Interior budget seeks $2.3B cut and Forest Service transfer

The National Park Service cuts drew particular attention at both the April 29 Energy Committee hearing and an earlier April 23 hearing before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior. The FY2027 proposal would cut operations of the National Park System by $760 million or 26 percent, reduce National Recreation and Preservation funding by $86 million or 93 percent, and cut the Historic Preservation Fund by $170 million — a 94 percent reduction that would eliminate everything except funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Simultaneously, the budget proposed a $10 billion mandatory fund called the Presidential Capital Stewardship Program to finance 'beautification' projects in and around Washington, D.C. Senator Jeff Merkley called it a slush fund for presidential vanity projects. Merkley and other senators noted the D.C. beautification fund is larger than the total proposed national parks operations budget for the entire country, and that the administration had not told Congress which specific projects it intended to fund.

The budget's centerpiece reorganization proposal would transfer all U.S. Forest Service wildland fire management functions from the USDA into a new U.S. Wildland Fire Service within Interior, consolidating federal wildland fire programs across DOI and USDA that together cover more than 693 million acres. The FY2027 Wildland Fire Service budget request is $6.91 billion, with $3.96 billion for operations and $2.95 billion for the Wildfire Suppression Operations Reserve Fund.

The new agency would add more than 13,000 positions dedicated to wildland fire, even as other Interior bureaus face major staffing cuts. This is the second consecutive year the administration has proposed the Forest Service fire transfer. The previous Congress did not enact it, and the proposal faces opposition from USDA interests, some western state officials, and forest management advocates who argue that separating fire management from broader forest health programs undermines long-term fire prevention. The administration argues that consolidating fire programs under a single federal agency would improve coordination and reduce duplication.

Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) pressed Burgum specifically on water security implications of the budget, focusing on two concerns: proposed cuts to hydropower generation at Hoover Dam and proposals to move 1 million acre-feet of water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir. Gallego told Burgum that cutting Lake Powell releases by 1.5 million acre-feet could cause an additional 40 percent reduction in hydropower generation capacity at Hoover Dam as early as that fall, raising energy prices for Arizona families and small businesses, particularly in rural communities.

Gallego also raised a Hualapai Tribe water settlement — $58 million included in the proposed budget — noting that if Congress doesn't appropriate those funds before an April 2029 enforceability deadline, the settlement would be voided. The hearing illustrated how Interior budget decisions cascade into water rights, tribal obligations, energy prices, and agricultural water availability across the Colorado River Basin — a politically complex issue that involves seven states and treaty obligations with Mexico.

Senators Murray, Murkowski, and Merkley raised concern that the NPS staffing and budget cuts would leave parks unable to manage basic visitor safety and infrastructure. Murray told Burgum the combination of a 38 percent cut to parks facilities and operations, a 35 percent cut for support staff, and a more than 50 percent cut to resource stewardship was 'a recipe for disaster for our parks.' Murkowski said she needed people out in the parks to keep bears at bay and manage the basic operations that turn natural resources into sustained visitor experiences.

Murkowski also expressed skepticism about the $10 billion D.C. beautification fund and lukewarm support for a budget increase for 300 new Park Police officers in Washington, New York, and San Francisco, questioning whether that allocation reflected the right priorities for a service primarily responsible for managing parks across the country. Her concerns illustrated a broader tension in the Republican caucus between senators from public-lands states and an administration that had prioritized urban beautification and revenue extraction from federal lands.

The BLM budget cut of $480 million includes a $139 million slash to Wildlife and Aquatic Habitat Management, which funds sage grouse recovery and threatened and endangered species programs. The budget would also eliminate renewable energy funding for both onshore and offshore wind energy programs, cutting $45 million from BLM and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Under Burgum's leadership, the Interior Department had already canceled a $928 million contract with French energy company TotalEnergies to terminate offshore wind farm projects off the Atlantic Coast.

The budget would consolidate Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act permitting within a single agency inside Interior, and would move NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service into the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a transfer worth approximately $125 million. Critics argued these consolidations could weaken species protections by concentrating permitting decisions in agencies that also manage public lands for extraction rather than in the independent science-focused agencies that currently hold that authority.

The FY2027 Interior request proposed cutting the Bureau of Indian Affairs by $378 million, including elimination of the Indian Guaranteed Loan program and the Indian Land Consolidation program, along with a 34 percent reduction in tribal self-governance support. The Bureau of Indian Education would lose $436 million — a 32 percent reduction — with eliminations including funding for Tribal Colleges and Universities, Replacement School Construction, and Early Child and Family Development programs.

These cuts would affect hundreds of tribes and Indigenous communities whose federal services, housing, education, and land management are governed by trust obligations the U.S. government has with tribal nations under treaty law and federal statutes. Senator Gallego's water-settlement question about the Hualapai Tribe underscored that Interior budget decisions directly intersect with legally binding tribal commitments. Budget advocates for tribal nations warned that reducing BIA and BIE funding while maintaining trust responsibilities without corresponding resources is legally and morally inconsistent with the government-to-government relationship.