Position on House FY26 Interior Appropriations

On behalf of the National Parks Conservation Association’s (NPCA) more than 1.6 million members and supporters nationwide, I write to express our opposition to the FY26 Interior, Environment and Related Agencies appropriations bill and urge you to oppose it. Instead, we ask you to support a bill that improves national park funding, stops the hiring freeze and increases National Park Service staff.

Since 1919, NPCA has been the leading voice of the American people in protecting and enhancing our National Park System and we know that funding and staffing our parks is one of their most urgent needs. The National Park Service (NPS) has been under unprecedented assault, and now is the time for Congress to provide strong support; this bill does the opposite.

On the one hand, we commend subcommittee Chairman Simpson and Ranking Member Pingree for rejecting the administration’s most damaging budget proposals. In particular, the bill ignores the effort to cut $900 million from the NPS operating budget and sell off or transfer hundreds of NPS-managed park units. We also commend the bill’s rejection of the administration’s requests to utilize LWCF funds for maintenance and to zero out funding for historic preservation and recreation community grant programs. However, the bill still contains significant and unsustainable cuts and policy provisions that would set our national parks back further.

The bill cuts the overall NPS budget by more than 6% ($213 million). This funding would set our parks and communities back significantly, especially at a time when the agency has already suffered debilitating staff cuts during the current fiscal year despite this committee’s bipartisan investment in park staffing. The unrealistic, deeply damaging cut of 6% ($176 million) to the Operation of the National Park System would lead to the loss of thousands of park rangers and other staff, significantly undermining protection of natural and cultural resources as well as visitor services.

If enacted, these cuts would only make a truly terrible situation for our national parks even worse. Since January, NPS has lost an unprecedented 24% of permanent staff due to the hiring freeze, deferred resignations and early retirements, firing of probationary employees—not all of whom returned to NPS after reversal of that decision—and staff continuing to leave feeling under assault with the potential for a Reduction in Force (RIF). We urge this committee to—rather than cut park operations funding—instead show oversight of administration’s series of actions undermining our national parks, their staff and resources and the well-being of the communities that depend on safe and healthy parks.

The committee should pursue statutorily binding oversight language reversing the NPS hiring freeze, preventing a RIF of NPS employees, and providing funding to rebuild the ranks of a beleaguered Park Service.

This legislation cuts park construction funding by 21% ($37 million), which would likely contribute to the growth of the deferred maintenance and repairs backlog that has attracted bipartisan concern and support for addressing it. We are also concerned about the deep cuts in this bill to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), which are key agency partners in protecting clean air and water and wildlife important to national parks and surrounding communities. The bill also imposes a 32% cut to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), an agency vital to federal review of historic sites. This drastic reduction directly undermines the federal government’s legal obligation to safeguard our nation’s historic and cultural resources and, after the recent elimination of staff positions, would further weaken the agency’s ability to carry out Section 106 reviews and protect historic places across the country.

The bill includes policy riders that harm parks, communities and the environment on which they depend. For instance, it includes reducing protection of national monuments designated under the Antiquities Act, egregiously threatens water quality in Voyageurs National Park and Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness by defunding a mining ban that would prevent toxic mining, and seeks to prevent the designation of wilderness in Big Cypress National Preserve.

Several other riders directly undermine the protection of more than 600 threatened and endangered species that have habitat in national parks. Not only does the bill rescind important regulations implementing the Endangered Species Act, it also attacks recovery efforts for specific national park species, including the grizzly bear, gray wolf, wolverine and northern long-eared bat. Several other policy riders give extractive industries easier access to public lands and weaken the government’s ability to protect them. This represents a troubling double standard: further diminishing resources for protecting our national parks while advancing even more benefits for industries that threaten them. These are among the policy provisions we oppose.

This bill would set our national parks back significantly, threaten the economies of the many communities that rely on them for their livelihood, undermine the incremental progress addressing climate change and significantly harm our air, water and wildlife.

In closing, we urge you to oppose this damaging bill and instead work with the Senate to produce a bipartisan bill that supports our national parks and communities with added funding and statutorily binding language to end the hiring freeze and prevent a RIF of NPS employees.