Since taking office in 2010, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has reshaped the state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR). He appointed a former state senator and critic of the agency to be its secretary and hired an outside “deer czar” in response to hunters’ complaints about the state’s management of the deer herd. Gov. Walker also re-wrote state mining regulations to clear the way for an ill-fated iron mine proposal that was finally abandoned last month. Several days ago, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the mining company’s lobbyist and spokesman had been considered for appointment as the DNR’s deputy secretary—until officials realized there was a federal law specifically preventing that kind of thing. (He was, instead, hired for a job in another agency.)

Now, the DNR has come under the budget knife. Among other changes and position cuts, the agency’s science bureau faces a 30 percent reduction in staff. Now, Wisconsin Watch reports that the DNR is considering eliminating the science bureau altogether, shuffling remaining staff into other divisions.

The bureau performs the local, applied ecological research and monitoring that informs state regulations. Timothy Van Deelen, a University of Wisconsin ecologist, told Wisconsin Watch he was concerned about losing that work. “Long-term data sets are so incredibly rare,” he said. “And now a lot of that monitoring, such as with the deer herd, is up in the air.”

The Wisconsin government is also in the news for taking a page from the Florida playbook: the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands, which oversees logging on some state land among several other financial duties, voted on April 7 to ban its nine employees from working on or speaking about climate change. The move was led by State Treasurer Matt Adamczyk, a colorful character who ran on a platform of abolishing the office of State Treasurer—an office that had atrophied over the years.

Adamcyzk has gone after the board’s executive secretary, Tia Nelson, who had also served as co-chair of the previous governor’s global warming task force in 2007 and 2008. Adamczyk apparently wanted Nelson fired for having worked on that task force, saying it was outside the board’s mission, and for testifying on climate change to a US House subcommittee in 2009 while in Washington DC on board business. Previously, Adamczyk successfully had references to climate change removed from the board’s website.

Tia Nelson, by the way, is the daughter of former Wisconsin Gov. Gaylord Nelson—the man who established Earth Day. Prior to working for the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands, she led a climate change program for the Nature Conservancy. Just don’t ask her about it while she’s on the clock.