Washington DC - President Donald Trump on Wednesday said his administration aims to cut around 65% of staff at the Environmental Protection Agency, a key regulatory body that works on a range of areas, including climate change.

"I spoke with Lee Zeldin and he thinks he's going to be cutting 65 or so percent of the people from environmental," he said, referring to the EPA administrator.

The agency currently employs more than 17,000 people, of the roughly two million total US federal workforce.

Trump has made slashing the size of the federal government a key priority in his first days in office, tasking Elon Musk, the world's richest person, with aiding that effort as well as cutting government spending.

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The Republican ran on a platform that promised to curb environmental protection regulations, specifically those related to climate change, in order to increase economic growth.

He has called climate change a "scam" and pulled Washington out of the landmark Paris Agreement for a second time on his first day back in office.

Since then, he has declared a "national energy emergency" to expand domestic oil drilling and signed executive orders to slow the transition to electric vehicles and halt offshore wind farm projects.

Zeldin, a former congressman from New York, has committed to delivering Trump's campaign promises, although he acknowledged last month that man-made climate change was "real."