National Parks Would Get Boost Under Biden Budget Request

By Jacob Fischler, Tennessee Lookout

June 4, 2021

Basic needs at the largest U.S. national parks top the Biden administration’s first proposed lists of projects to receive funding through public lands trust funds, showing how much maintenance is needed even as parks brace for record numbers of visitors this summer.

The projects likely wouldn’t be visible to the usual tourist, but they are essential to keep national parks functioning after a pandemic year in which many Americans “The list shows the extent of the disrepairs, with numerous projects that address basic clean water issues,” said John Garder, director for budget and appropriations at the National Parks Conservation Association, a group that advocates for national parks.

In its budget proposal last week, the administration included a list of proposed grants for the National Park Service and other Interior Department and Forest Service sites. The grants would come through the Land and Water Conservation Fund, or LWCF, and the National Parks and Public Lands and Legacy Restoration Fund, or LRF.

In the landmark Great American Outdoors Act, enacted in 2020, Congress stabilized the funding stream for the LWCF at $900 million annually. The law also created the LRF to provide $1.9 billion per year over five years to address deferred maintenance in national parks, national forests and other sites.

A 2018 National Park Service study found about $12 billion of overdue maintenance in the agency.
The administration’s proposed requests would pay for improvements at many of the nation’s most visited parks, including Acadia in Maine, the Everglades in Florida, Glacier in Montana, Grand Canyon in Arizona, Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina and Yellowstone in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

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