White House press secretary Sean Spicer (R) gives Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke (L) the first quarter check of US President Donald Trump's salary which he donated to the National Park Service as Tyrone Brandyburg (C), Harpers Ferry National Historical Park Superindendant, looks on during the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 3, 2017.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said he was "thrilled" that President Donald Trump donated his first-quarter salary to the National Park Service, but the donation will hardly make a dent.

The $78,333 check is a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of millions that Zinke said the department needs for the battlefield maintenance.

"We're going to dedicate it and put it against the infrastructure on our nation's battlefields. We're about a hundred [million] or $229 million behind in deferred maintenance on our battlefields alone," he said during the White House's daily briefing.

Zinke concluded that his department is "excited about the opportunity" to use the funds for this purpose.

Trump's donation, however, won't even cover 1 percent of its intended use, much less the $1.5 billion he's proposed to cut from the Department of Interior.

In March, the White House proposed to allocate $11.6 billion for the department, a 12 percent decrease from the 2017 budget. The budget outline, however, didn't specify how much of that amount would go towards the NPS, which is a bureau within the Interior.

For 2017, the Obama administration had requested $3.1 billion for the NPS, roughly 23 percent of the Interior's $13.2 billion budget for the year.

Trump's budget blueprint released last month is subject to congressional approval. The final budget plan may be substantially different from what the White House has proposed.