The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has not established performance goals for nine resilience projects funded with $125 million, limiting its ability to show whether restored habitat and infrastructure meet broader objectives, federal auditors found.
Congress provided the supplemental money to rebuild and restore national wildlife refuges and state wildlife-management areas, including work intended to withstand future weather events.
As of April 1, 2026, the agency had obligated 99.6% of the appropriation and spent about $48.9 million. The projects span 23 states and more than 75 National Wildlife Refuge System units.
Fish and Wildlife officials reported restoring more than 5,000 acres of wetlands and 16,000 acres of other habitat. Activities include water-control structures to reduce flood risk, forest restoration and fencing used in bison management.
Those counts document work completed, but GAO said the agency did not set performance goals tied to the implementation plan's outcomes, such as improving the capacity of habitats and infrastructure to recover from extreme weather.
Outputs and outcomes are different measures. Acres restored can show scale; a performance goal can test whether the restoration delivers the resilience, ecological or infrastructure result the program was designed to achieve.
Fish and Wildlife selected planned but unfunded activities that fit the appropriation and favored places that had not received similar supplemental money, as well as projects where established partners could broaden the work.
GAO recommended project-level performance goals and a workforce review identifying critical skills, staffing needs and strategies for gaps. Fish and Wildlife agreed with both recommendations.
The findings do not erase the restoration already reported. They identify a measurement gap that will matter when officials must decide whether the nine projects worked, which approaches to repeat and where to change course.