US data purges - do we need to be concerned?

Seeing what is happening with information that was on the CDC website and the stripping of inclusive language around gender and sex, do we have to worry about other US science organisations that are funded out of the public purse?
I see that the Way back Machine has been used to save some resources. Are there any sites particularly at risk that deal with flora and fauna?

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I just saw on LinkedIn that a first National Nature Assessment report was in the process of being written, and pages related to it have been shut down. The post I saw said that the authors are committed to continuing their work but who knows.

Still active links:
Announcement of the first-ever National Nature Assessment report | U.S. Geological Survey
Federal Register :: Draft Prospectus for the First National Nature Assessment

Removed pages (you can try accessing old versions on Internet Archive):
https://www.globalchange.gov/our-work/national-nature-assessment
https://edit.doi.gov/ppa/national-nature-assessment

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Fortunately iNat is not a government site.

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But we don’t know if going after government-financed science is all he plans to do or if it is just the first step. Just remember the Lyssenko time in Russia.

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I agree that at the moment it’s mostly public websites and research that are under threat to be censored.
And I really hope that a lot of the people working in government run research have been able to save their work before things are getting shut down/deleted.

I still think it would be valuable if iNaturalist staff would have an emergency plan in case hosting a service and sever dedicated to biodiversity research becomes problematic under the current government.
One) have a backup plan for data storage outside the US.
Two) have a backup plan in case staff would get in trouble for their work

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I expect the US will start censoring climate, pollutant, and endangered species data soon, too, so it would be worth storing anything related to that.

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Personally, I’m concerned about the US’s commitment to funding GBIF. US citizens, please contact your elected representatives and let them know you value continued support for GBIF.

https://www.gbif.org/funders

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It’s not just the feds, my city government is threatening me with legal action for wandering the open space nature preserves, taking photos and posting on iNat even though they seem to be not bothered with people exercising their dogs on the preserves off leash. I personally believe it is because I have been monitoring their beaver eradication (officially known as depredation).

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that’s ridiculous!

This is the first I’ve heard of these data purges - albeit, I’m not very in tune with the news! I have a lot of reading to do regarding the governement actions that initiated the CDC web page scrubbings, I still have no clue what to make of all this, or whether or not It could spill over to non-government websites.

I’m not entirely sure why the U.S. government would go after iNat… as far as I know, we’re not hurting anyone. So far, these executive orders only apply to federal agencies, i think it would be a huge leap and very unrealistic for these policies to spill over into public life. If it were to happen, it would be a blatantly obvious overreach of the federal government’s power and should be treated like such. I think everyone would be up in (metaphorical) arms, as they should be in that case.

is this too political for the forums? there’s a line somewhere and I don’t know if I’m crossing it.

I’m not super in touch, this is just my two-sense, so take everything with a heavy pouring of salt.

anyways, since I don’t want to make a bunch of posts in a row, I thought I’d condense this into here:

why would this happen?

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Because they are planning on selling public land. Although not sure why it would matter that threatened/endangered species are documented they don’t care and will do whatever they want because there is no one there to stop them.

We need to have a back up.

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I think a discussion about envirobmental data loss from public data sources is OK for the Forum, but please stick to that and not to other issues. If you’re a US citizen probably the most efficacious thing you can do, whatever your cause, is to call your representatives and to support and work for causes and groups directly aligned with your goals.

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Any program that involves funding from USAID is at extreme risk, and this includes multiple biodiversity and conservation programs. A quick google brings up this Vietnamese forest conservation initiative - USAID Biodiversity Conservation | WWF (panda.org)
The broader page for all USAID partnership with WWF is already taken down.

Edit: The Uganda Biodiversity Trust Fund is also USAID funded, though it may have additional sponsors that might be able to keep it afloat.
USAID Funded Projects - Uganda Bio-Diversity Trust Fund (ugandabiodiversityfund.org) Documents relating to this project are still indexed by Google, but have been taken down also.

Edit2: As of 5 Feb 2025, BiodiversityLinks, the USAID knowledge portal is still up, including several peer-reviewed journal articles. We’ll see how long it lasts. BiodiversityLinks — USAID BiodiversityLinks

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Neither was the CDC. But certain interests found its information inconvenient.

Same reason: certain interests find the information inconvenient. Remember when Florida banned state officials from mentioning climate change? This is an expansion of the same agenda.

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The National Science Foundation is now reviewing all grants based on a series of keywords relating to Trump’s executive orders targeting DEI initiatives, including ‘women’, ‘inclusion’, ‘race’ and ‘diversity’. Many of these terms are ubiquitous in research and topics not relating to DEI have been dropped from the review, so for now, plant diversity research for example is still business as usual. NSF reexamines existing awards to comply with Trump’s directives | Science | AAAS

On the other hand, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is now threatened by cuts in personnel, funding and mission, with DOGE gaining access to sensitive systems. Downsizing and dismantling NOAA is an explicitly stated goal of Project 2025. This will impact not only weather forecasting, but also limit the ability to assess fish stocks, resulting in overfishing.
Doge staffers enter Noaa headquarters and incite reports of cuts and threats | Trump administration | The Guardian

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No politics.

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Next up - the EPA, Forest Service, Park Service, USDA, NSF, NIH and the Smithsonian.

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As someone who follows government fairly closely my take on this so far is that a lot of the deletions were the result of an executive order requiring all federal websites to remove mentions of many diversity and gender related topics. This order contained a really quick deadline to remove all these things, and it was impossible to review all federal webpages by the deadline, so pages were taken down pending review. Many of these pages have been found to either not contain mention of diversity or gender, or have had such mentions removed, and have been put back up, so I don’t think every page that goes down is a page the government wants to delete entirely.

Even the pages that are taken down for good do not mean iNat will be censored, federal agencies largely work for the president so executive orders can be used to change federal websites, whereas iNat is private and cannot be changed by executive order

Also, most of these removals center on gender, diversity(in the human sense), or climate, While there is some connection between iNat records and climate/environmental issues, I don’t really see iNat as a big target for govt opposition

If they did want to censor iNat the way to do it would be to cut off federal funds and contracts to anyone who funds or works with iNat

Speaking of funds, this administration is trying to cut the federal budget, which I see as a much more likely cause of problems for iNat than censorship. The government may have limited power or interest in attacking iNat directly, but I don’t think iNat can rely on any federal funding, or any funding from an organization that receives federal funding, as that organization may have to cut back if they lose funding.

I have heard of landowners or local governments objecting to biodiversity data that could trigger federal regulations, but on the federal level I expect the focus to be more on repealing the regulations they don’t want rather than suppressing iNat

As @joerich mentions, censorship could be a problem for those using iNat to document negative effects of govt action or industries supported by govt, but I’m skeptical that iNat itself is a significant govt target, my concern is budget cuts more than censoership

What? On what grounds? Are they arguing that you are not authorized to be there or that you can be there but cannot take pictures? Or that iNat posting is somehow illegal?

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USAID is a dependency of Congress, not of the executive.

That is why I said largely, there are some agencies that don’t report to the president. Also, when the president’s party controls both houses of congress, as is the case now, the distinction between congressionally controlled agencies and presidentially controlled ones is less impactful