As Trump admin pulls back on science, Utah’s budding conservationists say job prospects look grim

Locomotive Springs • This summer, Weber State University researchers and a team of volunteers took on an ambitious chore — re-counting the flocks of snowy plovers nesting on the shrinking Great Salt Lake’s shores.

It’s not an easy task. The birds are called the “ghost of the playa” for a reason. They evolved to blend in with their salty surroundings.

Snowy plovers also nest directly on the ground, making them vulnerable to predators, people and motor vehicles. They’re listed as a threatened species along the Pacific Coast. But a Weber-led survey in 2008 found that at the Great Salt Lake, snowies were thriving. It had the largest snowy plover population in North America.

All these years later, Utah wildlife managers want to know whether those conditions changed. The lake, after all, is about half the size it was back then. And much of the plover’s prime habitat has been overrun with water-guzzling invasive phragmites. Students, meanwhile, are seizing on an opportunity to gain valuable experience in the field and bolster their resumes, even as they worry about dwindling career prospects in conservation due to changing politics in Washington, D.C.

The state in April gave Weber’s Avian Ecology Lab $55,000 to repeat their 2008 survey. This time, the researchers had a lot more constraints, with half the budget and fewer paid staff. They only had a two-week window to plan before the birds flew in and started preparing their nests.

“It’s type-two fun,” said Niku Mojabi, 26, research coordinator for the survey, of the grueling intensive fieldwork. She graduated from Weber’s zoology program in December. Even though her position is only part time, and will only last part of the year, she said she’s grateful to have a job in conservation.

“There’s so many people out there right now,” Mojabi said, “who are just looking for work in these fields.”

Mojabi recruited a few dozen volunteers from across the lake’s watershed, which included students from multiple universities, state wildlife workers and hobby birders.

Surveying while science is under attack

On an usually hot day in mid-June, almost all the volunteers happened to be Weber zoology students entering their senior year, thirsty to do fieldwork and gain the experience they need for their future careers.

The group’s assignment included one of the most remote reaches of the lake — Locomotive Springs, on the northernmost point of the lake’s hypersaline north arm.

The drive took hours, through a dry, desolate, sagebrush-strewn landscape. But to the young scientists, the terrain contained limitless splendor. They pointed out a harrier descending on a mouse. They debated whether two pint-sized figures that disappeared beyond a knoll were grouse or quail, finally deciding they were probably juvenile chukars. They talked at length about their shared love for science.

“It is such a collaborative and iterative process,” said Davis Swanson, 27. “You never know what impact something that might seem mundane will have.”

But because the drive was long, and graduation loomed on many of the students’ minds, the conversation often turned to their anxieties for the future.

The year prior, state lawmakers prohibited diversity programs some students turned to for support. That winter, lawmakers had intensified scrutiny of public universities, handing down multi-million-dollar budget cuts and creating a “chilling effect" for faculty speaking publicly about anything that might be perceived as political.

The Trump administration also made significant reductions to the federal workforce. Science-based agencies saw many of their entry-level positions — jobs the Weber State zoology students covet — eliminated entirely.

As they searched for plovers along the lake, Congress was debating even more cuts to programs that study conservation and climate change. The National Science Foundation had pulled back grants previously tapped by graduate programs.

Like the snowy plovers, the students wondered if they were running out of secure spots to land.

“Being a scientist, you see all the different places where federal funding is so important,” said James Bustin, 20. “It’s quite scary because, where am I gonna find that now?”

Maria Flores, 23, is a first-generation college student. Until recently, she worked night shifts at the Internal Revenue Service in Ogden to help support her siblings. Feeling her job under fire by Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, she quit. She also needed more time to focus on school and fieldwork experience.

“Nobody in my family has ever done this,” Flores said, “so it’s pretty scary.”

Fascinated by the microscopic world of bacteria, viruses and fungi, Flores had dreams of one day working for the Centers for Disease Control.

“We’ll see what happens,” she said.

Ernest Victorino, 25, pays for his studies out of pocket. Unwilling to take on debt, he said graduate school seems less and less like a viable option.

“I would rather get a job,” he said, “and get some money and stability.”

The students said they felt discouraged about a growing anti-science movement during a time when climate disruptions, disappearing animal species, a drying West and shrinking Great Salt Lake have made research and conservation work more urgent than ever before.

“There’s a lot of people who don’t trust science in general right now,” Mojabi said.

Precariously close to the brink

Snowy plovers like flat, sandy, salty ground with access to briny water that supports the bugs and brine shrimp they like to eat. Because they nest in the summer heat, on some of the most hostile surfaces, males and females take turns guarding their eggs.

“They have to stand over the nest to shade the eggs, and soak their feathers in water, to cool them down,” said John Cavitt, the Weber State zoology professor who oversaw both the 2008 and 2025 snowy plover surveys.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service funded the initial study, worried about declining populations on the West Coast. But at the Great Salt Lake, the survey found 5,500 plovers, more than double the flocks nesting on the Pacific and the largest known population on the continent.

Bonnie Baxter, director of the Great Salt Lake Institute at Westminster University, was one of the dozens of volunteers who helped with the 2008 survey. She said it was during an era of optimism for the lake.

“We were just counting birds,” Baxter said, “talking about how prolific they were.”

Utah’s economy was still booming, with the full effects of the Great Recession yet to take hold. The Great Salt Lake was lower than it had been in the 1990s, but not so low that scientists and lake-based industries had concerns.

Today, the students surveying plovers have never known a lake that wasn’t in decline. In 2022, when most of them were choosing their majors, the lake hit a historic low due to overconsumption by people living in the watershed. Its ecosystem began to collapse. Although the lake’s water has risen a few feet in the years since, it remains precariously close to the brink. And phragmites have overrun prime nesting habitat for the plovers.

“It’s heartbreaking to see,” Cavitt said, “because it’s just these monoculture stands.”

‘Mysterious little birds’

The hypersaline nature of the north arm at Locomotive Springs means little plant life grows, including phragmites, making conditions slightly less challenging for the students.

Still, the amount of ground they must cover is vast – a square kilometer per survey site. The volunteers walk their plots alone, back and forth, in uniform rows, recording any plovers they see scurrying across the lake shore, or pretending to have broken wings to distract predators from noticing their nests.

There is no cell service, no listening to podcasts, no distractions. That’s because the palm-sized playa ghosts are so illusive volunteers often hear their distinctive trilling calls before they see them.

“All of the sudden it’ll be just right in front of you,” said Clementine Rane, lead field technician for the survey. “It just appears.”

Rane, who will graduate next spring at 20 years old, said she used to be a shut-in who spent much of her life on a computer until she started counting birds.

“I was hooked,” she said. “I started volunteering banding birds at Weber State in high school, and I’ve been here doing research ever since.”

Over the winter, she discovered breeding populations of boreal owls in the Uinta Mountains, mostly by snowshoeing and snowmobiling into remote sites at night, often alone. Scientists had long suspected the birds might nest in Utah, Cavitt said, but it wasn’t confirmed until Rane did her fieldwork.

This summer, she said she has sunburned the roof of her mouth by treading so much ground around the Great Salt Lake looking for plovers.

“Some days, you’ll be walking around on the playa for hours and see none of them. And then other days, you’ll be in a spot that you think would have none, but they’re everywhere,” Rane said. “They’re kind of mysterious little birds.”

The survey at Locomotive Springs mostly turned out to be a bust, with few plovers in sight. But, as Rane reminded her colleagues, “even a zero on a data sheet is still good data.”

All said, the volunteers covered 98 square miles of the lake’s playa in about four weeks. They counted 961 plovers. That’s a similar amount of ground covered and birds counted to the 2008 survey.

Weber State is currently crunching data to calculate available habitat lake wide and the likely corresponding ratio of plovers to finalize the population estimate. The numbers could still be lower than 2008, but Cavitt called observations so far a “good sign.”

“I’m glad to see it,” the professor said. “Hopefully that means they’ve managed to stick it out here.”

The plovers are at the end of their breeding season at the Great Salt Lake, fueling up for their migration south. The students, meanwhile, are contemplating where in the world they might go next as they enter their next phase in life.

Mojabi started college thinking she’d become an art teacher. Then she discovered a love of science and field work. She now dreams of working on a boat, studying whales and sharks.

“I realized I can do hard things,” she said.

Swanson likes the idea of moving to New England for grad school. Bustin wants to study seabirds and species at risk abroad, maybe in Australia, New Zealand or Europe.

Rane says she wants to travel the globe doing field positions and studying birds.

“Hopefully the funding is better in other places,” she said.

Flores and Victorino are leaning toward staying in Utah.

“I always feel like when I’m out of state,” Victorino said, “I miss the mountains.”

Cavitt, their professor, said the tension between science and politics ebbs and flows, much like the lake itself. While there are reasons for the next generation of scientists to feel wary about their prospects, there are reasons to remain optimistic, too. The state of Utah, for example, poured millions of dollars into Great Salt Lake conservation projects in recent years. It even stepped up to fund the snowy plover survey as the feds pulled back.

Communities and their governments do not want to watch ecosystems collapse, he said.

“I think it will cycle back. It’s got to,” Cavitt said. “It will become clear that it’s more than just superfluous studies that are being done. These kinds of things matter.”

Note to readers • This article is published through The Great Salt Lake Collaborative: A Solutions Journalism Initiative, a partnership of news, education and media organizations that aims to inform readers about the Great Salt Lake.