The FY23 omnibus budget bill awaiting Congressional approval would bolster funding for the National Park Service and contains a number of items related to the Park Service and National Park System/NPS file

An omnibus budget bill for the current fiscal year would boost the National Park Service's funding by $210 million to $2.93 billion, and provide $1.5 billion to pay for recovery efforts in parks hit by flooding, wildfire, and drought. The measure also contains a range of items related to the parks, from establishing new units and studying potential units to calling for additions to the national trails system and the Wild and Scenic Rivers system.

The massive, more than 4,000-page package, which the full Congress must yet approve to avoid a government shutdown, would provide funding for the Park Service to hire hundreds of park staff and address parks’ historical and natural resources. 

The section providing $1.5 billion in natural disaster recovery funding does not specify how the Park Service is to spend the money, but presumably it go towards recovery work in Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Denali national parks at least. There are other parks that suffered significant damage this year from natural disasters -- Death Valley National Park, Mojave National Preserve, and Voyageurs National Park all witnessed significant flooding -- and both Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Utah and Arizona both have incurred significant bills from struggling to cope with the Colorado River's drought-constricted flows. Too, Vicksburg National Military Park in Mississippi and Tennessee continues to recover from catastrophic flooding in 2020 that washed out portions of Vicksburg National Cemetery.

Yellowstone alone is expected to need hundreds of millions of dollars to recover from June's historic floods, which took out sections of the park's north and northeast entrance roads. While temporary patches have been made to the Northeast Entrance Road, the main road from Gardiner, Montana, to Mammoth Hot Springs in the park remains shattered and officials are expected to propose a new path for a replacement road, one out of the canyon cut by the Gardner RIver.

“This bill is a sign that lawmakers are picking up the pace on annual national park funding and recognizing the numerous challenges facing these iconic places,” said Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of National Parks Conservation Association. “This year was a wakeup call as we witnessed severe natural disasters take a costly toll on our already underfunded and understaffed national parks. The scenes of floods demolishing Yellowstone and Death Valley, wildfires burning through Yosemite and droughts preventing people from accessing Lake Mead and devastating surrounding communities will not quickly be forgotten. Thankfully, this funding will help our parks bring back hundreds of staff to safely welcome the millions of people who visit them and keep gateway communities up and running.”

Also pleased with the measure was Mike Murray, chair of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks.

“We applaud the significant increase in funding for the National Park Service. This funding will help our parks hire much-needed additional staff to protect our irreplaceable resources and better serve visitors at parks across the country," he said. "In addition, it will help to expand housing for NPS staff, a critical need across the National Park System. We are pleased by several components of this legislative package. It provides funding for parks such as Yellowstone and Death Valley that are still trying to recover from the terrible natural disasters we experienced this year. In addition, there is funding to help address deferred maintenance projects, language that continues to protect Chaco Canyon from energy development, and a reauthorization of the National Park Foundation’s appropriation. We appreciate the hard work of our Congressional appropriators and park champions and will continue to work with our representatives to ensure our parks, programs, and public lands have the funding they need to protect resources and serve the public."

But the bill did draw not praise from all corners.

"The must-pass annual appropriations legislation retains language that first appeared in the FY2015 appropriations bill to prohibit the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from even considering whether the greater sage grouse warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act," said Josh Osher, public policy director at the Western Watersheds Project. "This year’s bill also now includes a poison-pill rider that mandates a six-year delay to implement necessary measures to prevent the entanglement and death of critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. Estimates suggest that there are fewer than 350 right whales remaining, with fewer that 100 breeding females.

“At a time when most global leaders have agreed to protect 30 percent of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030, manage the remaining 70 percent of the planet to avoid losing key habitats needed to support biodiversity, and ensure that industry discloses biodiversity risks and impacts, Congress is going in completely the opposite direction and potentially consigning both of these iconic species to extinction,” said Osher.

The bill contains quite a number of Park Service-related items that would move forward with enactment of the legislation. Among them:

* At Virgin Islands National Park, in the area of the Ram Head Trail at the peak of Ram Head, a plaque is to be displayed that commemorates the slave rebellion that began on St. John on November 23, 1733.

* Pullman National Monument would be renamed Pullman National Historical Park.

* Park boundary modifications are to be made at Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, Wilson's Creek National Battlefield, Ste. Genevieve National Historical Park, Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Park, and Cane River Creole National Historical Park.

* The Interior secretary would gain permission to obtain 15 acres on Mount Desert Island in Maine for housing for Acadia National Park workers.

* The 124-acre New Philadelphia National Historic Site in Illinois would be established "to protect, preserve, and interpret the historic resources associated with the town of New Philadelphia, the first town in the United States planned and legally registered by a free African American before the Civil War."

* The 16.5-mile Chilkoot National Historic Trail would be established in Alaska within Klondike Goldrush National Historical Park.

* A study would look into establishment of the Alaska Long National Scenic Trail, a 500-mile route from Seward to Fairbanks.

* There would be a feasibility study into the Buckeye National Scenic Trail, which as envisioned would follow a loop extending approximately 1,454 miles from Lake Erie to the Ohio River, through the farmland of northwest Ohio, the hills of Appalachia, the Black Hand sandstone cliffs of the Hocking Hills region, and the Bluegrass region of southwest Ohio.

* Sections of the Kissimmee River in Florida would be studied for possible inclusion under the Wild and Scenic Rivers program.

* Stretches of the Little Manatee River in Florida would be studied for possible inclusion under the Wild and Scenic Rivers program.

* Portions of the Houstaonic River in Connecticutt would be designed a "wild and scenic" river.

* Sections of the York River in Maine would be designated as a recreational river under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

* The bill calls for a number of Park Service studies to determine the propriety of: establishing a park system unit recognizing a historically black agricultural settlement founded by Oliver Toussaint Jackson in Weld County, Colorado; whether sites of lynchings in Mississippi should be included in the National Park System; and whether the coastline and adjacent areas to the Santa Monica Bay from Will Rogers State Beach to Torrance Beach, including the areas in and around Ballona Creek and the Baldwin Hills and the San Pedro section of the City of Los Angeles in California, should be added to the park system; 

* The Interior secretary shall create a United States African-American Burial Grounds Preservation Program, which would provide grants to organizations that want to  preservate, restore, and interpret African-American burial grounds in the country.

* The Interior secretary would create Japanese American Confinement Education Grants to support education surrounding the confinement of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Also, the secretary would create a Japanese American World War II History Network to complement and not duplicate studies of Japanese American World War II history and Japanese American experiences during World War II, including studies related to relocation centers and confinement sites.

* The National Park Foundation would receive $15 million to support the organization as it helps the National Park Service address such issues as deferred maintenance needs and visitation challenges.

“While we wrap up the year with some great progress for our national parks, we also recognize the missed opportunities to better protect America’s rich and diverse history. We will build on today’s momentum and continue to fight for the funding and resources our parks need and deserve. And we will not stop until we ensure that everyone feels welcome in our parks and has access, no matter where they live, to these places,” said Pierno.