Trump Admin Reportedly Nixes $25 Million in National Park Projects

Credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon and the National Park Service on Facebook

President Donald Trump’s administration has reportedly rejected more than 130 planned projects at national parks, putting at least $25 million in previously secured funding on hold.

The Interior Department last month declined to approve partnership agreements covering projects at parks including Yellowstone, Yosemite, Zion, and Joshua Tree, according to internal documents reported by The Washington Post on Friday.

The National Park Service uses such agreements to bring in outside organizations for specialized work without adding permanent federal employees, the paper noted. The rejected projects had already obtained funding, largely through congressional appropriations, existing federal programs, or internal processes.

Yet they were awaiting final Interior Department approval before the money could be released.

Department of the Interior spokesperson Aubrie Spady told The Post the department had “disapproved a number of partnership agreements with groups actively working against the best interests of the American people and the priorities of this administration.”

“This decisive action is ensuring that these taxpayer dollars are being used in alignment with the administration’s objectives to make life more affordable for Americans, unleash domestic energy production and expand access to our public lands,” she added.

Spady did not specify which administration policies the organizations or projects had potentially violated, according to the report.

Joshua Tree National Park was among the hardest hit, with at least 10 proposed agreements rejected. The planned work included wildfire recovery and prevention efforts and removing rodents carrying hantavirus from historic buildings.

“If this work is not completed, the park will be unable to fight wildfire. Fires will be larger and fire suppression will be more expensive,” an internal document warned about one Joshua Tree project.

Elsewhere, funding was rejected for work intended to protect prehistoric Native American mounds in Iowa from falling trees and a partnership aimed at preventing the endangered San Francisco garter snake from disappearing from the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Another rejected agreement would have funded three workers caring for sled dogs at Alaska’s Denali National Park and Preserve, where rangers use the animals for winter travel and visitor assistance.

The Great Basin Institute, a conservation nonprofit, accounted for more than 70 of the rejected agreements, worth at least $12.7 million. Its chief executive told The Post that the Department of Interior had not directly contacted the organization about the decision.

This news comes as the administration is also reportedly pursuing a land exchange at Yosemite that could give a private developer control of a quarter-mile strip of the park, according to NOTUS. The Park Service said last month, though, that “no final decisions” have been made.

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