The following OpEd by ConservAmerica fellow Dan Mahoney appeared in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle on September 5, 2025:
America’s public lands, and its national parks in particular, are in urgent need of reinvestment.
These lands support our country’s $1.2 trillion outdoor recreation economy, but they are suffering from a growing deferred maintenance backlog. The estimated costs for that maintenance are $23.3 billion for the Park Service, $8.7 billion for the Forest Service, $5.7 billion for the Bureau of Land Management, and $2.7 billion for the Fish and Wildlife Service.
In an effort to address that shortfall, Congress passed the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) in 2020 with the support of President Trump. In doing so it established the National Parks and Public Lands Legacy Restoration Fund (LRF), allocating $6.5 billion over five years to park maintenance, and permanently funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund at $900 million annually.
LRF funding runs out this year, however, and there is much work yet to be done.
That is why it is vital that Congress reauthorize LRF through the America the Beautiful Act, as introduced by Montana Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy. As parks across the country work to manage record visitation with reduced staff, Congress must support our country’s best idea and pass this bill when it returns from recess in September.
This is some of the best money the government can spend in terms of ROI, since data shows every dollar spent on parks can yield more than $10 in return. In 2023, for example, the National Park Service generated over $50 billion in economic activity with a $3.3 billion budget.
Since its passage in 2020, the LRF has funded work on 560 maintenance projects across the country. Its reauthorization has bipartisan support, with 23 Senate cosponsors and over 50 endorsements from national, state, and local organizations. As a state that is home to two crown jewel national parks and over 27 million acres of federal public lands, Montana stands to be a chief beneficiary of this law.
While this is a difficult time for bipartisanship in Washington, public lands and our national parks continue to be a rare point of agreement across the political spectrum in Montana.