What happens next in the federal applied natural resources science enterprise?
By Doug Beard, Senior Advisor, Rooted Waters Consulting
One of the challenges I’ve been thinking about a lot is what comes next in the federal applied natural resources science enterprise. I think we all understand that the federal government’s ability to conduct research and make it available to support management objectives has certainly been impacted in the last eighteen months. However, I’m a firm believer that we should “never let a good crisis go to waste” (the origin of this quote is debated - it traces all the way back to Machiavelli and is often wrongly attributed to Winston Churchill). Even the grimmest situations can offer opportunities.
Or in the marvelous words of Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters:
“It's times like these you learn to live again, It's times like these you give and give again, It's times like these you learn to love again.”
Building Back Better
The dramatic changes to federal science agencies, while grim, also offer an opportunity to rethink how the enterprise should be organized for future success. The temptation will be to restore impacted agencies to their previous organizations and structure. Yet I feel this would be a missed opportunity. The government should instead consider new approaches to ensure federal science better feeds into decision and policy making processes. This will require innovative and novel thinking.
First, future environmental science agencies should be restructured to prioritize end user engagement. Traditionally, federal agencies have not been set up to do this kind of co-production, i.e., assuring final outputs meet the needs of the management and policy choices that decision makers face. This is often because true co-production is time-consuming and places large demands on both scientific and management personnel. Yet it is important – engaging all interested parties throughout the life of the project assures that the science outputs meet current needs in a timely fashion. I firmly believe that restructured agencies should build co-production into their scientific systems. This would involve consciously developing approaches that minimize the time demand on resource managers while maximizing their input into identifying priority science needs. Correctly done, this will ensure science outputs feed directly into solutions and eliminate the mismatch between demand and supply.
Second, future federal science agencies should be organized around issues rather than disciplines. Traditional agencies are often heavily staffed by natural and physical scientists, with, at best, limited engagement with other disciplines (economics, human behavior, organizational structure experts, etc.). The federal science agency of the future should have small interdisciplinary teams of scientists focused on issues that form and re-form as needs inevitably change. Furthermore, to assure maximum flexibility to work on changing demands, future agencies should rely heavily on a small central staff empowered to bring in additional expertise as needed to address current priority issues. Revamped agencies that focus on a limited number of permanent principal investigators, complimented by outside experts, will allow the government to shift quickly to address emerging issues and changing priorities and respond to rapidly changing technology.
Third, agencies should track how well federal research is applied to on-the-ground natural resource management. Although there have been many attempts to measure the outcomes of scientific enterprises (e.g., Government Performance and Records Act (GPRA)), it has been hard to successfully monitor scientific impact through time. A revised federal natural resources science enterprise will emphasize applied science outputs that feed directly into application, then check whether the science led to real impacts. Developing approaches that track impact through time will help justify continued taxpayer investment.
Finally, renewed federal science agencies should prioritize and invest in science communication and delivery. Distilling complex scientific topics into digestible information that can be used by management partners, on the ground practitioners and for interested members of the public is a skill that most traditional scientists are not trained in. Learning lessons from programs such as the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s Agricultural Extension and NOAA’s Sea Grant program, agencies should hire specialists in translating science into guidance that is actionable. They should also have built-in mechanisms to ensure these professional science communicators are included as part of science teams from the beginning.
Final Thoughts
If I had my way, a revised applied natural resource management science agency would look very different than agencies that existed in 2020. It would provide direct input into the planning, policy, and management of natural resources, and be led by smaller professional science staff empowered to move resources to meet shifting needs. But no matter what happens, my biggest hope is that whatever process is developed truly engages the entire applied natural resources science enterprise to help define what comes next, before agencies move to just recreate the past.
Doug Beard retired in May 2025 after 15 years as the Director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Climate Adaptation Science Center (National CASC). He is now a Senior Advisor with Rooted Waters Consulting LLC. Doug also continues to contribute his extensive expertise in fisheries biology through roles with the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis Working Group on Guidelines on Core Data for Climate-Resilient Inland Fisheries (GO FISH).
