How We Fund Our Public Lands

When you're backpacking among rugged, high peaks or blasting down switchbacks on your local flow trail, public land can seem free and wild, a landscape that grows, sustains, and fixes itself. But intact, healthy public lands aren’t free. Outdoor recreation, whatever its form, has an impact—and that impact is skyrocketing. Furthermore, other uses of public lands are expanding—from oil and gas drilling to renewable energy development. To buy more land and restore the land and trails that exist, there’s a complicated web of funding from government agencies, specific bills, and nonprofit organizations across the country. As more and more of us get outside in more places, it’s becoming apparent that we have a problem: We need more funding for the places we love. Below, we break down where our funding comes from today, and ways we might be able to generate more revenue to expand and care for our public land down the line.

Government Funding

Tracing the nitty gritty of federal dollars for any government agency is a slog. But public lands ain’t free, and they belong to all of us—so users need to understand how they’re acquired, maintained, and improved. The main pools of money come from annual Congressional appropriations and specific bills that have been signed into law. Below, we dissect how all this works.

There are four main agencies in charge of the vast majority of our federal public lands—the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. These organizations have multibillion-dollar annual budgets appropriated by Congress. That money goes to many things: general operations, science and research, employee salaries, fighting wildfires, and a whole bunch more. The federal government appropriated those agencies a combined total of 15.7 billion dollars in 2024—several billion dollars less than what the agencies each asked for. The budgets of all our land management agencies are falling far short of meeting the needs of all the public land they’re in charge of. At the same time, government-wide slashes in spending under the current administration are expected to further cripple our land management agencies.

Mt Baker Snoqualmie National Forest Darrington Ranger Station sign

When work needs to get done on public land, but agencies lack the time, personnel, or money to do it, that project goes into an ever-growing heap of unfinished work on our public land called “deferred maintenance” (or the “maintenance backlog”). This work includes everything from building repairs in national parks to trail maintenance in national forests to campsite upgrades on BLM land. Even crucial tasks, such as trailhead bathroom maintenance, are often pushed into the maintenance backlog. According to the Congressional Research Service, the four agencies mentioned above had a combined deferred maintenance backlog of $35.5 billion as of 2022, and that number has continued to grow.

Most of that backlog is in our national parks. At the end of its 2024 fiscal year, the National Park Service had a maintenance backlog of just shy of $23 billion. Different parks and regions have differing needs; Yellowstone and Yosemite have the highest shortfalls, with over one billion in backlogs each. At the same time, the Forest Service’s backlog is at roughly $8.6 billion. Data for 2023 is hard to come by for the BLM and FWS, but in 2022, their backlogs were $4.77 and $2.02 billion, respectively. Fixing up roads, bridges, and trails make up the bulk of the work in the hopper. One of the key factors in this enormous pile of unfinished work is the aging infrastructure on our public lands. A great deal of buildings, bridges, trails, and other structures were constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s and have lasted well beyond their intended lifespan.

Old trail sign in lush Olympic National Park

As these backlogs have continued to grow, Congress has passed relatively new legislation to begin to address the above needs. At the same time, several other laws funnel money to our public lands. We explore several of the most important players below.

The Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA): Passed in 2020, this bill is explicitly designed to help tackle the immense backlog of public lands work. The GAOA established the Legacy Restoration Fund (LRF), which provides five years of up to $1.9 billion in funding annually to be split among the four agencies. While a substantial sum of money, this fund would take more than 17 years to address the needs we currently have if the annual contribution were to be extended. Still, it’s making an impact. In the first three years since it was passed, LRF money was used to complete at least 148 projects and get more than 1,000 underway. That work runs the gamut, from fixing trails to maintaining bridges to renovating rangers stations. Information on more projects that this funding has been used to complete—along with a useful map of what and where those projects are occurring—is available here. Additionally, the bill permanently funded the Land and Water Conservation Fund below.

The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF): The LWCF was signed into law in 1964 and was designed to ensure bountiful outdoor recreation opportunities exist for our present needs and future generations. The law primarily helps state and the federal governments acquire and protect new public land. Since its inception, the LWCF has helped acquire more than eight million acres of land, which is about the same size as the four largest national parks in the Lower 48 combined. The fund works for state and federal lands, and LWCF projects have touched not just every state but every county in the U.S. In 2020, the GAOA above permanently funded the LWCF at $900 million a year—money that comes from government royalties on offshore oil and gas drilling.

Bipartisan Infrastructure Law: This sprawling 2021 bill funneled an enormous investment into all kinds of the country’s built environment. It prioritized the country’s natural infrastructure, too—money for our public lands includes $1.4 billion for ecosystem resilience and restoration. Projects completed or in the works encompass things like fish passages, grazing enclosures, fire resilience projects, invasive species detection and removal, and riparian restoration projects. The law also devoted $5.5 billion for the Forest Service, which mostly uses it to fight wildfires.

Backpacking in front of historical site.jpg

Inflation Reduction Act: The IRA of 2022 included total federal spending nearing a whopping $900 billion, A small chunk of which was dedicated to public lands and ecosystems. About $700 million went to the Forest Service to help landowners protect private forests from development. An additional $50 million will back the Forest Service inventory and conserve old-grown forests. Another $700 million went to the Department of the Interior for public land conservation, restoration, and resilience projects. And finally, about $200 million went to national parks to make a small dent in the deferred maintenance backlog mentioned above.

John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act: This law, passed in 2019, is a conglomeration of roughly 100 bills that impact public lands. To but scratch the surface of the effects of this law, the Dingell Act withdrew certain public lands from mining development potential, increased public access to tracts of land, designated more than one million acres of new wilderness, allowed Conservation Corps (detailed below) to partner with more federal agencies, and expanded our National Trails System.

Entering Public Lands sign near alpine lake mobile

Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson: These landmark laws don’t only fund public land—they are deeply intertwined with open space and natural areas nationwide. Passed in 1937 and 1950, respectively, the laws put a tax on guns, ammo, and fishing gear and rerouted that money to wildlife restoration. Specifically, this money goes to state fish and game departments. It’s a user-pays model: The same people who make a dent in wildlife populations pay to help restore them. Thousands of wildlife species depend on public land, and these laws support public land research and conservation efforts. Pittman-Robertson alone generated more than $1.3 billion in 2023 and more than $17 billion since the program began.

EXPLORE Act: Signed into law in January 2025, the Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Experiences Act doesn’t directly increase funding for public land. However, the legislation aims to increase access to public land, with a focus on more equitable access. It also updates everything from permitting processes to broadband and digital pass access at parks. The law is wide-ranging, and some of its most groundbreaking impacts will take time to be felt. It sets the stage for the federal government to help local gateway communities address housing shortages and cost of living. It also calls for improving campgrounds and other infrastructure in disrepair.

USFS 2025 Hiring Freeze and Terminations

In the fall of 2024, the Forest Service announced it wouldn’t be able to hire any seasonal employees in the next fiscal year (outside of wildland firefighters). Historically, the agency annually hires about 9,000 workers who fall into this category. These employees range from trail crews to archeologists to rangeland workers. They’re colloquially called “1039” jobs, since temporary workers are contracted to work less than 1,040 hours per season, but they’re the backbone of much of the basic labor that gets done on our public land. The announcement was primarily due to lack of funding.

To make up for that lack of labor, the agency hired about 1,300 previously temporary workers to permanent positions. Since they were new to their jobs, these workers had what’s called “probationary” status. This essentially means these workers have fewer protections than more tenured employees. When Donald Trump took office, he quickly terminated more than 3,400 workers in the U.S. Forest Service, including these newly hired trail workers and former seasonals. Many of these workers had red cards and served as the “standing militia” for fire response in the heat of summer. As of mid-March 2025, workers inside the agency report low morale and chaos. Courts have ordered the terminated workers back to the office for at least 45 days, but at the time of publishing the agency hasn’t yet obeyed. At the same time, “Reductions in Force” are coming up, and insiders have reported additional firings of 7,000 employees or more could be in the works. The fallout from these decisions will likely be more visible starting in the spring and summer of 2025, when seasonal crews ordinarily begin their work.

Nonprofits

While the federal government is spending enormous chunks of cash on public lands, the need for more is still sky-high, running in the tens of billions for deferred maintenance alone. The nonprofit sector is also stepping up to make sure the places we treasure get the love and care they deserve and stay protected from industry and development. Here, we break down some of the major groups working to protect and enhance our public lands. Keep in mind that there are thousands of organizations dedicated to improving our natural world at the local and national levels, so we’re just scratching the surface.

The federal agencies in charge of our federal lands have nonprofit fundraising arms to secure more money for preserving our 640 million acres of public land. These organizations include the Foundation for America’s Public Land, the official charitable partner of the BLM; the National Forest Foundation, which serves the same role for the Forest Service; and the National Parks Foundation, which does the same for—you guessed it—our national parks. These nonprofits deal with large sums of money; in 2023, for example, the National Parks Foundation granted more than $70 million to parks and partner organizations.

As outdoor recreation reaches new highs every year—and subsequently passes them—many gear companies are stepping up to give back to the lands their customers are impacting. There are many notable nonprofits and players here, but we’ll focus on The Conservation Alliance. This group is a coalition of heavy-hitting outdoor companies, including the REI Co-op, Patagonia, Keen, Osprey, and The North Face. Member companies annually contribute to the alliance, and those funds are granted to community organizations working to protect and conserve public land and wild spaces. In 2023, the Conservation Alliance awarded more than two million in grant funding. That money went to groups as diverse as the Native American Rights Foundation to support their efforts to protect nearly 30 million acres of land in Alaska from oil and gas drilling and other mineral development, CalWild to designate areas around the Mojave as national monuments, and a campaign in Minnesota to save the Boundary Waters from sulfide-ore copper mining. To read more about the group’s recent work and impact, look at their annual report.

The Outdoor Alliance is another group, helmed by human-powered recreation enthusiasts, focused on advocating and lobbying for public lands funding and other legislation to help bolster protections for federal land. They’ve also partnered with The Conservation Alliance above and the Outdoor Industry Association to create Protecting America’s Outdoors, an organization dedicated to protecting and restoring public lands. This is a collaborative group of all recreation enthusiasts, but many specific sports have their own nonprofits, too. The Access Fund, for example, is dedicated to protecting and conserving climbing areas across the country and plays a major role in stewarding popular crags at areas like Utah’s Indian Creek; the Red River Gorge, in Kentucky; and the New River Gorge, in West Virginia. The International Mountain Bicycling Association likewise works with hundreds of local groups nationwide to develop and maintain trails.

These groups, in general, don’t always work on federal public land. But it’s their mission to conserve and protect open space and natural areas all over the country, and they’re often the heart and soul of funding and protecting city, county, state, and other local land. Land Trusts protect land in several ways: They buy it outright, work with landowners to conserve land (often through easements), and sometimes even transfer land ownership from private hands to the federal government. The Land Trust Alliance (LTA), for example, supports nearly 1,000 local land trusts nationwide, in about 93% of U.S. counties. The LTA reported that its network of organizations has protected more than 60 million acres across the country, which is larger than all our national parks combined. In short, there’s a good chance a land trust is active in or near your local community.

There are thousands of nonprofits nationwide working on public land issues through lobbying or at the micro-level. To finish out our breakdown of the major types of nonprofits, we’ll focus on some of the major players in protecting, restoring, and enhancing natural areas all over the map. The Trust for Public Land has protected more than four million acres across the country—from adding to national parks to expanding city natural areas. The Nature Conservancy is one of the country’s largest and most powerful environmental groups. In addition to research and lobbying, they’ve initiated land exchanges in which they purchase land and transfer ownership back to the federal government. Often, that land falls within “checkerboarded” federal landscapes, where one parcel is public, the next private, and so on, to provide large-scale, ecosystem-level protections. According to their data, they’ve protected about 120 million acres of land in six decades of work. This strategy—purchasing, restoring, and transferring land to the public domain—is a key tool in the nonprofit toolbox. Even hunting groups, like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, are actively promoting this strategy. That group has protected nearly nine million acres of land and restored habitat in 22 states.

Looking at the Methow Trails kiosk map in winter with fat bike

These are groups of mostly young people and veterans, often funded by the federal government’s Americorps program. From fuels reduction to habitat restoration to trail building and maintenance, these groups are instrumental in tackling the backlog of pressing needs on federal lands. The Corps Network serves 150 separate Corps nationwide. These groups reportedly employ more than 20,000 people annually to work on public land. To give but one small data point of their impact: In 2024, Corps members built or improved nearly 20,000 miles of trail. Put together, that’s enough single-track to cross the country more than five times.

Fundamentally, the key thing to know about the nonprofit sector is that so much takes place at the local level. While the federal government is bogged down in bureaucracy—and by design changes slowly—community-level organizations nationwide are hard at work building and maintaining trails, restoring habitat, and securing public access. There are far too many of these groups to break down one by one, but we encourage you to dig into the resources available to steward and protect the lands near you at the local level.

Hiking trail in Cascades with glacier in background

Ideas to Meet the Need

Even with federal appropriations to agencies, a slew of relatively new laws helping to address the maintenance backlog, and nonprofits funneling money to acquire and improve public land, our public lands are still in desperate need of billions of dollars just for general upkeep. Plus, that need is growing. Extractive and often destructive activities like oil and gas drilling and mining continue on public land. At the same time, outdoor recreation reaches new record highs year after year, bringing with it an impact of its own: erosion on trails, trash and waste, and so much more. In short, the need for cash to support our public lands is only increasing. There are a number of policy solutions to help meet that need. We’ll dive into some of the most promising—and controversial—ideas that could help our public land get the love it deserves.

First, many argue, there needs to be a dedicated money pool for conservation at the federal level; in short, this equates to a trust fund. The idea of a trust fund to fuel a public good is by no means new—the federal government already does this for Medicare, Social Security, highways, and more. A conservation trust fund would funnel cash to conservation projects all over the country. States like Colorado are already doing this: profit from the state’s lottery products goes directly back to conservation. At the federal level, though, the crux is figuring out where all the money—$35.5 billion and growing for the deferred maintenance backlog alone—could come from.

Recreationists aren’t the only users of public land. Oil and gas, mining, timber, coal production, and even renewable energy generate billions of dollars annually on federal public land. Many of these activities also degrade the environment and contribute to climate change. Oil and gas drilling on federal land currently pays a 16.67 percent royalty rate to the federal government. Groups like the nonpartisan advocacy organization The Center for Western Priorities advocate for raising this to at least 25 percent. The same goes for coal production: about 40 percent of coal production in the country comes from federal land—most of it from Wyoming and Montana’s Powder River Basin. Many groups argue that current policy is outdated and laden with loopholes that allow the industry to skirt by without paying their due. When it comes to mining, things are even murkier; while there are active mining claims on about 1.3 million acres of federal public land, there’s little to no tracking of what’s actually being mined and how much of it companies pull out of the ground. Plus, there are currently no royalties paid to the federal government for mining. Even a modest royalty for minerals extracted could go a long way in our conservation coffers. Finally, renewable energy is burgeoning on public land. Enough solar, geothermal, and wind power exists on BLM land to power millions of homes across the country. As our demand for more clean energy increases, this development will only accelerate. Again, some groups argue that a small royalty rate on this development could help fuel conservation efforts while not penalizing companies trying to innovate with renewables.

With little tracking and data on all this, along with constantly fluctuating market prices, dialing in the exact amount any of these sources could produce is challenging. Plus, demands vary on exactly what the right royalty rates could be. That said, even a modest increase in oil and gas royalties alone could generate hundreds of millions annually. But industry power remains high—so getting any of these changes through the legislature would be an uphill battle (albeit a very worthy one).

Wind turbines on skyline with tilled fields below

There’s another source of potential funding that could draw the cash we need from another pool of users that also have an impact: outdoor recreationists. For decades, arguments have ebbed and flowed about a so-called “backpack tax,” which would put a small additional fee on outdoor gear. So far, nothing’s made it into law at the national level—but the new pool of people recreating outside could, at least in theory, generate billions for public land.

The Outdoor Industry Association’s 2024 Outdoor Participation Survey reports that more than half of the U.S. population—just shy of 176 million people—recreated outside last year. That number’s been on a steep upward trend for years. In fact, every year for the last nine years, a record number of people have been getting outside. In 2024, there were 22.2 million more people hiking, biking, backpacking, and camping than 2019. Let that sink in: that’s more than 2.5 times the size of the population of New York City.

Putting trailhead camping fee into Pay Here kiosk

Recreation Fee Area Discover Pass Required sign

Pay Launch Fee Here kiosk at Lake Roosevelt National Park

In one sense, this is a really great thing—more people are getting outside. Studies show that spending time in nature can have tremendous benefits for both physical and mental health and pay dividends in conservation, as more people find a personal stake in the natural world. That said, the impacts are undeniable: erosion on trails, waste at trailheads, displacing wildlife, and more.

Debates about a “backpack tax” started in the 1990s, when then-Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt proposed the idea. The argument went like this: for decades, hunters and anglers—public land users—had paid a modest tax on their equipment. In short, public land users paid their due. But even 30 years ago, recreation was increasing, and people who get outside to hike, backpack, bike, or just wildlife watch on public land weren’t explicitly giving back to that land in the same way (aside from, say, national parks passes).

Today, that untapped pool of resources is larger than ever. Think about this one data point: In 1995, national parks saw about 169.5 million visits across the country. By 2023, that number had nearly doubled, at roughly 325.5 million visits. We’re going to mostly stay out of the weeds of these proposals, but it’s worth running the numbers. In 2023, outdoor retail sales totaled about $27.5 billion. As a thought experiment, let’s imagine the government instituted a five percent tax on outdoor gear. At that level, taxes would generate just shy of 1.4 billion dollars annually for our public lands. That’s still not enough to cover even the agency backlog of maintenance that’s needed. But it’s a tremendous amount of money that would amass over time and equate to an enormous on-the-ground impact. For the consumer, the impact would be relatively negligible. The price of a relatively fancy $250 backpack would only go up to $262.50.

As a thought experiment, let’s imagine the government instituted a five percent tax on outdoor gear. At that level, taxes would generate just shy of 1.4 billion dollars annually for our public lands.

Still, the outdoor industry as a whole has remained largely opposed to a “backpack tax.” The arguments on that side are manifold. We’ll quickly break down two: First, a tax on outdoor gear would be logistically difficult to impose: How do you differentiate between a rain jacket used on a hike compared to one you throw to commute to work? How do you draw the line between, say, a backpack used to trek deep into the wilderness and one used to schlep books and papers to a middle-school classroom? Second is an equity issue: additional taxes on outdoor gear would create barriers to new, diverse, and lower-income populations accessing public lands.

While several bills at the national level have attempted to make this work, nothing has yet been codified into law. A similar idea in Washington, which would have placed a .2 percent sales tax only on outdoor equipment over $200, also failed.

Fundamentally, crucial questions remain: What is the right amount to tax? What gear should be subject to that tax? Other ideas in the space argue for placing more limited taxes on outdoor goods. These could be just taxing RVs, ski passes, or even Sprinter Vans. Some groups also advocate for empowering federal agencies with more flexibility in seeking user fees. Some of these possibilities could include expanding entrance fees for all, increasing public land types, upping fees for specific user groups like overseas visitors, expanding site-specific fees at campgrounds or parking areas, and simply raising the price of recreation passes.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that other ideas to help meet the need have been thrown out into the ether as well. Many of these ideas focus on taxing collective vices, such as recreational marijuana sales, sports gambling, offshore oil and gas drilling, and even bitcoin mining.

Altogether, the picture of public lands funding is complicated, with revenue streams coming from federal appropriations, bills passed into law, and nonprofits all over the country. But the need for more capital to maintain and improve the places we collectively treasure numbers, at the low end, in the tens of billions of dollars. We’ll continue to keep tabs on how debates to meet this need play out in the future.