Land Management Cuts in the President’s Less-Skinny Budget Request

On Friday afternoon, the White House posted a 1,200 page appendix to the President’s “skinny” budget request from early May. Since then, most of the executive departments have published their own budget justifications or budgets-in-brief. Overall, the President wants congressional appropriators to cut $163 billion (or 22%) of federal non-defense spending for Fiscal Year 2026. Here are some of the specifics within the Agriculture and Interior budget summaries:  

Agriculture: $23 billion in discretionary budget authority – a 23% reduction from FY25.

• Natural Resources Conservation Service: 87% reduction.

• Forest Service: Reduces discretionary funding (not including IIJA and disaster supplemental funding) by 65%. Eliminates State, Private, and Tribal Forestry and Forest and Rangeland Research. Also eliminates Wildland Fire Management and shifts funding to a newly proposed U.S. Wildland Fire Service (USWFS) at Interior. Reduces Capital Improvement and Maintenance by almost 50%. Reduces National Forest System (NFS) funding by 30%.

Interior: $14.4 billion – a 30% reduction from FY25.

• Supports the establishment of a new centralized USWFS at $3.7 billion and the Wildfire Suppression Operations Reserve Fund account at $2.85 billion, for a total of $6.55 billion.

• Bureau of Land Management: 35% reduction

• National Park Service: 36% reduction. Eliminates the Centennial Challenge. Reduces the National Recreation and Preservation and the Historic Preservation Fund roughly 90%.

• Reduces Park Management funding by almost 32%.

• Bureau of Indian Affairs: 31% reduction. Cuts Indian Guaranteed Loan Program Account by over 90%.

• Less than 1% increase for the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program

Both the House and Senate Appropriations Committee chairs have panned the White House’s budget proposal. But the President has the final say unless Congress has votes to overturn a veto (which they likely won’t) – teeing up another dramatic appropriations season that’s more than likely to spill over into the next calendar year (again).