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Wilderness Management: Accountability for Forest Service Funds Needs Improvement

RCED-92-33 Published: Nov 04, 1991. Publicly Released: Nov 04, 1991.
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Highlights

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed how the Forest Service distributes and spends congressionally designated funds for wilderness area management on national forest lands.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Agriculture To enable better management and oversight of funds designated by Congress for wilderness management, the Secretary of Agriculture should direct the Chief, Forest Service, to revise the Program Development and Budgeting Handbook to conform to House Appropriations Committee reprogramming procedures.
Closed – Implemented
The Forest Service changed its reprogramming guidelines to prevent regional foresters from reprogramming funds without prior approval from appropriations committees effective for fiscal year 1992.
Department of Agriculture To enable better management and oversight of funds designated by Congress for wilderness management, the Secretary of Agriculture should direct the Chief, Forest Service, to revise the manner in which expenditures in the recreation uses budget activity are accounted for to show how funds, when programmed within or from this budget activity, benefit wilderness, recreation, or cultural resource management.
Closed – Implemented
The Forest Service established separate accounts for recreation management, cultural resources, and wilderness (the three categories of expenditures within the recreation uses budget line item) to better present the needs, tradeoffs, and benefits of any reprogrammings.
Department of Agriculture To enable better management and oversight of funds designated by Congress for wilderness management, the Secretary of Agriculture should direct the Chief, Forest Service, to establish specific output targets for wilderness management and measure manager performance against those targets.
Closed – Implemented
The Forest Service included eight measurable targets for wilderness management in all regional foresters' performance evaluations and required all line officers' performance elements to address the issue of accountability for wilderness management.

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Topics

AccountabilityBudget administrationexecutive relationsFederal agency accounting systemsForest managementFunds managementNational forestsReprogramming of appropriated fundsWilderness areasWildlife management