Cross-border wildlife conservation between the U.S. and Canada is weakening

In the early 1990s, a radio-collared grey wolf named Pluie was recorded covering an area of 100,000 square kilometres in the Rocky Mountains over two years. She crossed 30 political jurisdictions, three U.S. states, two Canadian provinces, and several First Nations’ territories.

“What she showed us is that nature doesn’t recognize our borders, and our protection systems have to catch up to that reality,” says Laurel Angell, director of government relations and policy at the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, or Y2Y, a transboundary U.S.–Canada–Indigenous wildlife protection non-profit.

Canada shares a nearly 9,000-kilometre-long border with the United States, and more than 500 migratory species cross that border each year, ranging in size from the monarch butterfly to the grey whale – and that’s not including the animals that roam across the border constantly, such as whitetailed deer, grizzly bears and grey wolves like Pluie.

Nature doesn’t recognize our borders, and our protection systems have to catch up to that reality.

– Laurel Angell, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative

The two countries have collaborated on cross-border wildlife conservation for decades, sharing research and partnering on initiatives. Key to this has been the relationship between federal agencies, local governments, non-profits, scientists, private landowners and Indigenous groups. But as U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration slashes funding for conservation research and federal departments, and rolls back critical endangered-species laws, wildlife that rely on the stability of these relationships now face unbalanced protection.

“We are genuinely concerned about what’s happening to federal land and wildlife management agencies,” Angell says. “Our federal partners are essential to this work, and when you cut those agencies deeply, you lose the people, the research capacity, the field scientists and the relationships that make cross-boundary conservation actually function.”

In 2025, Trump began slashing jobs at U.S. public land agencies, firing rangers and land managers who protect public parks. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has had an 18% reduction in workforce – about 1,800 jobs, including around 500 biologists. In a letter to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, FWS director Brian Nesvik said that “almost 60 percent of the nation’s wildlife refuges lack the resources and staff needed to fulfill their missions.”

Sixteen out of 22 land research cooperatives – government research centres that focus on science-based conservation – have been placed on indefinite hiatus. During his first administration, Trump proposed several provisions that would weaken the critical Endangered Species Act (ESA) to make energy and resource development easier. And the 2027 proposed budget would cut funding by hundreds of millions of dollars to a host of environmental programs and departments.

Staff cuts to the Fish and Wildlife Service predate the current administration, says Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation. But the accelerated rate is worrying, he says, particularly the loss of scientists, who are integral to collecting the data sets that then inform conservation work. As climate change and biodiversity loss affect how transboundary wildlife – including endangered species such as caribou and monarch butterflies – shift their movements, up-to-date data and research is vital.

These aren’t solely U.S. problems. Many species protected by the Endangered Species Act migrate across the border, like the whooping crane, which travels from Texas to breeding grounds in the Northwest Territories and Alberta. These migration routes are essential to their survival.

On-the-ground conservation work across the border has been disrupted, too. “There are cross-border conservation projects right now where the U.S. side of critical habitat and connectivity mapping work is being cut mid-stream, leaving partners working from an incomplete picture of the landscape and leaving many people uncertain about what to even do,” Angell says.

Connectivity mapping helps researchers maintain and improve wildlife corridors across borders, which are protected spaces that allow animals safe passage through busy roads and private lands. Making sure animal populations aren’t isolated is essential to their survival. For more than 30 years, Y2Y has worked to bridge the gap between two of the largest Rocky Mountain grizzly populations in Montana and Canada, which were split by 240 kilometres. Now, through land conservation and wildlife corridors, that gap is just shy of 50 kilometres. Once connected, the transboundary populations can migrate and mate, strengthening their numbers.

“That’s what we’re trying to protect,” Angell says. “And that last stretch to achieve real, full connectivity – which would be a landmark conservation success story – requires sustained investment and rigorous science, not less of both.”

Both Angell and O’Mara have cause for optimism, however. So far, the U.S. Congress has pushed back on most of the proposed budget cuts, “in a bipartisan, nonpartisan way,” O’Mara says. “I think at the end of the day, there’s so much support – across regions, across political ideology, across the national boundary – for this work,” he says. “That’s what gives me hope.”

Ayesha Habib is a Toronto-based journalist who has written for The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, The Narwhal and Maisonneuve.