sort-of yes.. for the last decades, there have been a steady stream of college students who want to make change for the environment (in the West, at least). There have been far more trained and qualified young graduates than there are jobs. Now, we see the latest evolution of this story arc -- not only are the graduates left to fend for themselves by the US Federal Govt and others, but the few jobs that did become available are gone, and those that had stable careers by getting one of the few jobs, are being fired.

There is an embarrassing trend at the US EPA for example, to get interns and volunteers to do some official work, with no real way to transition to full time with job security and health insurance. This is partly due to the unending stream of applicants, despite few positions.

So from this context, rebuilding research means .. what? Both institutional knowledge store and authoritative titled positions. After some advances in data management by Google and some other commercial players, it is not clear what role Federal science had anyway, from this desk.