Forest Service timber sale tracking inadequate

Dan Berman, Greenwire senior reporter

The Forest Service tracks timber sale-related costs at the program level, rather than by individual sales, GAO found. In addition, the agency recently stopped tracking timber sale obligations and expenditures at the ranger district level, and only tracks that data at the national forest level.

The lack of data means managers "cannot compare actual expenditures on sales with planned expenditures, identify potential inefficiencies across sales, or identify resources available for redirection to another sale if needed," GAO wrote. The Bureau of Land Management installed a system to better track its timber sale data after a similar report in the 1990s.

Forest Service officials told GAO that field managers don't need the more detailed figures, a claim field managers rejected.

"Many field managers we talked with said that detailed data are crucial to their timber sales management efforts," GAO wrote. "Without obligation and expenditure data on individual sales, for example, field managers said they cannot compare actual expenditures on sales with planned expenditures, identify potential inefficiencies across sales, or identify resources available for redirection to another sale if needed."

Field managers have resorted to keeping manual "cuff records" to track obligation and expenditure data of individual sales and at the ranger district level. But GAO said maintaining those records can be time consuming and divert attention from actually overseeing the timber harvests.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who requested the report, was critical of the Forest Service. "Like in so many other cases, this administration has obfuscated the true costs of its policies, and once again, the result is poor management, unintended consequences, missed opportunities and wasted tax dollars," Bingaman said in a statement.

In a letter to GAO, Forest Service Chief Gail Kimbell said the agency generally agreed with the report's findings and would examine administrative remedies.