After Nearly 40 Years, NSF Budget Cuts Force Closure Of Arctic Research Consortium
After nearly 40 years, the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States will close Sept. 30, a casualty of President Donald Trump’s proposed budget cuts and his administration’s focus on using the Arctic as an outpost for national security and energy dominance—and its push away from science. As part of the overarching defunding of science after Trump took office, ARCUS’ major funder, the National Science Foundation, chose not to re-open a bid for a community hub project that would have continued to fund the nonprofit.
EDIT
In May, Trump released his budget request, which would cut NSF funding by 56 percent, from $9 billion to $3.9 billion. The request “reflects a strategic alignment of resources in a constrained fiscal environment in which NSF prioritizes investments that can have the greatest national impact,” an NSF spokesperson told Inside Climate News in an email. The NSF spokesperson did not answer questions about the rationale for the cuts, how the money would be redirected and any connection between the reduction and the Trump administration’s national security plans for the Arctic region.
EDIT
Founded in 1988, ARCUS advanced Arctic research by connecting scientists, government agencies, Indigenous communities and nonprofits all over the world. Its dozens of projects included an Indigenous scholars program, the launch of the Sea Ice Prediction Network and an initiative to develop the prediction network’s sea ice forecast reports. That research not only shed light on the effects of global climate change on sea ice, but provided crucial information for local subsistence hunters and businesses that relied on Alaskan shipping channels. ARCUS, based in Fairbanks, Alaska, is closing at a critical time. Over the past several decades, federal data show Arctic air, ocean and land temperatures have increased at a rate more than twice the global average.
In May, the Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy revised an implementation plan for the Arctic. Under the Biden administration, it had prioritized community resilience and health, hazard mitigation and sustainable economies and livelihoods, as well as the global climate impacts of a warming Arctic.
EDIT
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19092025/after-trump-cut-the-national-science-foundation-by-56-percent-a-venerable-arctic-research-center-closes-its-doors/