Looming Federal Cuts Threaten the Bird Banding Lab, a Cornerstone of Avian Science

For 105 years, a small team of biologists near Washington, D.C., has honed and supported the single most foundational tool of avian science: crimping metal ID bands around birds’ legs to track where they turn up. Simple as it sounds, banding and the data collection that comes with it have revealed vital insights into how birds behave, which habitats they most depend on, and how their populations are faring. “Banding is the essential key to all the research I do, and that a lot of ornithologists do across North America,” says José Ramírez-Garofalo, a New York City-based ecologist and vice chair of the Ornithological Council representing bird researchers. 

But the Bird Banding Lab, a program of the U.S. Geological Survey’s biological research arm, may not survive to reach 106. The Trump administration has ordered massive “reduction in force” layoffs that could fire all or most of its staff, and has asked Congress to approve sweeping cuts that would erase the lab’s budget. If implemented, either move could soon close the lab outright.

The barebones office of around a dozen people, based at the federal Patuxent Research Refuge in Maryland, is the linchpin for all bird banding and related research in the United States. Its workers are responsible for distributing every permanent band used in the country, totaling more than a million uniquely numbered aluminum and steel rings each year. In partnership with Canadian officials, they maintain a complex database that documents the more than 79 million bands deployed in North America since the early 1900s and records the roughly 87,000 times per year that scientists, hunters, or others report finding a banded bird. They also issue the only permits that allow scientists to conduct banding and bird-in-hand research; handling live wild birds is otherwise forbidden by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

During banding, biologists collect multitudes of data: While briefly capturing a bird, they record measures like its weight, sex, and age; take blood or tissue samples to assess its health; and track how many of any given species are captured. This information—plus any future encounters with a band across the world via resighting, recapture, or harvest—enables biologists to understand population trends, migration behavior, disease spread, habitat preferences, and more. 

For example, public land managers use banding records to assess whether environmental hazards are affecting birds’ survival by comparing data from different sites. Conservationists decide where to target habitat protections by tracking where banded birds spend different parts of their life cycles. Game agencies set seasonal hunting regulations in part based on how many banded birds hunters shoot.

“And  it’s not just deep scientific research questions that this is good for,” says Melanie Smith, Audubon’s director of digital science and data products. She and colleagues relied primarily on banding lab data to develop the Bird Migration Explorer, an interactive migration visualization platform. Banding, she says, reveals for anyone the incredible journeys birds take and their cross-continental connections.

Without the Bird Banding Lab, all of the programs and projects dependent on its data would grind to a halt or be severely hampered—something that would be detrimental to bird research across the hemisphere.

The program has already faced disruptions amid broad cuts to the federal government, including spending freezes that have interrupted USGS projects and buyouts that have left the lab understaffed. In May, following a Trump executive order, USGS reportedly planned to start firing up to 80 percent of staff across its Ecosystems Mission Area (EMA). This biology division—which makes up $307 million of the research agency’s $1.6 billion budget—houses the banding lab along with programs that survey native and invasive species, monitor toxic chemicals in drinking water, track wildlife disease outbreaks, and much more. 

A U.S. District Court in California has so far blocked these layoffs, ordering 22 federal agencies and departments to pause plans to fire more than 100,000 workers. After an appeals court upheld the injunction, the administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene. But even if the high court doesn’t clear the way for cuts, Congress could: Trump, in his 2026 budget request, has asked them to eliminate EMA entirely, in part to stop work on climate change.

Certainly, climate change is among the unprecedented threats facing wildlife today—but losing the banding lab could unravel decades of progress on myriad other threats, too, and at a critical time for birds, says Stuart Mackenzie, who directs the international migration tracking systems run by conservation nonprofit Birds Canada. “The ripple effects would be felt far beyond science: They’d impact policy, education, and community-based conservation from the Arctic to the Andes.”

Biologists, resource managers, hunting advocates, conservationists, and governments that rely on the lab are bracing for the worst. Ramírez-Garofalo says he stockpiled bands this winter to make sure he can monitor birds and supply information that, for example, city parks use to manage recreation. (This spring, the lab emailed banders, begging them to stop panic-ordering.) 

Banders are also re-upping their permits, which are often good for several years, but no one is sure the permits will remain valid if the lab shuts down. If they don’t, banding stations will immediately close. Other work that requires handling wild birds—like outfitting them with geolocators, GPS trackers, or Motus tags—would also be put on hold, says David Aborn, an avian ecologist at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Aborn says he’s been warning his students that they may have to change their research focus. 

Still more biologists have dedicated hundreds of gigabytes on hard drives to privately store the records they’ll need if the database disappears. Canadian environmental officials say they’ve backed up all data from bands deployed in the country or re-encountered there, and are working on measures to ensure their future record-keeping isn’t interrupted. The American banding lab runs the online portal that banders in both countries use to upload and access their data, as well as the public website where anyone can report finding a band. But even with these preservation efforts, some parts of the massive database may never be recovered in the public sphere, says the director of a bird banding nonprofit who requested anonymity for fear of retribution.

Ironically, placing the banding lab at USGS was meant to shield its science from political pressures. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service housed the lab for decades and still relies on its data to manage species, but in the ’90s, swaths of biological research were removed from the agency in an attempt to separate researchers and regulators. Today, some think returning the lab to its former home may be the best hope for saving it. Yet if the Trump administration plans another such move, it has given no indication; meanwhile, it has made deep cuts at USFWS.

Now, bird researchers, managers, and advocates are watching what unfolds in the courts and Congress. Many worry that what’s most at stake, beyond the birds themselves, is public trust. “Having these monitoring programs going all the way back gives confidence that we’re managing on the best available science,” says a hunting nonprofit executive who asked not to be identified. This year, for example, hunters will abide by a shortened Blue-winged Teal season, because banding and survey data show their population has dipped, and will be able to shoot more Pintails, because research shows their population can take it. Hunters trust that these changes are protecting species because they’re backed by sound data.

The same kind of trust is required of all Americans when the government manages public lands or other resources to protect birds. If banding comes to a halt, wildlife managers will still have to make decisions about the landscapes that people and birds share. But without the science to guide them, such choices may be less effective for conservation and less accepted by the public.

“We can’t afford to lose the foundation on which so much of North America’s bird conservation has been built,” says Mackenzie at Birds Canada. “If we do, the recovery will take years, if not decades. The costs to birds and biodiversity may be irreversible.”