By IBO Research Director Jay Carlisle
To say 2025 has been different feels like an understatement. For a researcher who’s built a career on “soft” money (grants, private donations, etc.) the recent changes to federal funding have been seismic. This soft money supports about 90% of my position and 100% of IBO’s research biologist positions.
The “Cliff Notes” version is that we’ve missed out on approximately $700,000 in grant funding for work in 2025.
This represents roughly half of our expected grant budget – and, since March we’ve had to lay off people in 2 full-time (grant-funded) positions, bringing the number of current IBO full-time staff down from 9 to 7. Unsurprisingly, it’s been the most stressful year of my career, and probably the least productive as well, since so much of my work effort has focused on budget triage as opposed to science.
Among many challenging aspects is that this loss of funding is not a reflection of our performance. 2025 was poised to be our busiest yet as we’ve added new projects and grown others in recent years, and we pride ourselves on cultivating and maintaining strong, collaborative partnerships with funders and the “end users” of the data we collect.
We’re far from alone in our plight. Across the country, there are countless stories of high-achieving employees losing their jobs in 2025, whether from efforts to reduce staff at federal agencies or the downstream effects of budget cuts or freezes within the research and conservation community. These challenges are impacting many organizations like ours that have built a funding model based on providing high quality data to land and wildlife management agencies and other partners.
These federal budget changes have forced us to end employment for 2 hard-working employees – Ryan Healey and Heather Hayes.
Ryan’s time with IBO included several stints as a seasonal biologist before 1.5 years of full-time work. And Heather has dedicated the last 10 years of her career to many aspects of IBO’s work, especially including Long-billed Curlews, hummingbirds, and community education.
As we look to the next year, there’s reason for hope amidst the turmoil of 2025.
We are excited to bring Ashlyn Alexander onto the team as our Academic Programs Coordinator. Ashlyn has handled admin work for IBO for the past few years while finishing her degree. Once she graduated, with the support of the College of Arts and Sciences and Department of Biological Sciences, we were able to keep her on the team in a role we’ve been seeking for years! We’re thankful for her smart and speedy support on detailed tasks like payroll, field work logistics, workshop planning, 3D printing, and more!
As far as grant funding prospects for the 2026 field season, if none of our funding agreements are subject to early termination – something that recently happened to at least 2 NGOs we partner with – things are looking better for 2026. Still not to the level we were anticipating for 2025 but an improvement nonetheless.
And, for the foreseeable future, we still get to work collaboratively to implement many exciting and important field research projects.
We thank all of you for the important support you provide, ranging from appreciation for our work, volunteering on one or more projects, or financial contributions.
Here’s to the birds :)
This article is part of our 2025 end of the year newsletter! View the full newsletter here, or click “older posts” below to read the next article. Make sure you don’t miss out on IBO news! Sign up to get our email updates.