National Park Service Budget Squeezed Despite Growing Needs

Why It Matters

A new Congressional Research Service report on National Park Service (NPS) appropriations trends lays bare a decade-long squeeze on the National Park Service. The agency is being asked to do more with less, and a confluence of policy decisions is making that gap harder to close.

NPS's regular discretionary budget grew 11 percent in nominal dollars between fiscal year 2017 and fiscal year 2026, but when adjusted for inflation, it fell 16 percent. Meanwhile, the agency's deferred maintenance backlog nearly doubled, staffing declined by an estimated 18 percent, and a landmark funding mechanism that had been filling the gap expired at the end of fiscal year 2025.

The 119th Congress, operating alongside an administration that has pursued aggressive federal workforce reductions, now faces decisions about whether and how to replace that funding.

The Big Picture

The report, updated June 3 by CRS specialist in natural resources policy Laura B. Comay, tracks park service appropriations across six budget accounts from fiscal year 2017 through fiscal year 2026. The picture that emerges from the NPS budget analysis shows its diverging priorities, with accounts that fund assistance to nonfederal entities growing in real terms, while accounts that fund what happens inside the parks in decline.

The Operation of the National Park System account, which covers day-to-day park operations and represents 89 percent of NPS's fiscal year 2026 discretionary budget, fell 10 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars over the decade. Every sub-activity within it declined in real terms. Visitor services took the steepest hit, falling 17 percent. Resource stewardship fell 8 percent. Park protection fell 10 percent.

The construction account, which funds repairs and new infrastructure, fared worse. Regular appropriations for that account dropped 68 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars over the decade, falling from $209 million in fiscal year 2017 to just $88 million in fiscal year 2026. The Centennial Challenge account, a matching-grant program designed to spur private donations for park improvements, fell 81 percent in real terms, from $20 million to $5 million.

Congress partially offset those declines through supplemental appropriations tied to natural disasters. The largest came in fiscal year 2025, when lawmakers approved $2.313 billion in disaster relief for the construction account alone, more than two-thirds the size of NPS's entire regular appropriation for that year. But those supplementals are reactive and unpredictable, not a substitute for sustained baseline funding.

The Great American Outdoors Act, signed in 2020, represented the most significant structural intervention of the decade. It created the National Parks and Public Lands Legacy Restoration Fund, which provided $1.33 billion annually in mandatory spending for NPS deferred maintenance from fiscal year 2021 through fiscal year 2025. It also shifted Land and Water Conservation Fund spending from discretionary to mandatory, removing it from the annual appropriations fight. But the Legacy Restoration Fund's authorization expired at the end of fiscal year 2025, and no replacement has been enacted.

The deferred maintenance backlog shows what happens when infrastructure investment lags. The CRS report estimates the backlog grew from $11.607 billion in fiscal year 2017 to $24.237 billion as of the end of fiscal year 2025, an increase of 108 percent in nominal dollars and 58 percent in inflation-adjusted terms. The agency attributed part of that growth to changes in how it calculates deferred maintenance, but the trajectory is unmistakable. Combined discretionary funding for the two budget sub-activities that primarily address maintenance fell 21 percent in real terms over the decade.

The agency also expanded during this period. Nineteen new units were added to the National Park System between fiscal year 2017 and fiscal year 2026, including the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in Illinois and Mississippi, the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument in Pennsylvania, and the Frances Perkins National Monument in Maine. Total acreage remained roughly stable at approximately 85 million acres.

Political Stakes

For the Administration

The report provides an uncomfortable baseline. The Office of Personnel Management, cited directly in the CRS report, recorded a 16 percent drop in NPS employee counts during fiscal year 2025 alone, attributed to workforce reduction initiatives tied to Executive Order 14210, the Department of Government Efficiency workforce optimization order signed in February 2025. The CRS report estimates fiscal year 2026 staffing at roughly 16,039 full-time equivalents, down from 19,668 in FY2017, the lowest level in the decade covered by the report.

The administration also did not release an NPS budget justification for fiscal year 2026, an omission the CRS report flags directly. Without that document, Congress could not fund line-item construction projects through the normal process, and those funds were redirected into the operations account instead. The joint explanatory statement for the relevant appropriations law noted that the relevant committees had not received a list of requested line-item construction projects and expressed that they looked forward to receiving one in the future. Congress also enacted P.L. 119-21, which rescinded unobligated balances from a $500 million mandatory appropriation for NPS employee hiring that had been provided under the Inflation Reduction Act. That rescission further constrained the agency's capacity to rebuild its workforce.

For Republicans

The report presents a trade-off between fiscal restraint and constituent demand. National parks are broadly popular across the political spectrum, and the expiration of the Legacy Restoration Fund deferred maintenance program leaves a multibillion-dollar infrastructure gap that will be visible to visitors. The 119th Congress will need to decide whether to renew that program or find another mechanism.

For Democrats

The report offers a documented record of real-dollar decline in park operations funding, paired with a staffing collapse driven by executive action. Annual visits to the parks stood at approximately 323 million in 2025, 2 percent below the 2017 peak, with the CRS report citing the six-week government shutdown in October and November 2025 as one contributing factor.

For the Public

Fewer staff managing more park units, a maintenance backlog approaching $25 billion, and reduced visitor services funding all directly impact the experience of visiting a national park.

The Bottom Line

The ten-year park funding trends documented in this CRS report make two things clear. First, the National Park Service has been losing ground in real terms for a decade, and the structural funding that helped offset that decline has now expired. Second, the current administration's workforce reduction initiatives have accelerated a staffing decline that was already underway, compressing the agency's capacity precisely when the deferred maintenance backlog is at its largest recorded level. The question before the 119th Congress is whether to treat the expiration of the Legacy Restoration Fund as a one-time event or to replace it with something durable.

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