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The Trump administration released new details of its proposed Fiscal Year 2026 budget in a late Friday trash dump on the White House website. The new 1,200-page document lays out massive cuts to programs and staffing across America’s public lands and national parks. Additionally, the budget proposes to raid the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), using non-taxpayer funds to pay for park maintenance instead of land protection. This would effectively rescind the Great American Outdoors Act which Congress passed in 2020 to provide permanent funding for LWCF.
The Bureau of Land Management would be hit especially hard by the administration’s cuts, which propose slashing 75 percent of the agency’s funding from national monuments and conservation areas, 77 percent from wildlife habitat, and 63 percent from recreation management, leaving BLM with just $27 million to manage recreation for the more than 80 million people who recreate on BLM lands every year.
“You can see why President Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum tried to hide this budget proposal in the dead of night—it’s indefensible,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director at the Center for Western Priorities. “When Secretary Burgum travels to Capitol Hill in a few weeks, I’m confident he’ll get a frigid reception from both sides of the aisle if he doubles down on this plan to eviscerate the lands he’s supposed to care for on behalf of our kids and grandkids.”
The proposed budget would also eliminate more than 5,500 full-time equivalent positions from the National Park Service and 4,600 positions from the U.S. Forest Service.
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I’m tired of waking up at 3 in the morning and not being able to fall back asleep because I’m concerned about how I’m going to navigate the latest staffing communiqué.”
