Biologists who monitor wildlife year-round at San Francisco’s remote Farallon Islands will be leaving their posts for the first time in nearly six decades due to federal budget cuts. Despite its timing, the news is not related to President Donald Trump’s funding freeze that recently impacted Yosemite National Park and the Presidio Trust, among other places. Nevertheless, it raises concerns over the loss of continuous data collection on cherished California species that researchers are calling an “unprecedented disruption.”   

Staff at Point Blue Conservation Science, an organization that has been running a research station at the 211-acre national wildlife refuge since 1968, initially learned of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to cut funding in early 2024 and are slated to scale back to seasonal work as soon as this September. That means the islands would likely be unattended in the fall and winter, when great white sharks migrate to the area to hunt and elephant seals haul out to give birth.  

Multiple employees will be affected by cuts to the program, with at least two biologists, five to six research assistants studying migratory birds and sharks, and four staff who monitored elephant seals leaving their posts under the new model, Lishka Arata, a communications manager for Point Blue, told SFGATE in an email. Training and mentorship opportunities for interns, volunteers and scientists early on in their careers will also be “significantly reduced,” she said. 

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FILE: Farallon biologist Pete Warzybok holds an ashy storm petrel chick along the cliffs of Southeast Farallon Island in 2011.

“It was incredibly disappointing and concerning, as it directly impacts decades of critical research and conservation work,” Arata said. “The Farallones are one of the most ecologically significant sites on the West Coast, and losing year-round monitoring puts many species and long-term data sets at risk.”

Hundreds of thousands of seabirds, sharks, marine mammals and other species call the craggy islands and sea stacks about 30 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge........

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