The mission of the agency is "working with others to conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people.

Therefore, the USFWS works closely with private groups such as Partners in Flight and the Sport Fishing and Boating Partnership Council to promote voluntary habitat conservation and restoration.

Clinton Hart Merriam headed the Division for 25 years and became a national figure for improving the scientific understanding of birds and mammals in the United States.

The same year, Congress passed the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act (FWCA), one of the oldest federal environmental review statutes.

[19] Under Darling's guidance, the Bureau began an ongoing legacy of protecting vital natural habitat throughout the United States.

USFWS manages the National Wildlife Refuge System, which consists of 570 National Wildlife Refuges, encompassing a full range of habitat types, including wetlands, prairies, coastal and marine areas, and temperate, tundra, and boreal forests spread across all 50 U.S. states.

Between 1999 and 2023, the program has worked with over 2,000 local partners to open 61,000 mi (98,000 km) of upstream habitat by removing or bypassing 3,400 aquatic barriers.

By treaty, it also is the official crime laboratory for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the Wildlife Group of Interpol.

and other interested parties on issues related to the implementation of treaties and laws and the conservation of species around the world.

[28] At its founding in 1896, the work of the Division of Biological Survey focused on the effect of birds in controlling agricultural pests and mapping the geographical distribution of plants and animals in the United States.

[29]: 95–96  Meanwhile, scientists like Joseph Grinnell and Charles C. Adams, a founder of the Ecological Society of America, were promoting a "balance of nature" theory – the idea that predators were an important part of the larger ecosystem and should not be eradicated.

Edward A. Goldman, from the Survey, made perfectly clear their position in a paper [30] that with the arrival of Europeans in North America, the balance of nature had been "violently overturned, never to be reestablished".

He concludes with the idea that "Large predatory mammals, destructive to livestock and to game, no longer have a place in our advancing civilization."

With various agency reorganizations, the practice continued more or less apace through the early 1970s but though hundreds of thousands of coyotes were killed, their extreme adaptability and resilience led to little overall population reduction and, instead, their migration into an expanded habitat, including urban areas.

Increasing environmental awareness in the late 1960s and early 1970s resulted in Nixon banning post-World War II-era poisons in 1972 and the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973.

The loss of federally fund to protect their livestock was too much for ranching and agricultural communities and by 1980 Reagan had reversed the poison killing ban and transferred the responsibility for predator control to the Wildlife Services program under the US Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

The Program's mission has evolved to protect "agriculture, wildlife and other natural resources, property, and human health and safety".

Today, these agencies work closely with tribal governments to ensure the best conservation decisions are made and that tribes retain their sovereignty.

The Bureau of Fisheries inherited these in 1903, and then greatly expanded its fleet of seagoing vessels, including both patrol vessels for fishery enforcement in the Territory of Alaska[15] and a cargo liner — known as the "Pribilof tender" — to provide transportation for passengers and haul cargo to, from, and between the Pribilof Islands.