Arizona Republic (Feb 19, 2026) by Joan Meiners

As a new poll shows overwhelming voter support for public lands, an Arizona bill proposes $500,000 for the Arizona Trail to offset federal funding cuts.

Advocates say state funding alone is not enough to counter federal rollbacks of conservation rules.

The Trump administration is reviewing or repealing several environmental regulations, including the Public Lands Rule.

Arizonans love their public lands, based on widespread use, decades of investments and a new survey of voter attitudes. But that won’t fully protect the shared spaces from a surge of federal attacks targeting conservation rules, management funding and protective regulatory efforts,Western land experts say.

An appropriations bill to support the Arizona Trail, the state’s National Scenic Trail that touches nearly every category of public land along its 850-mile route between Mexico and Utah, has advanced partway through the state Legislature. The $500,000 requested from the state general fund would help offset sweeping federal cuts to land management agencies and staff.

Passage may also signal political backing for public lands that could play out on related fronts.Alone, advocates say, state funding is an incomplete defense against the Trump administration’s broad-scale dismantling of the science-based laws and guidelines that have sustained generational access to many of America’s favorite outdoor places and programs.

“We used to get pretty consistent funding from the Bureau of Land Management, but that disappeared a year ago, and then all of our recent requests and grant applications to the BLM have not been approved,” said Matt Nelson, who directs the Arizona Trail Association and worked with state Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, to introduce the appropriations proposal as Senate Bill 1041.”That agency has taken a big hit, and partners like us are seeing it.”

The money would be used for trail maintenance and construction of reroutes, which Nelson said cost about $40,000 per mile. It would also free up more of the Arizona Trail Association’s approximately $1.5 million annual budget — amassed through a patchwork of donations, grants, fundraisers, merchandise sales and membership fees — for staffing and programs that engageArizona youth, girls, veterans and others in volunteer opportunities designed to build community while donating about $1 million in labor costs to the improvement of state recreation resources.

State support has been unreliable and inconsistent over the years, Nelson said, leaving a backlog of needed work. That’s despite the trail’s bipartisan popularity, evidenced this year by its appropriation bill being sponsored by a well-known far-right conservative.

Rogers did not respond to The Arizona Republic’s request for further insight into her leadership on outdoor recreation funding. She has said publicly that she enjoys using the trail and feels it enhances her district.

Public lands have a long history of bridging political divides in ways few other issues can. In poll results released Feb. 18, Colorado College’s State of the Rockies report found that a majority of nearly 3,500 Western voters surveyed viewed natural habitat losses, rollbacks of environmental laws and land management funding cuts as serious problems.

Between 81% and 89% of those queried across eight states said conservation issues are important in deciding whether to support an elected official. And though the rising cost of living was a near-universal concern, nine out of 10 respondents still supported using federal dollars to purchase and incorporate private inholdings into parks and other public spaces.

These opinions spanned party lines and were shared by Trump-supporting Republicans, though to a slightly lesser degree, the survey found. The views have also become more widely held over time, with 85% of polled voters marking public lands, waters and wildlife as important issues for them in2026 compared with 75% in 2016. This year, a majority of Republicans even emphasized a desire to protect natural resources as more than just energy products, up to 62% from 48% in 2019. 

In Arizona, as Colorado River negotiations continue to stall and memories of last summer’s devastating fires at the Grand Canyon remain fresh, voters were especially concerned about inadequate water supplies and recent layoffs of wildland firefighters. Arizona also topped the list ofWestern states on enthusiasm for dark skies (limiting light pollution) and for conservation as a public lands priority.

These voter results come as one of the strongest federal tools for incorporating conservation into land-use decisions, known as the Public Lands Rule, is under review by the Trump administration.

It’s just one of many environmental regulations the White House has labeled as unnecessarily obstructive to business and too expensive.

Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the nonpartisan conservation organization Center for WesternPriorities, expects to see that Biden-era provision show up on the White House’s formal chopping block soon, after plans to rescind it were announced in September. With the administration also declaring on Feb. 12 its “elimination” of the endangerment finding, and thus the legal foundation for nature preservation through greenhouse gas reductions, U.S. protections for public lands are tipping into precarity against a trend of bipartisan support.

“We see every year that there are very few hard gaps with what voters say matters on public lands,” Weiss told The Republic. “It’s not rocket science. And yet you don’t see that translating into policyat the federal level, certainly right now.”

The Arizona Trail as a symbol of public lands support in the state

What happens next with SB 1041, the measure to allocate $500,000 from the state general fund for construction and maintenance of the Arizona Trail, may foreshadow whether Arizona lawmakers will take a stand for public lands.

The bill passed in the Senate Committee on Natural Resources with unanimous support (one member was absent) on Feb. 10. But it was bumped from the committee agenda twice before being heard, raising some concerns that its advancement was not guaranteed. Next, it will be debated by the Senate Appropriations Committee before going to the Senate floor for a vote, then on to the House.

In that chamber, Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, has expressed skepticism about funding public lands. In 2019, he voted against a bill to put the Arizona State Parks Heritage Fund back into state statute. It still passed with a 54-6 vote and was signed into law by then-Gov. Doug Ducey. But Finchem maintains that funding for public outdoor spaces should be considered on a case-by-case basis, after other priorities.

“The State has four primary responsibilities including transportation infrastructure, public safety, education and providing care for those who cannot care for themselves (the developmentally disabled),” Finchem wrote to The Republic this week. “Once we have paid for those priorities, and if there is any room on the budget, then we can visit funding for the trail then.”

His hesitancy will be challenged by lawmakers such as Sen. Priya Sundareshan, D-Tucson, who voiced enthusiasm for this year’s funding bill.

“Democrats proudly supported this bill to fund the Arizona Trail in the Natural Resources committee, while Republicans were not uniformly in support,” Sundareshan told The Republic.”Democrats believe supporting our public lands, and other services that benefit regular Arizonans, is a better use of our state’s limited revenues (than) Republican proposals for yet another tax cut that favors private jet owners and the wealthiest.”

Differing values about how to spend state funds and manage public lands are also at odds in another GOP-introduced bill that advanced through the Senate Natural Resources Committee onFeb. 17. Senate Bill 1336 seeks to increase oversight of the Arizona State Lands Department in response to poor performance reviews.

State Rep. Gail Griffin, R-Hereford, sponsored that bill and indicated in a press release that she hopes it will make it easier to sell state-owned land to fund education and meet housing demands. In a 2024 analysis, The Republic found that Griffin had introduced more anti-environmental legislation than any other lawmaker in the previous two years. Sundareshan voted against the bill in committee, along with Sen. Theresa Hatathlie, D-Coal Mine Mesa.

In contrast, at least for now, the committee hearing last week for SB 1041 to fund the Arizona Trail was short, sweet and uncontroversial. Sam Richard, a Capitol lobbyist and Arizona Trail Association board member who identified himself as an Eagle Scout, spoke in favor of the bill, reminding committee members that the Arizona Trail has the distinction of being one of only 11 in the nation designated as a National Scenic Trail.

Another speaker read a letter sent in by author Tom Zoellner, a former Republic reporter and Arizona Trail finisher who wrote a historical biography of the state called “Rim to River” that is based around locations on the trail.

“I am especially happy that the sponsor of this worthy measure happens to be Senator Rogers,” Zoellner wrote. “I don’t share her politics, and disagree with her on many questions but we do agree on a love for the state and the sentiment that the trail is deserving of some level of public support.This is a powerful illustration of the unifying symbolism behind this important cultural and recreational resource that binds the state together regardless of party preference.”

The bigger picture: ‘That’s not good for anyone’

The appropriations debate over funding for Arizona Trail will take place not only amid other fights over public lands in Arizona, but against a national backdrop of drastic regulatory repeal and controversial agency nominations.

In addition to the upcoming Public Lands Rule revision and last week’s repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding that had made climate-warming gases eligible for regulation, the Trump administration has also moved to weaken the Endangered Species Act, which could open up land currently protected as critical species habitat.

Immediately after taking office, President Donald Trump initiated the now-final “removal” of the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act that required environmental impacts and public input to be considered before breaking ground on major federal projects. And in September, he proposed expanding cattle grazing leases beyond the limits scientists say are sustainable and initiated a repeal of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule that restricted road-building through pristine wilderness areas.

Many of these actions will face lengthy legal challenges. But in the meantime, lasting damage maybe done.

Weiss of the Center for Western Priorities worries about rule repeals and legal breaches trending more bold. Over the past month, the Trump administration has illegally removed signage at national park and historic sites that explained slavery or climate change.

“The rewriting history stuff is really awful, particularly when it comes to tribal engagement and tribal history,” Weiss said.

He’s also warily watching the GOP’s newly expansive use of the Congressional Review Act to attack public lands protections for areas like Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Local opponents fear water pollution and wilderness degradation in the name of foreign mining interests, while bigger-picture concerns center around the precedent all of this sets.

There’s also the widespread cuts to research on sustaining healthy ecosystems and of the staff doing that work in federally protected places. All told, Weiss suspects the ultimate goal is to cripple the system of public lands management so thoroughly that it will be easy for lawmakers to declare selling off these public assets as the only solution.

“The overall theme here is the Trump administration and then Congress is just tying the hands of these agencies so they can’t do their job,” Weiss said. “At the end of the day, that’s not good for anyone.”

Similar concerns underpin opposition to several of Trump’s picks to lead the nation’s land management agencies.

“Steve Pearce is just a massive risk,” Weiss said of Trump’s current nominee to head the Bureau of Land Management. “This is a guy who spent his entire career trying to sell off public lands. He ran bills every session he was in Congress, similar to (Utah Sen.) Mike Lee, trying to find ways to sell off public lands. He tried to strip wilderness protections. He opposed the creation of a national monument in New Mexico (his home state) that people love and have built an outdoor recreation economy around.”

Pearce’s track record on public lands management in Congress “makes him totally unqualified, and that’s before you even get into conflicts of interest,” Weiss said. Pearce has financial entanglements with mineral mining, oil drilling, the sale of water rights and various real estate ventures that a long list of environmental groups have called out as inappropriate for someone poised to oversee 245million acres of public lands and 700 million acres of mineral estate. His nomination has the support of some rancher groups and the wary attention of hunters and anglers.

“I think a man of the soil ought to run that organization,” Finchem told The Republic in response toa question about Pearce. “My position on disposing the lands held by the federal government under a proprietorial interest only have not changed.”

Finchem declined to elaborate for The Republic on what he means by “man of the soil,” whether he supports the nomination or his exact position on the disposal of public lands.

But Nelson of the Arizona Trail Association said this will be the first time his organization has ever opposed a nominee.

“Usually they’re benign positions,” the Arizona Trail director said. “But with Pearce, he’s been quoted as saying that most of the BLM lands we don’t even need, which is a huge concern for somebody who is going to be leading the agency that is the largest land manager in the entire U.S.”

Trump’s more recent nomination of Scott Socha to lead the National Park Service was also met with dismay by environmental groups, yet appears to be moving forward to confirmation. Many critics allege that his longtime corporate leadership of Delaware North, a major concessions operator at many national park sites, is a clear conflict of interest when it comes to doing what is best for these publicly owned natural wonders. He has also been reported to have made large contributions to the company’s political action committee and to several Republican candidates.

“We are facing more and more attacks on public lands from Republicans, both at the federal level and in the state legislature, who would prefer to privatize these lands for their cronies to profit,” said Sundareshan in response to questions about Trump’s federal agency nominations.

For Nelson, how SB 1041 progresses at the state Legislature over the coming weeks and months wil ltell him everything he needs to know about whether Arizona will take a meaningful stand for public lands.

“When the state makes the commitment to appropriate into this Arizona Trail fund, the state —which is us of course because the legislators represent us — we are saying that we are committed to maintaining and improving this resource that in itself on principle is valuable,” he said. “I think if people love the Arizona Trail and participating in outdoor recreation, which we know they do, I would encourage them to contact their elected officials and tell them to vote in favor of public lands.”