23 



those forests. The Bureau could not sell or manage this timber ef- 

 fectively because it had not committed sufficient resources to ac- 

 quire easements through private lands that were essential to ac- 

 cess approximately 132,000 acres of Bureau land on which the tim- 

 ber was located. 



Without this access, substantial losses of timber revenues will 

 occur on an annual basis. I would like to emphasize that the report 

 that we issued in 1990 considered the spotted owl controversy and 

 focused solely only on those lands that were outside the areas of 

 controversy. Our report discussed those management actions by the 

 Bureau of Land Management that, if implemented, should maxi- 

 mize timber harvest activity on Federal lands that were not at that 

 time restricted by the spotted owl issues. 



Since our audit was completed, some boundaries may have 

 changed and some lands that may not have been included in the 

 spotted owl controversy at the time, and those lands that we looked 

 at at the time of the audit may now be included under various in- 

 junctions and other prohibitions of activity on those lands. 



The Bureau's response to our audit was positive, and the Bureau 

 agreed to request full funding to reduce the backlogs and to acquire 

 the necessary easements for access to Federal lands. However, 

 based on information provided by the Bureau at the 1992 Senate 

 appropriations hearings for its 1993 budget, at that time the Bu- 

 reau told the Appropriations Committee that it still needed ap- 

 proximately $39 million to eliminate its reforestation and forest de- 

 velopment backlogs. 



As a result of a recent congressional inquiry of my office, we re- 

 quested the Bureau's Oregon State office to provide us with up- 

 dated information on the backlogs addressed in our 1990 audit re- 

 port. The information supplied to us by that State office in Feb- 

 ruary of this year indicates that the plantation maintenance back- 

 log identified in the 1990 audit has been significantly reduced, fi*om 

 108,000 acres to 46,000 acres. The BLM Oregon State office also in- 

 dicated that the backlog of pre-commercial thinning has remained 

 at 43,000 acres, that the fertilization backlog has been partially re- 

 duced from 127,000 acres to 101,000 acres, and that the timber 

 stand conversion backlog has about doubled to 6,600 acres, and 

 that there is no current backlog in tree planting or reforestation. 



However, we did not verify the accuracy of the information pro- 

 vided to us by the BLM State office in February of this year. We 

 also were not able to ascertain or obtain information from them as 

 to whether the Bureau has secured the necessary easements on pri- 

 vate lands so as to access and increase timber operations on their 

 public lands. 



Because of the significance of the audit findings, and because of 

 the current interest by the United States Congress in these issues, 

 we have scheduled a follow-up review of the issues raised in our 

 1990 report, and we actually began the work about the middle of 

 March — this month. Based on that follow-up audit, we will deter- 

 mine whether the Bureau has implemented the recommendations 

 that we made to it in September of 1990, and whether the underly- 

 ing program deficiencies have been corrected. 



