Interior secretary calls for rebuilding national parks that have fallen into disrepair

Reporting from MEDORA, N.D. —  Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke reiterated his support for addressing a maintenance backlog at national parks during a visit Tuesday to the one named for a U.S. president known for championing conservation.

Zinke toured the Peaceful Valley Ranch at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, a former dude ranch that is on the National Register of Historic Places but in disrepair and in the middle of a $4.3-million rehabilitation project. Zinke said it exemplified the types of projects needed at parks nationwide.

“We want to make sure that we focus on rebuilding our parks,” Zinke said. “The president is a builder. He loves the idea of rebuilding.”

The Interior Department is trying to address an $11.7-billion maintenance backlog in national parks. Zinke supports the National Park Restoration Act in Congress, which would use federal energy revenue to provide up to $18 billion over the next 10 years for a fund to address deferred maintenance.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke speaks with Theodore Roosevelt National Park Supt. Wendy Ross on Tuesday.

(Blake Nicholson / Associated Press )

Some groups including the Pew Charitable Trusts and the National Parks Conservation Assn. have questioned whether the proposal would provide consistent revenue on a yearly basis for park projects. Zinke said he didn’t share the concern.

“It’s funded with across-the-board energy, not just oil and gas,” he said. “Not just onshore or offshore, it’s across the board — wind, solar, oil and gas, geothermal.”

Another bill in Congress, the National Park Service Legacy Act, would provide $500 million annually from federal oil and gas revenue until 2047. A spokeswoman for Zinke said he had not taken a position on that bill.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which has both a south unit and a north unit in western North Dakota, is a rugged area of hills, ridges, buttes and bluffs where millions of years of erosion have exposed colorful sedimentary rock layers. The park is home to a wide variety of wildlife including prairie dogs, wild horses and bison. It is North Dakota’s top tourist attraction, drawing more than 700,000 visitors annually.

The park has nearly $43 million in deferred maintenance projects, according to Supt. Wendy Ross. A few have received funding, including the ranch project, but even that money is only for rehabilitation and stabilization, she said.

“We’re looking at this historic dude ranch as the perfect place to have an environmental education center that’s in the heart of the park, where we can connect to those ideas that Theodore Roosevelt brought and thought in this area,” she said.

The Pew Charitable Trusts this year began a Restore America’s Parks Campaign, saying the National Park Service lacks the needed resources for the more than 400 sites it manages across the country.

The nonprofit cites inconsistent annual funding and aging infrastructure at many parks, and said more than two-thirds of the $11.7-billion backlog is priority needs such as deteriorating historic buildings, eroding trails and crumbling roads.

The National Parks Conservation Assn. also has called on Congress to fund needed park repairs.

Zinke said addressing the park maintenance backlog “has been a long time coming.”

“If you’re going to create wealth through energy on federal land, then you too should have an obligation to help to conserve it,” he said. “I can give you 11.7 billion reasons why it’s time to do it.”