Head Start has received bipartisan support over the years, the program has been slowly starved of funding under the second Trump administration. Compared to this time last year, the federal government has sent $1 billion less in Head Start funding to states, according to an analysis by the Senate Committee on Appropriations. This comes after reports of funding freezes and mass terminations at the regional and federal levels.

In Georgia, Mindy Binderman, executive director of the Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students, said Head Start programs are now experiencing delays because of an executive order requiring that all requests for federal funds include a detailed justification statement. This practice can be especially destructive for programs in rural areas, experts say, where Head Starts may not have other funding sources from local philanthropies or government sources to tide them over. One of the first programs to temporarily close earlier this month due to a delay in funding was a rural Head Start network outside of Yakima, Washington.

In Montana, a largely rural state, the uncertainty over Head Start’s future is causing fear as the program’s teachers worry their jobs could soon disappear, said Ashley Pena-Larsen, Head Start program director at Montana’s Rocky Mountain Development Council Inc. In rural areas, it’s already a struggle to find qualified teachers, and Head Start programs often have to compete with higher-paying positions in local school districts. Pena-Larsen fears the lack of certainty will compel teachers to search for jobs elsewhere. “When you already have a workforce that’s stretched thin, you don’t want to come into an environment where you’re unsure about your career. Are you wanting to start a career in a field that’s potentially dying?” she said.

Back in Okanogan, with summer heat looming, DeCesari is unsure what will happen when she submits a request to shift some funds to buy a new air conditioning unit at one of her centers. Usually that request would eventually end up at the regional office in Seattle, but that was one of the offices that was abruptly shuttered. “It’s been really chaotic,” DeCesari said. “I feel like everything is in question right now.”

One thing DeCesari is certain about is that if Head Start goes away, there will be an immense ripple effect throughout the local economy. In addition to providing child care and wraparound support, DeCesari’s organization employs more than 100 people and invests millions in the local community through buying food at local grocery stores and hiring companies that help run the organization’s buildings and buses.

But she worries most about the broader impact on Okanogan families if Head Start disappears. “Families benefit from our services,” she said. “Without Head Start, I think we’re really going to see a generational loss.”

Contact staff writer Jackie Mader at 212-678-3562 or mader@hechingerreport.org.

This story about Head Start was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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The post As federal dollars for Head Start slow, rural parents left without other options appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

The summer of 2021 was brutal for residents of the Pacific Northwest. Cities across the region from Portland, Oregon to Quillayute, Washington broke temperature records by several degrees. In Washington, as the searing heat wave settled over the state, 125 people died from heat-related illnesses such as strokes and heart attacks, making it the deadliest weather event in the state’s history. 

As officials recognized the heat wave’s disproportionate effect on low-income and unhoused people unable to access air conditioning, they made a crucial change to the state’s energy assistance program. Since the early 1980s, states, tribes, and territories have received funds each year to help low-income people pay their electricity bills and install energy efficiency upgrades through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP. Congress appropriates funds for the program, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, doles it out to states in late fall. Until the summer of 2021, the initiative primarily provided heating assistance during Washington’s cold winter months. But that year, officials expanded the program to cover cooling expenses. 

Last year, Congress appropriated $4.1 billion for the effort, and HHS disbursed 90 percent of the funds. But the program is now in jeopardy. 

Earlier this month, HHS, led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., laid off 10,000 employees, including the roughly dozen or so people tasked with running LIHEAP. The agency was supposed to send out an additional $378 million this year, but those funds are now stuck in federal coffers without the staff needed to move the money out. 

LIHEAP helps roughly 6 million people survive freezing winters and blistering summers, many of whom face greater risks now that the year’s warm season has already brought unusually high temperatures. Residents of Phoenix are expected to have their first 100 degree high any day now.

“We’re seeing the warm-weather states really coming up short with the funding necessary to assist people in the summer with extreme heat,” said one of the HHS employees who worked on the LIHEAP program and was recently laid off. Losing the people that ran the program is “absolutely devastating,” they said, because agency staff helped states and tribes understand the flexibilities in the program to serve people effectively, assistance that became extremely important with increasingly erratic weather patterns across the country.

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In typical years, once Congress appropriates LIHEAP funds, HHS distributes the money in the fall, in time for the colder months. States and other entities then make critical decisions about how much they spend during the winter and how much they save for the summer. 

The need for LIHEAP funds has always been greater than what has been available. Only about one in five households that meet the program’s eligibility requirements receive funds. As a result, states often run out of money by the summer. At least a quarter of LIHEAP grant recipients run out of money at some point during the year, the former employee said. 

“That remaining 10 percent would be really important to establish cooling assistance during the hot summer months, which is increasingly important,” said Katrina Metzler, executive director of the National Energy and Utility Affordability Coalition, a group of nonprofits and utilities that advances the needs of low-income people. “If LIHEAP were to disappear, people would die in their homes. That’s the most critical issue. It saves people.”

In addition to Washington, many other states have expanded their programs to provide both heating and cooling programs. Arizona, Texas, and Oregon now offer year-round cooling assistance.

HHS staff plays a crucial role in running LIHEAP. They assess how much each state, tribe, and territory will receive. They set rules for how the money could be used. They audit local programs to ensure funds are being spent as intended. All that may now be lost. 

But, according to Metzler, there are some steps that HHS could take to ensure that the program continues to be administered as Congress intended. First, and most obvious, the agency could reinstate those who were fired. Short of that, the agency could move the program to another department within HHS or contract out the responsibilities. 

But ultimately, Metzler continued, LIHEAP funds need to be distributed so those in need can access it. “Replacing the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program is a nearly impossible task,” she said. States “can’t have enough bake sales to replace” it. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘People would die’: As summer approaches, Trump is jeopardizing funding for AC on Apr 11, 2025.

News by Scott France

Jefferson County farms, food banks, and school districts are scrambling to plug holes created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) termination of funding for two programs that provided more than $1.1 billion for schools and food banks to purchase food from local farmers and producers in the U.S. 

“This was an 100% gut punch for agencies like ours around the county,” said Patricia Hennessy, Executive Director of the Jefferson County Food Bank Association (JCFBA). The four food banks and one mobile unit operated by the JCFBA serve an average of 3,400 households per month. The number of households served rose 24% in 2024, according to Hennessy. “We might not find funding to replace the sudden shortfall,” Hennessy said. “Our largest line item is for food, and we need money to pay our staff and bills.”

The purpose of the programs was to maintain and improve food and agricultural supply chain resiliency. The food served feeding programs, including food banks and organizations that reach underserved communities. In addition to increasing local food consumption, the funds help build and expand economic opportunities for local and underserved producers.

The elimination of the two programs will affect local organizations in different ways.

Kai Wallin, Community Liaison with the Port Townsend School District, said that the District received funding from both programs, the Local Food for Schools (LFS)  and the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA). “We will still buy locally what we can, but without this matching grant from the USDA helping us purchase local ingredients, our dollars won’t go as far, and we may need to buy more conventional, non-local ingredients to fill the gap,” she said.

Other school districts in Jefferson County might not be as adversely affected by the cuts as the Port Townsend school district. Neither the Quilcene School District nor the Brinnon School District received any funding from either of the two programs, according to Ron Moag and Trish Beathard, superintendents of those respective school districts.

The Chimacum School District receives USDA funding through the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), and is uncertain of the eventual effect on its funding pending finalization of  OSPI’s budget, said Kelly Liske, Executive Director of Business and Finance at the District. 

The Olympic Peninsula Community Action Program (Olycap) had an LFPA grant that served nine sites in Jefferson and Clallam counties. Between August 2023 and December, 2024, LFPA funded food purchases from farms in Jefferson and Clallam counties and distributed 135,875 pounds of produce to these nine sites.

Jefferson County food banks, local farmers and school districts with whom we talked say that the USDA’s decision is likely to increase food insecurity among vulnerable populations and create economic hardships for these farmers who previously supplied local produce to schools and food banks.​

“People have come to rely on this funding for meeting the demands for healthy food,” said Sallie Constant, Farm to Community Coordinator with Washington State University Extension for Clallam and Jefferson counties.

LFS was a cooperative agreement between the federal government and state entities (OSPI in WA) to identify producers of Washington-grown products and make those products available for free or at a subsidized cost for schools. For the 2025-2026 school year, $660 million was going to go towards purchasing regional foods such as salmon, berries, lentils, tortillas and squash and providing those foods to schools at half market price. The contract for this coming school year was canceled, so while these products will still be available, they will no longer be subsidized by the USDA, according to Danielle Williams with the WSU Clallam County Extension.

”The people who grow our food contribute to our local economy and food systems,” Hennessey said. Karyn Williams, owner of Red Dog Farm, said that the farm fills one order per week from Olycap, totaling approximately $50,000 annually, all of which will be eliminated. “I feel for people receiving this food, as well as my crew who get great satisfaction that the food they are growing feeds less advantaged people,” Williams said.

Hennessey is concerned about the consequences for seniors, houseless, domestic violence victims, and veterans, many of whom don’t have the capacity to shop in grocery stores if they can even afford to buy food. “Our mission is to “provide food to people in need,” Hennessey said. “They pulled the rug out from under us.”

Addendum:

The Beacon has learned that food bank officials in six states are reporting that up to $500 million dollars in funding for food banks through the USDA emergency food assistance program has been frozen. The New York Times reports that USDA representatives cannot be reached for comment. The Times reports that Vince Hall, the Director of Government Relations for Feeding America, a nationwide network of over 60,000 food, pantries and distributors, said that rural communities are likely to be most deeply affected. Emergency food assistance programs like this are “the food lifeline for rural America” because they come with funding to improve food storage and distribution, which can be more challenging in rural areas.

Anyone interested in supporting local purchasing for food access they can donate to the WSU Extension Olympic Peninsula Farm to Food Bank Fund or donate to their local food bank- JCFBA donations.

Helping people understand their rights might seem like dry legal work, but working for Jefferson County Immigrant Rights Association (JCIRA) allowed Courtney Morales-Thral, the Multicultural Center Administrator, to make a real difference in the lives of immigrants on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.

“We heard recently that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was parked in front of the hospital in Port Angeles, and that stopped someone from going to see a baby in the hospital because they didn’t feel safe,” Morales-Thrall said. “That’s going to make people turn around and go home or go to a different hospital, which may be out here, rurally, an hour or two away”

Despite the Keep Washington Working Act passed in 2019, which prohibits law enforcement from detaining anyone to determine their immigration status and working with CBP or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, amongst other rights, immigrants have good reasons to feel nervous. 

The immigrant community here still bears the trauma of a campaign waged against them in 2008. 

After a suspected terrorist was apprehended at the Port Angeles border, the number of agents increased from four agents to 25. Suddenly, checkpoints appeared on highways, with CBP and ICE agents demanding to see IDs and other documents from drivers and bus passengers. They also monitored public places, like hospitals and schools. 

In the 2011 documentary Keep the Border Patrol on the Border, it was reported that between February and November 2008, the border patrol stopped 24,524 vehicles at 53 roadblocks in Washington State. These stops led to 81 undocumented immigrants being taken into custody, though they were unable to find any additional evidence of terrorist activity.  “The community was decimated by the amount of deportations, stops, and the trauma of that time in this area,” Morales-Thrall said.

In that same documentary, Pastor John Topal from St. Mary of the Sea Catholic Church in Port Townsend summed up the cultural shift by saying, “The border patrol says it will not apprehend people in churches or schools, but their presence at these institutions nevertheless has had a chilling effect.” 

Trump’s recent executive order allowing ICE into formerly protected spaces like hospitals and schools has reignited that trauma for many in the immigrant community, regardless of the State’s new protections. 

Dr. Linda Rosenbury, the superintendent of Port Townsend Schools, is working closely with JCIRA to help parents and high school students understand their rights and give them the support and reassurance they need to continue attending school.

The school is also working with staff to understand what types of warrants allow immigration agents into part of the school beyond the main office and what kind of legal support they can get if they have an emergency need.

Alongside having clear messaging for immigrant families and teaching staff, the school also helps families make plans in case anything does happen.

“When I’ve studied ICE raids in the past, it’s a major impact on a community. If there is an ICE raid at a local employer and then there are multiple children left without caretakers,” Rosenbury said.  “If we had to place students in homes, we would follow family plans and ensure that there’s a safe place for every student.”

While the schools are focusing on the physical well-being of immigrant families, JCIRA has found a way to help support both their understanding of their rights and their mental well-being through a trauma-informed therapy program specifically for immigrants. 

“We started a mental health partnership with an organization, a nonprofit based in Mexico because therapy is hugely cost-prohibitive for a lot of people and also has a lack of cultural understanding and language proficiency,” Morales-Thrall said.

JCIRA connects local immigrants with a therapist in Mexico who specializes in migration and trauma through a new low-bar support program. 

“The majority of the immigrants we work with are Mexican, Latino, Guatemalan, and so that’s the focus, but it’s not just for those people,” Morales-Thrall said. This program brought a resource to rural Jefferson County, whose local hospital has struggled to find the resources to provide even basic language support. 

“There’s one doctor that speaks pretty good Spanish, and so that’s really great, but therapists,  absolutely not,” Morales-Thrall said. “And even if they had a nice white lady that speaks Spanish, it wouldn’t be the same. Because people need that cultural understanding when you’re talking about immigration.”

The post Protecting Rural Immigrant Populations from Expanding Reach of ICE    appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

When the Trump administration first announced a freeze on all federal funding in January, farmers across the country were thrust into an uncertain limbo. 

More than a month later, fourth-generation farmer Adam Chappell continues to wait on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reimburse him for the $25,000 he paid out of pocket to implement conservation practices like cover cropping. Until he knows the fate of the federal programs that keep his small rice farm in Arkansas afloat, Chappell’s unable to prepare for his next crop. Things have gotten so bad, the 45-year-old is even considering leaving the only job he’s ever known. “I just don’t know who we can count on and if we can count on them as a whole to get it done,” said Chappell. “That’s what I’m scared of.” 

In Virginia, the funding freeze has forced a sustainable farming network that supports small farmers throughout the state to suspend operations. Brent Wills, a livestock producer and program manager at the Virginia Association for Biological Farming, said that nearly all of the organization’s funding comes from USDA programs that have been frozen or rescinded. The team of three is now scrambling to come up with a contingency plan while trying not to panic over whether the nearly $50,000 in grants they are owed will be reimbursed. 

“It’s pretty devastating,” said Wills. “The short-term effects of this are bad enough, but the long-term effects? We can’t even tally that up right now.” 

In North Carolina, a beekeeping operation hasn’t yet received the $14,500 in emergency funding from the USDA to rebuild after Hurricane Helene washed away 60 beehives. Ang Roell, who runs They Keep Bees, an apiary that also has operations in Florida and Massachusetts, said they have more than $45,000 in USDA grants that are frozen. The delay has put them behind in production, leading to an additional $15,000 in losses. They are also unsure of the future of an additional $100,000 in grants that they’ve applied for. “I have to rethink my entire business plan,” Roell said. “I feel shell-shocked.”

Within the USDA’s purview, the funding freeze has targeted two main categories of funding: grant applications that link agricultural work to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and those enacted under the Inflation Reduction Act, which earmarked more than $19.5 billion to be paid out over several years. Added to the uncertainty of the funding freeze, among the tens of thousands of federal employees who have lost their jobs in recent weeks were officials who manage various USDA programs.

Following the initial freeze, courts have repeatedly ordered the administration to grant access to all funds, but agencies have taken a piecemeal approach, releasing funding in “tranches.” Even as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Interior have released significant chunks of funding, the USDA has moved slowly, citing the need to review programs with IRA funding. In some cases, though, it has terminated contracts altogether, including those with ties to the agency’s largest-ever investment in climate-smart agriculture. 

In late February, the USDA announced that it was releasing $20 million to farmers who had already been awarded grants — the agency’s first tranche. 

According to Mike Lavender, policy director with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, that $20 million amounts to “less than one percent” of money owed. His team estimates that three IRA-funded programs have legally promised roughly $2.3 billion through 30,715 conservation contracts for ranchers, farmers, and foresters. Those contracts have been through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, Conservation Stewardship Program, and Agricultural Conservation Easement Program. “In some respects, it’s a positive sign that some of it’s been released,” said Lavender. “But I think, more broadly, it’s so insignificant. For the vast majority, [this] does absolutely nothing.”

A week later, USDA secretary Brooke Rollins announced that the agency would be able to meet a March 21 deadline imposed by Congress to distribute an additional $10 billion in emergency relief payments.

Then, on Sunday, March 2, Rollins made an announcement that offered hope for some farmers, but very little specifics. In a press statement, the USDA stated that the agency’s review of IRA funds had been completed and funds associated with EQIP, CSP, and ACEP would be released, but it did not clarify how much would be unfrozen. The statement also announced a commitment to distribute an additional $20 billion in disaster assistance. 

Lavender called Rollins’ statement a “borderline nothingburger” for its degree of “ambiguity.” It’s not clear, he continued, if Rollins is referring to the first tranche of funding or if the statement was announcing a second tranche — nor, if it’s the latter, how much is being released. “Uncertainty still seems to reign supreme. We need more clarity.” 

The USDA did not respond to Grist’s request for clarification. 

Farmers who identify as women, queer, or people of color are especially apprehensive about the status of their contracts. Roell, the beekeeper, said their applications for funding celebrated their operations’ diverse workforce development program. Now, Roell, who uses they/them pronouns, fears that their existing contracts and pending applications will be targeted for the same reason. (Federal agencies have been following an executive order taking aim at “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs.”) 

“This feels like an outright assault on sustainable agriculture, on small businesses, queer people, BIPOC, and women farmers,” said Roell. “Because at this point, all of our projects are getting flagged as DEI. We don’t know if we’re allowed to make corrections to those submissions or if they’re just going to get outright denied due to the language in the projects being for women or for queer folks.”

The knock-on effects of this funding gridlock on America’s already fractured agricultural economy has Rebecca Wolf, senior food policy analyst at Food & Water Watch, deeply concerned. With the strain of an agricultural recession looming over regions like the Midwest, and the number of U.S. farms already in steady decline, she sees the freeze and ongoing mass layoffs of federal employees as “ultimately leading down the road to further consolidation.” Given that the administration is “intentionally dismantling the programs that help underpin our small and medium-sized farmers,” Wolf said this could lead to “the loss of those farms, and then the loss of land ownership.”  

Other consequences might be more subtle, but no less significant. According to Omanjana Goswami, a soil scientist with the advocacy nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, the funding freeze, layoffs, and the Trump administration’s hostility toward climate action is altogether likely to position America’s agricultural sector to contribute even more than it does to carbon emissions. 

Agriculture accounted for about 10.6 percent of U.S. carbon emissions in 2021. When farmers implement conservation practices on their farms, it can lead to improved air and water quality and increase soil’s ability to store carbon. Such tactics can not only reduce agricultural emissions, but are incentivized by many of the programs now under review. “When we look at the scale of this, it’s massive,” said Goswami. “If this funding is scaled back, or even completely removed, it means that the impact and contribution of agriculture on climate change is going to increase.”

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The Trump administration’s attack on farmers comes at a time when the agriculture industry faces multiple existential crises. For one, times are tight for farmers. In 2023, the median household income from farming was negative $900. That means, at least half of all households that drew income from farming didn’t turn a profit. 

Additionally, in 2023, natural disasters caused nearly $22 billion in agricultural losses. Rising temperatures are slowing plant growth, frequent floods and droughts are decimating harvests, and wildfires are burning through fields. With insurance paying for only a subset of these losses, farmers are increasingly paying out of pocket. Last year, extreme weather impacts, rising labor and production costs, imbalances in global supply and demand, and increased price volatility all resulted in what some economists designated the industry’s worst financial year in almost two decades. 

Elliott Smith, whose Washington state-based business Kitchen Sync Strategies helps small farmers supply institutions like schools with fresh food, says this situation has totally changed how he looks at the federal government. As the freeze hampers key grants for the farmers and food businesses he works with across at least 10 different states, halting emerging contracts and stalling a slate of ongoing projects, Smith said the experience has made him now consider federal funding “unstable.” 

All told, the freeze isn’t just threatening the future of Smith’s business, but also the future of farmers and the local food systems they work within nationwide. “The entire food ecosystem is stuck in place. The USDA feels like a troll that saw the sun. They are frozen. They can’t move,” he said. “The rest of us are in the fields and trenches, and we’re looking back at the government and saying, ‘Where the hell are you?’”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Slim margins, climate disasters, and Trump’s funding freeze: Life or death for many US farms on Mar 5, 2025.

News by Derek Firenze

Flyers and zines proliferate around Jefferson County with a warning of “Dollar Store Danger.” Quimper Resiliency Network (QRN), an activist organization publishing the materials, was founded in response to construction on the future Dollar Tree located in Port Hadlock. 

Construction on the Dollar Tree is slated to be completed sometime in the middle of February, according to Josh Gass, the general contractor working on the project.

“That is not the solution for what any community really needs,” Hannah Welch, one of QRN’s founding members, said. “There was a dollar store in town when I was a kid and it didn’t last, so I’m hopeful maybe this one won’t last. But in the current state, it doesn’t feel like enough just to have hope.”

The zine published by QRN takes aim at various issues surrounding dollar stores including lead poisoning, resource extraction, low wages, and more. Much of its facts and statistics come from a report from 2022 by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) entitled “The Dollar Store Invasion”.

“These stores aren’t merely a byproduct of economic distress; they are a cause of it,” the report argues. “Dollar stores drive grocery stores and other retailers out of business, leave more people without access to fresh food, extract wealth from local economies, sow crime and violence, and further erode the prospects of the communities they target.”

One of the core arguments against dollar stores is the extraction of resources from local communities. 

“A dollar store contributes only half to a third of the economic contributions of a local business,” QRN writes. They cite how studies consistently show that for every dollar spent at a local business, 45 to 60 cents remains in the community, while chain stores contribute only 14 to 30 cents.

“Dollar stores have made their name by offering cheap food, and that’s what they do: provide low-quality goods at the expense of our community,” QRN writes in their zine. They also point to illegal levels of lead and cadmium in children’s products found in 2018, 2019, and 2021.

While the myriad of other economic factors involved are complex and take up the bulk of the 30-page ILSR report, issues like lead poisoning are much less difficult to parse. Scroll to the bottom of Dollar Tree’s website and you’ll find a page listing recent recalls which includes a 2023 recall of an apple cinnamon puree targeted towards infants and young children. This toxic product was recalled after four children were found with elevated blood lead levels, indicating potential acute lead toxicity. The only physical storefront where the contaminated product could be found was Dollar Tree, though it was also sold through Amazon and other online discount sites.

Still, everyone agrees on the desperate demand for more local affordable goods.

“There is a specific need in this place to have access to affordable products,” Welch said. “Letting these corporate powers that have no accountability to the community be the ones to provide that is not the way to move forward.” 

Instead, QRN wants to encourage more creative solutions like a pop-up free store and an online community resource inventory to educate people on the abundance that’s already available locally.

“This place that I love and care about so deeply is on the precipice of change, and it’s either going to become a little more radical and start creating systems that are of the people, for the people, or it’s going to be subsumed into these structures that are failing,” Welch said.

The Quimper Peninsula has a long history of creative solutions outside of traditional capitalist enterprises. For years, the North Olympic Exchange, a chapter of Bellingham-based Fourth Corner Exchange, has offered a barter and trade system utilizing the concept of “life dollars.” Life dollars can be thought of as a kind of “community currency,” a facilitated barter system that serves to complement the federal monetary system. The goal of the exchange is to connect unused resources with unmet needs, helping to build a stronger and more sustainable community.

The Jefferson Community Foundation’s Nonprofit Directory is another kind of online resource inventory that provides a comprehensive list of the nonprofit organizations in Jefferson County.

If you’d like to voice your own concerns about the incoming Dollar Tree, QRN has created a survey to hear from the community. You can also contact them through QuimperResiliencyNetwork@gmail.com.

For more information on the North Olympic Exchange, email Gary@fourthcornerexchange.org for a personal orientation session.

The ant scurries along on six nimble legs. It catches up to its peers, a line of antennaed bugs roaming the winding surface of a tree, perpetually hunting for food. While doing so, each unknowingly leaves antibiotic microorganisms secreted from its feet. 

That trail of tiny footprints, indiscernible to the naked eye, is remarkably effective at protecting the tree from pathogens and pests. That makes ants, in the eyes of Ida Cecilie Jensen, a legion of unlikely warriors — one humans should consider enlisting in the fight to grow food in a warming world. “Ants are a Swiss army knife,” said Jensen, a biologist who studies the symbiotic relationship between ants and agriculture at Aarhus University in Denmark. “Kind of like a multi-tool for farmers.” 

With an estimated 20 quadrillion ants on Earth at any given time, the bugs are found just about everywhere on the planet. They are also among the species humans, which they outnumber at least 2.5 million to one, have most in common with. Ants have extraordinary collective intelligence, their colonies’ weaving robust community networks and dividing labor. The social insects even wage war with one another, and build complex agricultural systems. 

Ants also have “so many of the same problems and challenges that we have,” Jensen said. “Luckily for us, they already found a lot of great solutions.” One such challenge is how to grow food while confronting climate-wrought consequences — such as an influx of spreading plant pathogens caused by warming. 

Plant diseases cost the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars every year, with between 20 to 40 percent of global crop production lost to crop diseases and pests. Climate change is ramping up outbreak risks by morphing how pathogens evolve, facilitating the emergence of new strains, and making crops more susceptible to infection. Most farmers and growers increasingly rely on chemical pesticides to combat these emerging issues, but the widespread use of such substances has created problems of its own. Synthetic pesticides can be harmful to humans and animals, and lose their efficacy as pathogens build up resistance to them. The production and use of synthetic pesticides also contribute to climate change, as some are derived from planet-warming fossil fuels. 

Instead of chemicals, an army of ants may march right in. Though most people view the small insects as little more than a nuisance, colonies of them are being deployed in orchards across a handful of countries to stave off the spread of crippling infestation and disease. 

In a body of recently published and forthcoming research, Jensen examined the antimicrobial effects of wood ants, a European field ant known for building dome-shaped nests in fields and open woodlands, and weaver ants, which live in ball-shaped nests within tropical tree canopies across Asia, Africa, and Australia. Her team looked at how the microbes influenced apple brown rot and apple scab in two orchards in Denmark — one commercial and one experimental — and found that wood ants effectively reduce apple scab, which can cause serious yield losses, by an average of 61 percent. The scientists also found that the number of disease-free apples more than doubled compared to when ants weren’t wielded as an alternative biological pesticide. For another experiment in Senegal, they collected weaver ants from mango orchards to investigate the bacterial communities associated with ants, discovering that they also leave microbial footprints that may inhibit fungal diseases such as mango anthracnose, which can lead to extensive yield losses. 

Past studies have found that for crops from cocoa to citrus, ants could replace insecticides in a multitude of climates and locations, reducing incidences of pear scab in pear trees, coffee leaf rust in coffee shrubs, and leaf fungal attacks in oak seedlings. Weaver ant nests used as an alternative pesticide in mango, cashew, and citrus trees have all been shown to lower pest damage and produce yields on par with several chemical pesticide treatments. For more than a millennia, the species was embraced as a natural insecticide in countries like China but never quite made its way into the agricultural mainstream in North America or Europe. The method would eventually be replaced by the dawn of synthetic solutions. Still, despite that legacy, exactly how ants take on disease has remained a scientific mystery. 

The answer, Jensen said, lies in how ants function. All species of the arthropod possess a body that is essentially hostile for bacteria because they produce formic acid, which they use to constantly disinfect themselves. Ants are also perpetually hungry little things that will feast on the spores of plant pathogens, among other things, and their secretion of formic acid and highly territorial nature tends to deter a medley of other insects that could be transmitting diseases or making lunch of some farmers’ crops. Ultimately, their greatest trick is what Jensen’s newest research reveals: Ants also inherently have antimicrobial bacteria and fungi on their bodies and feet, which can reduce plant diseases in afflicted crops, with these microorganisms deposited as the critters walk. When the bugs are cultivated in fruit orchards, they march all over trees, their feet coating the plants in microbial organisms that can curb emerging pathogens. 

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Understanding why they have this effect makes it easier to promote and implement native species of ants as biological agents in fields and farms, which Jensen advocates for. She’s not only researching how to do this as a doctoral candidate, but also founded AgroAnt in 2022, a company that leases colonies to cull plant pathogens and pests to farmers in Denmark — much like beekeepers lease hives. Her research team is now looking into boosting populations of existing ant colonies already living in orchards, rather than introducing new ones. Building rope bridges between trees to help ants better get around, and increasing the number of sugary extracts left in strategic locations to feed them, can create ant population booms, which Jensen sees as a simple and inexpensive way for farmers to ward off costly bouts of crop disease. 

Others are not convinced this would be any more useful or cost-effective than existing biopesticides like canola oil and baking soda, or pest management chemicals derived from natural sources.

Kerik Cox, who researches plant pathology at Cornell University, said that many of the microbes derived from the ants in the study have already been studied, and optimized for formulation and efficacy in agricultural systems. “Many are highly effective and there are numerous commercial products available for farmers to use,” said Cox, adding that he doesn’t see “anything in this study that would be better than the existing biopesticide tools, which are registered by the [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency].” 

Jensen acknowledges there is always a risk when introducing any species — ants new to an area could push out other beneficial species, for example, or attract aphids, those small green plant-damaging insects that ants share a symbiotic relationship with. Still, she is adamant that as long as the species is native to the area and agricultural system they’re being introduced to and then properly managed, the possible benefits outweigh the pitfalls. 

On a practical note, the money-saving argument of ants pitted against synthetic products also carries a big draw; particularly given that conventional pesticides, in addition to their organic, chemical-free counterparts, have become more expensive in recent years across Europe and the U.S. Those product prices tend to climb when extreme weather shocks disrupt production, a likelihood as climate change makes disasters more frequent and severe. 

Conversely, Jensen said farmers can simply leave sugar-water solutions, cat food or chicken bones, among any number of kitchen scraps, in fruit orchards where beneficial, pathogen-combating ants are typically already present — such as weaver ants in mango orchards. If the species already dwell there, this could increase their numbers and efficiency. The technique, however, should be approached with caution depending on location, to minimize the risk of attracting potentially harmful members of the ant family. 

“I don’t believe in one solution that could fit everything, but I definitely think that ants and other biological control agents are going to be a huge part of the [climate] puzzle in the future,” she said. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A secret weapon in agriculture’s climate fight: Ants on Jan 13, 2025.