Interior Dept claws back NPS money to fund Trump projects
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) As Americans continue to flock to national parks, maintenance backlogs continue to increase. Now, the Trump administration has made the situation worse by blocking millions in funding for National Park Service projects that were already approved.
In late August, the Montana Conservation Voters, a nonprofit organization, sent a letter to Montana’s U.S. senators asking them to advocate for better funding for the National Park Service and to improve government transparency, especially regarding recent reports that the Trump administration has blocked funding for more than 1,600 national parks projects, most of which would have provided needed maintenance.
“Glacier and Yellowstone are central to Montana’s identity, our outdoor way of life, and the economies of communities across our state. Montanans and park visitors should not be forced to subsidize projects in Washington while being left with deteriorating facilities, fewer services, and a less safe park experience here at home,” said Ben Super, Montana Conservation Voters Education Fund executive director, in a release. “Senators Daines and Sheehy have a responsibility to stand up for Montana’s parks, our communities who rely on them, and the millions of people who visit them.”
Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy have yet to respond, according to MCV spokesperson Anna Shaffer.
Where did the funding go? On Aug. 9, the Substack “Scott MacFarlane Reports” reported that internal Park Service records showed that more than $323 million had been made available this year for President Donald Trump’s projects on the White House grounds and almost $100 million was made available for projects on the National Mall. Those projects include a new White House ballroom and National Mall reflecting pool.
The records showed that Trump’s money had come from funds allotted to but then later withdrawn from around 1,500 National Park Service projects. Those projects had been moved to a “low priority” list, while Trump’s projects were given first priority. The shelved projects at more than 200 NPS sites ranged from roof repairs at Golden Gate National Recreation Area, to computer upgrades at Alaska’s Katmai National Park and bulk purchases of toilet paper and garbage bags at Yellowstone National Park, according to the Associated Press. The Atlantic Magazine reported that the Yellowstone Center for Resources won’t receive $1.5 million for a roof-replacement project “to halt pest invasions and water leaks.”
Park service employees “were told to not expect anything on the low priority list to be contracted,” an anonymous official told the Associated Press.
Then on Sept. 11, reporters for the Washington Post received additional internal documents that showed the Trump administration has blocked more than 130 additional NPS projects that would have started in fiscal year 2027. The total funding for those projects was $25 million.
Glacier and Yellowstone national parks had four projects that dealt with processing and cataloguing records, manuscripts and oral histories. For example, one Yellowstone project would preserve and catalog backlogged bison and ungulate management records, including some preserved on obsolete audiovisual and electronic media.
More than a half-million dollars in funding would have paid for 15 employees: two at Glacier and 13 at Yellowstone. Although archival work is not physical maintenance, it’s work that the Park Service can’t do itself after losing roughly a quarter of its staff since Trump took office in 2025.
“Bison management remains a significant public controversy, particularly in adjacent states. Cataloging these records will promote understanding of agency policies and activities, support research and public use, and ensure their long-term preservation. If not awarded, records that the NPS has a legal mandate to curate and preserve in perpetuity will not be collected. Without funding, critical preservation tasks for archives collections would remain incomplete, risking their integrity and curtailing public engagement resources,” according to a Park Service funding application.
The Interior Department told the Washington Post that the 130 or so projects were blocked because they’d been contracted with organizations that had been identified as working against administration priorities. Great Basin Institute executive director Peter Woodruff was surprised to learn his organization was one of the ones labeled as “working against the administration,” because the Institute is already helping the NPS on a number of projects that received earlier funding. He said he hopes it turns out to be a misunderstanding.
For 28 years, the Nevada-based Great Basin Institute has used applied science and direct service to support national parks, forests and other public lands. It had cooperative agreements to do the archival work at Glacier and Yellowstone, along with projects for other parks totaling $12.7 million. Of the 78 projects that Great Basin Institute partnered with various parks to do, six were rated mid-level priority and the rest were assigned high or highest priority when the applications were submitted, Woodruff said.
So he was surprised in early August as little by little, the various national parks he thought he’d be working with started telling him their projects were denied. He received no notification from the Interior Department.
Woodruff sent a Aug. 13 letter to the Interior Department, asking for clarification as to why his funding had been denied. He said he has yet to get a response. But he’s hoping that the issue can be addressed so the parks can reapply for funding in the next fiscal year.
However, things aren’t looking promising for the next fiscal year. The Trump administration proposed a 32% cut to the NPS budget, but the House appropriations committee chose instead to give the NPS close to what it received in 2026. The administration wants $11.76 billion in mandatory appropriations, $10 billion of which would be slated for the Presidential Capital Stewardship Program in Washington, D.C.
The administration also proposed an 18%reduction from fiscal 2026 enacted staffing levels. The cuts likely reflect a pending reorganization of the NPS planned by the Trump administration. In late August, more internal NPS documents obtained by News of The United States showed that the administration planned on combining national parks in a hub-and-spoke system where “hub” parks control “spoke” parks and all would have to share resources.
Finally, the administration requested that $578 million be spent on maintenance and facility operations while the House proposal would provide $783 million. Neither would come close to addressing the NPS maintenance backlog. In April, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told a Senate appropriations subcommittee that the Park Service still had $30 billion worth of deferred maintenance.
The National Park Service received some temporary funding relief starting in 2020 thanks to the National Parks and Public Lands Legacy Restoration Fund, which helped address billions of dollars of maintenance issues. That fund expired in 2025, but Congress is working on new bills to replace it, although there are heated debates about what the money should pay for.
In Montana, Glacier National Park has a deferred maintenance backlog of approximately $132 million, while Yellowstone National Park faces more than $1.2 billion in deferred maintenance and repair needs. And yet, the visitors keep coming. For the third year in a row, Yellowstone has hosted 3.5 million visitors by the end of August.
“It is unacceptable that this administration is siphoning visitor fees away from Montana’s national parks to fund wasteful projects in Washington, D.C. Using those dollars for a reflecting pool makeover while Glacier and Yellowstone face stalled maintenance projects, staffing shortages, and a growing repair backlog shows just how badly this administration has its priorities backwards,” Super said.
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.