Rangeland Management

GAO reviewed a January 1992 report by a Nevada consulting firm that critiqued three GAO reports on management of the western public rangeland by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service. Subjects addressed included declining and overstocked grazing allotments, riparian area restoration, and the federal wild horse program. GAO carefully examined both the consulting firm's analysis of GAO's reports as well as GAO's adherence to its own standards, policies, and procedures. GAO is confident that its work was done with due professional care consistent with generally accepted government auditing standards and that its findings are well supported, its conclusions flow logically from the facts, and its recommendations offer reasonable suggestions for addressing the problems identified. The first report provides GAO's point-by-point responses to the charges made in the consulting firm's report, while the second provides the titles of the documents GAO reviewed and the names of individuals GAO contacted in preparing its reports. GAO summarized these reports, along with two other recent reports on rangeland management (GAO/RCED-92-52, Feb. 24, 1992, and GAO/RCED-92-12, Nov. 26, 1991) in testimony before Congress; see: Rangeland Management: Results of Recent Work Addressing the Performance of Land Management Agencies, by J. Dexter Peach, Assistant Comptroller General for Resources, Community, and Economic Development Programs, before the Subcommittee on National Parks and Public Lands, House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. GAO/T-RCED-92-60, May 12 (10 pages).