Natural Resources and Environment Program to Transfer Land Between the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service Has Stalled

GAO reviewed the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) and the Forest Service's implemention of the Jurisdictional Land Transfer Program, which was established in 1980 to identify and evaluate opportunities to transfer the two agencies' land management responsibilities and develop proposed legislation to effect such transfers. GAO found that BLM and the Forest Service did not meet the milestone dates which they had established for developing the first legislative proposal. In addition, joint field work on the program was suspended in January 1983 because: (1) the two agency heads could not agree on the size and scope of potential land transfers to be included in the legislative proposals; and (2) the agencies' field staffs, who were responsible for identifying transfer opportunities and developing potential transfer proposals, frequently did not follow the jointly issued program guidelines. Furthermore, statewide land pattern goals were not established in four of the five states studied because of a lack of resources, a lack of communication with agency heads, and a lack of coordination between field staffs and their failure to establish a specific goal. Between 1982 and 1983, the agencies' efforts to comply with an administration initiative to identify and sell unneeded federal land also hindered program progress. Finally, GAO found that some field staffs did not consider transfers that would result in the closing of offices or personnel reductions and relocations.