Private donations pour in for cash-strapped national parks

WASHINGTON — The National Park Service is seeing a surge in private support bigger than anytime in its 108-year history, as it also faces a maintenance backlog of more than $23 billion, made worse this fall by hurricane damage to its most popular location.

Three years after setting a goal of raising $1 billion, the Park Service’s official charitable partner, the National Park Foundation, is almost there, having raised $840 million since 2021, the foundation’s outgoing president and CEO Will Shafroth said.

That fundraising under the Campaign for National Parks is in addition to efforts of park partners across the country — such as the Trust for Public Land, American Battlefield Trust, Conservation Legacy and the Student Conservation Association — that collectively want to raise another $3.5 billion.

Visits to national parks rose from about 275 million in 2010 to 325 million last year. Shafroth said many of these visitors, inspired by the beauty of places like Yellowstone National Park, say the parks and staff have “created an amazing experience for me and my family. I want to give back.”

Hundreds of thousands more give back by volunteering, whether rebuilding trails, clearing trash, serving as docents or organizing special events.

“National parks experienced substantially increased public interest over the past two years,” according to the 2024 Park Partners Report commissioned by the foundation.

There are now at least 470 partner groups, many of them “Friends” organizations that coordinate volunteer work with superintendents of individual parks. That community provided nearly 1 million volunteer hours in the park system last year, the equivalent of 122,500 days or 471 full-time employees, according to the report.

One of those groups is Friends of the Smokies, which has about 2,000 members who volunteer for projects in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee, the most popular of the 63 national parks with 13.3 million visitors in 2023.

The park, which stretches over 816 square miles, sustained extensive damage from Hurricane Helene in late September, and many roads and trails are still closed to the public, said Dana Soehn, president of Friends of the Smokies. But the group is eager to get to work when the Park Service completes its assessments and makes restoration plans, she said.

“We stand at the ready to really push and raise funds,” Soehn said. “The public-private partnership in helping meet these challenging times is something that’s critically needed. Our organization is able to provide $2 million to $4 million of funding each year to help support the national park.”

Funding needs

The private funding goes a long way to help the cash-strapped National Park Service, with an operating budget of $3.3 billion in fiscal 2024, which supports about 20,000 full-time employees. The Senate’s Interior-Environment Appropriations bill would provide $3.5 billion in fiscal 2025, as the Biden administration requested, but the House version would cut the funding to $3.1 billion.

The Great American Outdoors Act passed by Congress in 2020 provided up to $1.3 billion per year for five years through 2025 to help reduce $23.3 billion in deferred maintenance projects.

Private donations won’t do much to reduce the maintenance backlog because most people aren’t interested in funding infrastructure projects like roads and bridges that are the government’s responsibility, Shafroth said.

“We’re never going to be very effective at convincing donors to pay for pothole repair and water systems and things like that,” he said. “So we really need to focus on the things that are resonant to donors and also are a high need for the parks.”

When Lilly Endowment Inc. announced a $100 million contribution in August, Shafroth’s foundation said the funds would go toward four priorities: creating environmental stewardship opportunities for young people, protecting fragile ecosystems and diverse species in the parks, developing new technologies to improve visitor experiences, and providing “a more comprehensive historical narrative” about national parks and the communities around them.

Many donors to the park system, especially corporate givers, are also motivated by the knowledge that public lands used for recreation are an economic driver.

Outdoor recreation generates $1.2 trillion in annual economic activity and supports 5 million jobs, according to a report released in November by the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable using data from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. The ORR is a coalition of more than 110,000 businesses in the sector.

The Interior Department reported last year that visitor spending in communities near national parks totals more than $50 billion a year, supporting nearly 400,000 jobs.

Other legislation

Advocates for the parks are urging Congress to rev up this economic engine by passing a package of bills that would overhaul how public land agencies distribute passes and permits, encourage technology to improve visitor experiences, restore campgrounds and address housing shortages near outdoor recreation areas, among other things.

The House passed the legislation sponsored by Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., in April by voice vote under suspension of the rules. Dozens of groups are urging the Senate to pass the measure in the lame-duck session.

“Despite the profound and widespread benefits that parks and outdoor recreation offer, they are chronically underfunded with many systems facing a significant backlog of capital improvement projects,” more than 50 organizations said in a Nov. 12 letter to Senate leaders urging them to prioritize the legislation.

Aside from their economic importance, Shafroth noted that national parks play a role in uniting Americans.

“You know, our country just feels so divided in so many ways, especially politically,” he said. “It feels like those divisions just dissolve when people enter a national park. They’re just citizens of the United States. They’re just lovers of the outdoors, appreciators of America’s story.”

Shafroth announced this fall that he plans to step aside as president and CEO of the National Park Foundation and turn over the reins to Park Service veteran Jeff Reinbold, most recently the superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks in Washington.

The pair will work together on the transition in December and January, then Shafroth said he plans to develop a new program at the foundation addressing issues facing the park system, including climate change, housing shortages near parks and development of new technologies.