Conservation Plots a Future Without American Aid

The USAID agency was a primary financial backer of Liberia's eco-guards, who help protect species from poaching and trafficking. The eco-guards, all of whom live in forest communities, patrol for signs of illegal activity and share their findings with rangers from nearby parks and forests.

In late January 2025, the SCNL learned that USAID, the eco-guards' primary financial backer, was being dismantled by the Trump administration and that funding had been abruptly suspended. The SCNL programme manager, Michael E Taire, a Liberian who lives in the capital, Monrovia, spent several days travelling over rough forest roads to break the news to the eco-guards, who were shocked and distraught.

Conservation organisations large and small lost tens of millions of dollars, forcing some to function with a fraction of the resources they had expected and others to shut down programmes entirely. Efforts to address the root causes of wildlife trafficking across the globe were axed, as was USAID's forest-protection programme in the Congo basin of central Africa, one of the agency's largest and most enduring endeavours.

David Kaimowitz, a longtime advocate of community-led conservation in the Amazon basin and Central America, puts it bluntly: 'We’re talking about an end to a whole era of conservation.'

Diane Russell, an American anthropologist who has worked for USAID in the Congo basin since the 1980s, says the agency helped draw international attention and funding to the region’s remarkably rich remaining forests, which are home to mountain gorillas and forest elephants. It also enabled conservation to continue through extraordinarily difficult conditions.

'The callous glee with which [the Trump] administration choked off aid is something I will never forgive or forget,' Kevin Starr writes.

'We cannot replace USAID, but we can do big things, because we, the locals, were the engine behind what USAID was doing in this region,' Dida Fayo says.