When Congress gets back to work, it will have quite a few measures tied to the National Park System to consider.

At the end of June, U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, introduced an 891-page omnibus bill, S. 1460, the Energy and Natural Resources Act of 2017.  This legislation is the successor to similar bipartisan legislation from the previous Congress that passed the Senate and House but for which the conference was incomplete at the end of the session. S. 1460 was placed directly on the Senate calendar for expedited consideration by the full Senate. 

According to the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, among the items in the bill related to the park system are the following items:

• Sec. 5101, to establish the National Park Service Critical Maintenance and Revitalization Conservation Fund consisting of $150 million annually deposited into the fund from Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas drilling revenues, subject to annual appropriations, to be used for high-priority deferred maintenance needs of NPS that support critical infrastructure and visitor services;
• Sec. 5102, to permanently reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund and direct that not less than 40 percent will be available annually for federal land acquisition purposes; not less than 40 percent collectively for state grants, the Forest Legacy program, cooperative endangered species grants, and the American Battlefield Protection program; and not less than 1.5 percent or $10 million, whichever is greater, for projects that secure recreational access to public lands for hunting, fishing, and other recreational activities.
• Sec. 5103, to permanently reauthorize the Historic Preservation Fund;
• Sec. 5104, to require the establishment of a conservation incentives landowner education program to inform landowners interested in undertaking conservation activities on their lands, including the potential acquisition of their land, donation of their land, or the use of perpetual or term conservation easements and agreements. 

• Sec. 6101, to authorize the secretary to develop and maintain a current and accurate multipurpose geospatially enabled inventory of buildings and other real property, including roads, transmission lines, and pipelines located on federal lands;
• Sec. 6107, to require the secretary to establish a process to expedite access to federal lands for organizations and individuals to conduct good Samaritan search-and-recovery missions within 48 hours of receiving such requests, and under specific conditions outlined in the section; 
• Sec. 7001, to authorize a special resource study of the President James K. Polk Home in Columbia, Tennessee, as a potential unit of the national park system;
• Sec. 7002, to authorize a special resource study of Fort Ontario in New York as a potential unit of the national park system; 

• Sec. 7101, to redesignate Ocmulgee National Monument in Georgia as Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park and to revise its boundaries to include additional properties;
• Sec. 7102, to authorize the secretary of the Interior to acquire approximately 44 acres of land in Martinez, California, for inclusion in John Muir National Historic Site;
• Sec. 7103, to authorize administrative and visitor center facilities at Coltsville National Historical Park in Connecticut to be located in appropriate buildings within the Colt Armory Complex instead of the East Armory building;
• Sec. 7104, to revise the boundary of Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park in Georgia to include the Wallis House and Hairston Hill;
• Sec. 7105, to designate the wilderness within Lake Clark National Park and Preserve in Alaska as the Jay S. Hammond Wilderness;
• Sec. 7107, to make Hispanic-serving, Asian-American-serving, and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions eligible for preservation education and training programs under the Historic Preservation Act;
• Sec. 7108, to redesignate the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Georgia as the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park and to expand the boundary to include the Prince Hall Masonic Temple, the headquarters of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference;
• Sec. 7109, to provide access to certain vehicles servicing municipalities adjacent to the Delaware Gap National Recreation Area in Pennsylvania via Route 209;
• Sec. 7110, to amend the Denali National Park Improvement Act to clarify certain provisions relating to the natural gas pipeline authorized in Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska;
• Sec. 7111, to authorize the secretary to allow the introduction of a small number of free-roaming wild horses from Cape Lookout National Seashore in North Carolina to ensure the genetic diversity and viability of the wild horse population in and around the Currituck National Wildlife Refuge; 
• Sec. 7112, to designate segments of the Lower Farmington River and the Salmon Brook in Connecticut as recreational rivers within the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System;
• Sec. 7114, to authorize the secretary of the Interior to establish restroom facilities in the vicinity of the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial within George Washington Memorial Parkway in Virginia;
• Sec. 7115, to remove the use restrictions on a parcel of land transferred to Rockingham County, Virginia, under the Federal Lands to Parks Program to allow its continued use as a day care center;
• Sec. 7116, to authorize a land exchange between the George Washington Memorial Parkway and the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center of the Federal Highway Administration to allow better access to the center;
• Sec. 7117, to expand the boundary of Shiloh National Military Park Tennessee and Missouri, and to establish the Parker’s Crossroads Battlefield as an affiliated area of the national park system;
• Sec. 7118, to reauthorize the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Historic Preservation Program; 
• Sec. 7119, to expand the boundary of Fort Frederica National Monument in Georgia;
• Sec. 7120, to authorize the designation of the small property at 24th and Massachusetts Avenue N.W. in Washington, D.C., as Robert Emmet Park and to the placement in the park of information about his statue, his contributions to Irish independence, and his respect for the United States and the American Revolution;
• Sec. 7121, to designate a National Memorial to Fallen Educators at the National Teachers Hall of Fame in Emporia, Kansas;
• Sec. 7122, to establish within the National Park Service a U.S. Civil Rights Network that includes all NPS parks and programs that relate to the civil rights movement from 1939 through 1968 as well as related federal, state, local, and privately owned properties and related research, educational or interpretive programs carried out by non-governmental organizations.  This section also requires the dissemination of educational materials and the provision of technical assistance, and the adoption of an official symbol for the network;
• Sec. 7123, to establish a commission to authorize activities and programs to recognize the contributions of African-Americans to the United States over the past 400 years;
• Sec. 7124, to transfer administrative jurisdiction from BLM to NPS for several properties within the boundary of Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota and to authorize the exchange of lands between NPS and Minnesota for a couple of state-owned properties within the park’s boundaries;
• Sec. 7125, to revise the authorized route of the North Country National Scenic Trail in northeastern Minnesota and to extend the trail into Vermont to connect with the Appalachian National Scenic Trail;
• Sec. 7126, to authorize the establishment of the National Emergency Medical Services commemorative work in Washington, D.C.;
• Sec. 7127, to designate the Appalachian Forest National Heritage Area, Maryland and West Virginia; the Maritime Washington National Heritage Area, Washington; the Mountains to Sound Greenway National Heritage Area, Washington; the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta National Heritage Area, California; and the Susquehanna National Heritage Area, Pennsylvania;
• Sec. 7128, to adjust the boundary of the Abraham Lincoln National Heritage Area in Illinois to include two additional cities and an additional county;
• Sec. 7129, to authorize a study of a potential Finger Lakes National Heritage Area in New York;
• Sec. 7130, to authorize the placement of additional commemorative elements or engravings at the Second Division Memorial in President’s Park, Washington, D.C.;
• Sec. 7131, to modify the maximum acreage available for inclusion in the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Colorado;
• Sec. 7132, to modify the boundary of the Fort Scott National Historic Site in Kansas;
• Sec. 7133, to authorize a small land exchange between Gulf Islands National Seashore in Mississippi and a local Veterans of Foreign Wars Post;
• Sec. 7134, to authorize the establishment of the Ste. Genevieve National Historical Park in Missouri upon acquisition of sufficient lands to constitute a manageable unit;
• Sec. 7135, to authorize the transport of bows and crossbows not ready for immediate use in vehicles traveling across NPS lands; and
• Sec. 7136, to authorize the use of qualified volunteers in wildlife management on NPS lands. 

In the House, the House Natural Resources Committee recently approved the following bills: 

• H.R. 289, to amend the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act to specify the circumstances under which the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture may issue special recreation permits and charge fees for specialized individual and group use of federal facilities, lands, and waters. Most of this revised authority applies to the Forest Service and the BLM, but the general authority to issue permits and charge fees also applies to NPS;
• H.R. 954, to remove the use restrictions on a parcel of land transferred to Rockingham County, Virginia, under the Federal Lands to Parks Program to allow its continued use as a day care center;
• H.R. 1397, to authorize a land exchange between the George Washington Memorial Parkway and the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center of the Federal Highway Administration to allow better access to the center;
• H.R. 1541, to modify the boundary of the Fort Scott National Historic Site in Kansas;
• H.R. 1719, to authorize the secretary of the Interior to acquire approximately 44 acres of land in Martinez, California, for inclusion in John Muir National Historic Site;
• H.R. 1927, to establish within the National Park Service a U.S. Civil Rights Network that includes all NPS parks and programs that relate to the civil rights movement from 1939 through 1968 as well as related federal, state, local, and privately owned properties and related research, educational or interpretive programs carried out by non-governmental organizations.  The bill also requires the dissemination of educational materials and the provision of technical assistance, and the adoption of an official symbol for the network;
• H.R. 2370, to authorize Escambia County, Florida, to convey to any person or entity, without restriction, its interest in any part of the former Santa Rosa Island National Monument that was conveyed to the county by the federal government in 1947. The bill conditions the conveyance on the requirement that Escambia County preserve in perpetuity the areas, on the date of enactment, that are dedicated for conservation, preservation, or public recreation use; and
• H.R. 2425, to require the Department of the Treasury to establish a separate special account for the National Park Service, the other land management agencies, and the Bureau of Reclamation for the deposit of rental fees received from the occupancy and use of federal lands for communications purposes. The fees shall remain available for use in support of these activities by the respective agencies.