The Interior Department layoffs, also known as a Reduction in Force, are at the center of ongoing litigation<\/a> over President Donald Trump and his administration\u2019s efforts to further gut the federal workforce.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Monday\u2019s filing came in response to a judge\u2019s order requiring the Interior Department to disclose its layoff plans for unionized employees. The administration said it intends to eliminate 2,050 Interior Department positions, a decision made before the government shutdown began.<\/p>\n That timing contradicts Trump\u2019s recent claim that government layoffs stemmed from the shutdown.\u00a0<\/p>\n Most of the planned cuts would hit the U.S. Geological Survey, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service\u2019s regional offices and Interior\u2019s main headquarters, according to the filing.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Interior Department manages national parks, wildlife refuges and other public lands. It oversees environmental and wildlife conservation, fulfills trust obligations to Alaska Natives and Native American tribes and conducts scientific research on endangered species, water resources and natural hazards like flooding and wildfires so officials can better respond to them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those research positions would be especially hard hit by the planned layoffs, including projects focused on the Great Lakes ecosystems and the USGS Columbia Environmental Research Center in Missouri, where scientists study toxic contaminants such as PFAS, a class of chemicals Trump\u2019s health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has pledged<\/a> to address.\u00a0<\/p>\n Asked for comment, the White House referred questions to the Interior Department, which did not respond.\u00a0<\/p>\n Environmental groups described the move as part of a broader campaign by Trump and his administration to eliminate research and data collection on environmental contamination after carrying out what EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called the largest rollback of environmental protections in U.S. history<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis plan would eviscerate the core science that every American depends on,\u201d said Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the conservation group the Center for Western Priorities, in a statement about the new Interior Department cuts revealed Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rokala said the planned cuts \u201cwould devastate scientific research across the Rocky Mountains, Great Plains, and Great Lakes,\u201d while harming workers who \u201cmake our parks and public lands the envy of the world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Rokala also said that Monday\u2019s filing revealed only the planned layoffs for unionized employees: \u201cWe don\u2019t know how many non-union offices and positions are also on the chopping block.\u201d<\/p>\n At the EPA, the new furlough notices arrived as the agency\u2019s funding dries up. Last week, Trump said the shutdown was an opportunity to dismantle \u201cDemocrat programs that we want to close up or we never wanted to happen.\u201d He has repeatedly cast environmental protection, conservation and related public health issues as \u201cwoke\u201d and left-wing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some of the country\u2019s key environmental<\/a> protections<\/a>, and in fact the EPA itself<\/a>, date back to the Republican Nixon administration.<\/p>\n \u201cOnly Trump\u2019s EPA would lay off the people who protect our kids from breathing polluted air and drinking contaminated water but keep the pesticide office open to greenlight more poisons,\u201d said J.W. Glass, EPA policy specialist at the conservation organization Center for Biological Diversity.<\/p>\n Glass, in a written statement, accused the administration of using the shutdown to dismantle the EPA, leaving \u201cour communities paying the price.\u201d<\/p>\n EPA press secretary Carolyn Holran said in a written statement that the suggestion that the furloughs are part of a deliberate campaign to dismantle the EPA \u201cis both inaccurate and unfair to the dedicated EPA employees who continue working to protect human health and the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n Holran blamed Democrats for the government shutdown and said the EPA was taking a \u201ccalculated approach\u201d to ensure \u201cthat we remain able to deliver on Presidential priorities and avoid actions that directly impact or harm the American people.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Asked for details about\u00a0the number of furlough notices sent and which offices they impact, Holran called it \u201ca ridiculous question to ask.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In a written statement, Peter Murchie, senior director at the nonprofit Environmental Protection Network and a former EPA official, called on Congress to intervene and stop the \u201csystematic dismantling.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe health harms facing American families\u2014cancer, childhood asthma, infertility, organ failure\u2014don\u2019t pause for politics,\u201d Murchie said. \u201cWhen EPA\u2019s expert staff are sent home, large parts of the agency\u2019s work simply stop.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was updated Oct. 21, 2025, with a statement from the EPA, and the White House referring questions to the Interior Department.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tAbout This Story<\/p>\n Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That\u2019s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not all. We also share our news for free with scores of other media organizations around the country. Many of them can\u2019t afford to do environmental journalism of their own. We\u2019ve built bureaus from coast to coast to report local stories, collaborate with local newsrooms and co-publish articles so that this vital work is shared as widely as possible.<\/p>\n Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. 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