DENVER—Earlier this year, National Park Service headquarters in Washington shifted about 1,500 projects, many already approved, to a new “low priority” list, the Associated Press reported in August. The projects span more than 200 sites and carry a combined cost estimate of more than $400 million. Park Service employees “were told to not expect anything on the low priority list to be contracted,” one official told the AP, and officials said almost all of the work is expected to go undone.
Meanwhile, White House priorities, including projects tied to President Donald Trump’s Freedom 250 initiative, were given a new, top-priority status. That list included the $16 million botched effort to paint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool blue.
“The cancelled projects are working on things that are widely popular, across partisan lines. Who doesn’t want safer water and cleaner campgrounds?” a National Park Service ranger told the Center for Western Priorities. CWP is not identifying the ranger. “So they’ll cancel projects like these that keep parks safe in order to save a few dollars, but then they turn around and spend millions in D.C. on gold-plated statues. That’s what’s more important to them, which is both appalling and un-American.”
A new interactive map from the Center for Western Priorities shows 1,492 projects designated low priority at 276 national parks and Park Service offices, drawn from an internal NPS project database. They range from roof repairs and computer upgrades to toilet paper and garbage bags. In the West, 548 projects across 12 states landed on the list, including 97 in Alaska, 90 in California, and 78 in Wyoming.
The Park Service’s repair backlog has doubled over the last decade to more than $24 billion, and the agency has lost at least a quarter of its permanent workforce under the current Trump administration.
Project records are from an internal NPS project database, updated as of late August, 2026.
The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Center for Western Priorities Creative Content and Policy Manager Lilly Bock-Brownstein:
“These are the everyday projects that keep parks open and running: roof repairs, replacing outdated computers, even buying toilet paper and garbage bags. None of that is low priority. It’s the basic work national parks need to function.
“It is illuminating to see which repairs and purchases were pushed aside so Secretary Burgum could pay for President Trump’s vanity projects in Washington. The National Park Service is supposed to protect every park. Instead, parks across the country are being neglected while money flows to the president’s pet projects.”
Learn more:
- National park maintenance work sidelined as Trump’s Freedom 250 takes precedence — Associated Press
2026 NPS Agreement Disapprovals — Center for Western Priorities
How Burgum is helping Trump gut national parks to fund vanity projects — Center for Western Priorities
Staffing shortages, traffic jams and a culture war: Inside the fight over America’s national parks — CNN
Featured image: Great American Outdoors Act project in Colorado National Monument. Source: NPS Flickr.