Federal lands, including national parks, currently have a combined maintenance backlog of more than $35 billion, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. Advocates at Pew are calling on Congress to pass a bill renewing the Legacy Restoration Fund, which would put $9 billion into upkeep public land.
The National Parks and Public Lands Legacy Restoration Fund was originally passed in 2020 as part of the Great American Outdoors Act. It put $9 billion into address maintenance backlogs on federal land, including more than $260 million to improve public lands in New York State alone.
However, the LRF expired in 2025 and since then, Rebecca Knuffke, a senior officer of U.S. conservation at Pew, said the backlog has not been addressed.
“Without another large tranche of funding, many of these great projects would just go undone as they have for many years, and that means things like closed roads, closed trails, closed bathrooms, parking lots in disrepair, perhaps even closures at parking lots,” said Knuffke.
The Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site in Buffalo receives about a third of its funding every year from the National Parks Service. Executive Director and Site Superintendent Spencer Morgan said his site has not yet received its operation dollars for the year from the federal government.
The site is also dealing with a maintenance backlog, Morgan said, in the form of an “ancient” HVAC system and a Victorian roof that needs to be replaced.
“All cyclic maintenance dollars were essentially refused by Washington for the 2026 fiscal year,” said Morgan, “So all of those projects that we had on the punch list for this year have been detained to a future budget year, which means no cyclic maintenance is happening.”
The bill to reauthorize the Legacy Restoration Fund has bipartisan support in Congress, said Knuffke. She hoped the legislation would pass quickly.
“If people can't enjoy these national parks, it affects not only vacations that people have planned for, but also these local gateway communities,” said Knuffke. “The longer we wait, the more it will cost.”