Wildlife experts say the most cost-effective way to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species is through education and outreach. But those efforts have gotten much harder this year for the Invasive Species Action Network, a Livingston-based nonprofit.
Executive director Sara Ricklefs says a large grant awarded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last fall hasn’t come. She says their work educating boaters about how to prevent mussel infestations has been severely hampered.
“But most importantly, the fact that these funds are delayed is just this potential impact to the waters of the West, and Montana’s waters,” Ricklefs says.
Ricklefs says she’s been told the grant – which accounts for a third of the network’s budget – is hung up in a review process. Experts monitoring federal grants say that’s a familiar story.
Scott Delaney helps run Grant Witness, a nonprofit that started tracking the delays and cancellations after the Trump administration began making sweeping cuts last year. Now, Delaney says the administration is shifting focus.
“In the place of the mass grant terminations are a set of policy changes that are far more dangerous, they cause much more damage,” he says.
Delaney says more grants are being held up in review or aren’t getting paid out at all. Grant Witness has documented more than $80 million in canceled or delayed federal grants to Montana, covering everything from disease research to climate resilience.
Now, the federal budget office wants to allow political appointees to award or rescind grants based on political priorities. Adam Jespersen with the Montana Nonprofit Association says that could make his members’ budgets wildly unpredictable.
“It kind of adds this layer on top of everything, across all agencies, that has a political bent to it we’ve never seen in the past,” Jespersen says.
30 Montana nonprofits signed on to a letter urging the federal budget office to reject that change. If it moves ahead, the new grantmaking rules would go into effect in October.
