KJZZ (October 14, 2026) by Mark Brodie

MARK BRODIE: The Trump administration has blocked at least $25 million worth of projects in national parks across the country, according to the Washington Post. That accounts for more than 130 projects at parks, including the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Joshua Tree and Yosemite.

With me to talk about what this might mean for national parks and monuments, both here in Arizona and elsewhere, is Matt Nelson, executive director of the Arizona Trail Association. Matt, good morning.

MATT NELSON: Good morning. Thanks so much for having me.

MARK BRODIE: Thanks for being here. So what are the potential impacts at some of the parks? I mentioned the Grand Canyon, but there’s also Organ Pipe, Chiricahua, a bunch of parks and monuments in Arizona could be affected by this.

MATT NELSON: Indeed. I think one of the things we all agree on is that we love our national parks and our national monuments, and this is something that I think has attracted people to this state to live and work and visit here. Very little funding flows toward our park system, and now what we’ve seen is that over $25 million that was already approved and ready to go to partner organizations to support projects within these parks has suddenly been disapproved.

And the official explanation is because these organizations — these partner orgs similar to the one that I work for — their mission, vision does not align with the priorities of the current administration.

MARK BRODIE: Do you have a sense of what some of these projects are at Arizona parks that are not going to happen now?

MATT NELSON: Indeed. One of the ones that happened most recently is in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument down near the border. They were in desperate need of cultural surveys because we all know that it’s a very important cultural landscape, but a lot of that monument had not been properly surveyed. And especially with border wall construction and things that are happening down there, a contract was awarded to be able to do a cultural resource survey. That has now been disapproved.

Same story in Lake Mead National Recreation Area. The list is quite long of the 130 projects that have been disapproved, and these are all things that were preapproved and ready to go. So we’re genuinely concerned that this is just yet another attack on public lands, and now it’s our national parks.

MARK BRODIE: Are any of these projects ones — like for example at the Grand Canyon, we’ve heard so much about the water pipe that needs fixing and work recovering from the Dragon Bravo Fire last year. Are there sort of bigger projects, more infrastructure type projects like that included in this as well?

MATT NELSON: Yeah. Of the list of this 130, Grand Canyon is not on it. Grand Canyon is my favorite national park in the entire system, but a lot of the money that’s been appropriated to support the Dragon Bravo recovery comes from disaster relief funding, so that’s separate.

However, Grand Canyon, like a lot of other national parks, if you were to add up the maintenance backlog, it’s over a billion dollars. And so Congress over time has been trying to chip away at that and address some of these priority maintenance issues.

But what we’re seeing is that the current administration is deprioritizing all of these projects within national parks so the secretary of the Interior can redirect the funding to other priorities in Washington, D.C. So while we’re hoping disaster relief funding benefits Grand Canyon, there’s a whole lot of other maintenance issues that all of our parks need that are now not being funded.

MARK BRODIE: You mentioned the partner organizations. Did your organization have any contracts canceled?

MATT NELSON: No, not at all, which I was very grateful for. We don’t receive much money from the National Park Service, actually. Some of our money comes from National Forest, but a lot of it’s private, state, foundations, grants, things like that. But as a partner organization that works in really close partnership with National Park Service as well as U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, we’re genuinely concerned that this is setting that precedent for defunding partner organizations that bring a lot to the table: technical expertise, volunteerism, private funding. So when a dollar is not going to one of these partner orgs, it’s probably having three to four times the impact.

MARK BRODIE: When you talk about the maintenance backlog at places like the Grand Canyon, does this move potentially exacerbate that?

MATT NELSON: 100%. Yeah, I think right now, what we’ve seen over the past two years is that the National Park Service staff nationally has been reduced by 25%. So three of the four people that used to work for the Park Service are now having to do the jobs of everybody.

So they have to continually reprioritize what’s most important. And with fewer staff and less funding and now funding being redirected, it’s really putting our parks into a state of chaos. All of us, visitors and locals alike, are going to start to see those impacts.

MARK BRODIE: We have seen constitutionally approved money that the Trump administration has either tried to redirect or just not pay out. We’ve seen lawsuits and challenges to that, in some cases successful challenges to that. Are you anticipating that there will be some kind of legal challenge to this?

MATT NELSON: I do. I think that partner organizations are fearful that if they challenge the administration, they will never see funding again. But as we see funding reduced and redirected, I think some organizations that have a lot of capacity and have a lot of federal contracts that are already lined up are probably going to be willing to take the leap and seek litigation.

MARK BRODIE: And in terms of the projects that these parks and these organizations are doing at the parks, this pot of money from the federal government, how big of a component of those projects is this? How big of a hit is this to the park system?

MATT NELSON: Huge. One of the reasons that the National Park Service partners with organizations is because they just don’t have the capacity to do all the work. So by relying on partner orgs, they bring in so many other resources to infuse our parks. It’s beyond just friends groups that are helping with general maintenance and things like that. It’s really bringing technical expertise that the park staff doesn’t have.

So the hit is huge, and I think that it’s just the beginning, especially because over the past few days, we’ve learned that there are 1,500 projects nationwide that individual parks have said, “These are our priorities,” that the Department of the Interior, who governs National Park Service, has reprioritized all of those as low priority — all of them.

So think about the parks that we have in Arizona: Saguaro, Grand Canyon, and then soon to be hopefully Chiricahua National Park. Those parks have listed, “Here’s what our priorities are, here’s what it will cost,” and the level of priority at the Washington level has all been deprioritized to low priority so the funding can be redirected.

MARK BRODIE: Wow, that is interesting. All right, we’ll have to leave it there.

MATT NELSON: Yeah.

MARK BRODIE: I mean, from your perspective, I assume, as you’ve said, not great.

MATT NELSON: Not great, and really like, what to do? What to do about this? I think part of it is just getting the word out there that our parks are being defunded and they’re under attack. I think encouraging people to reach out to their members of Congress to say, “What are you going to do about this? We love our parks. Please help us protect them.”

MARK BRODIE: Fair. All right, that is Matt Nelson, executive director of the Arizona Trail Association. Matt, thanks so much.

MATT NELSON: Thank you, Mark. Have a great day.

 

Listen to the radio interview here.