Iowa State students on campus weighed in on President Donald Trump’s potential cuts of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), most disagreeing with the president’s decision.

Students sitting in Curtiss Hall were from an array of different majors: pre-business, anthropology, pre-professional health programs, agronomy, agricultural studies, animal science, animal ecology, environmental science and landscape architecture.

Trump released his budget outline last Thursday with a proposed increase in defense spending and a 31 percent cut in funding of the EPA. The budget outline is subject to change as Congress must approve it; however, the full budget will be released in May.

$2.6 billion will be cut from EPA funding, and 3,200 employees will be discharged.

The proposed budget will decrease funding for international climate change and climate change research.

Among the programs losing funding is the Clean Power Plan, a program intended to combat climate change that was proposed by Barack Obama in 2015.

Students voiced their opinions when asked whether or not they believe Trump should be cutting EPA funding.

“[Trump] doesn’t believe climate change or global warming even exists when scientific evidence states otherwise,” Wyatt Metcalf, freshman in pre-business, said.

Metcalf believes that it’s a massive problem that EPA funding will be cut as we are constantly destroying the environment.

According to Sarah Salmon, senior in agronomy, the EPA is very important in regulating environmental and human health.

“To help ourselves, we need to protect the environment,” Salmon said.

Cara Smith, junior in animal ecology, fears that the proposed funding cuts will lead to an increase in deforestation and consequently detract attention from the U.S. Forest Service.

Similarly, most students polled in January by Chris Kahn, polling editor at Reuters, showed that a majority of Americans would like to see the EPA funding stay as it is or be increased.

“More than 60 percent of Americans would like to see the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s powers preserved or strengthened under incoming President Donald Trump, and the drilling of oil on public lands to hold steady or drop,” according to the Reuters poll.

Trump is staying true to promises outlined in his campaign, as he’s trying to shrink the role of other federal programs like the State Energy Program, Water and Waste Disposal Loan and Grant Program and National Wildlife Refuge System.

“Just over 60 percent of Americans think it would be wrong to weaken wildlife protections and air and water regulations to bolster the energy industry, while they were nearly evenly split on whether carbon emissions should be softened to help the industry,” according to the Reuters poll.

Despite this 60 percent, Trump remains firm on utilizing resources like clean coal, shale oil and natural gas reserves.

“Based off of conversations I’ve had with some Iowan farmers, I think that there is room for potential policy changes within the EPA and other programs, but they need to maintain a healthy budget to be influential,” said Michael French, senior in landscape architecture.