Forest Service

Sales of salvage timber--trees that are insect-infested, dead, damaged, or downed--represented nearly half of all the timber offered for sale from the national forests in fiscal year 1996. Because nonsalvage timber offered for sale has declined significantly in recent years, the salvage sale volume offered is nearly double the proportion offered just five years ago. The Salvage Sale Fund is used to prepare and administer these sales. After reaching a high of $247 million at the end of fiscal year 1993, the fund's balance declined 25 percent to $186 million at the end of fiscal year 1996. The decline occurred for several reasons, and the fund's balance appears to be stabilizing in fiscal year 1997. If the Forest Service's estimates are correct, the fund's balance will total $182 million at the end of fiscal year 1997, a level that the Forest Service believes is sufficient to meet the estimated obligations for fiscal year 1998. Several management practices that affect the flow of salvage sale receipts into the fund need to be improved, including how regions and forests (1) establish priorities for distributing salvage timber sale receipts, (2) establish estimates of the costs to be recovered, (3) review salvage sale plans for completeness and accuracy, and (4) satisfactorily correct deficiencies.

GAO noted that: (1) after reaching a high of $247 million at the end of fiscal year (FY) 1993, the Salvage Sale Fund's balance declined 25 percent to $186 million at the end of FY 1996; (2) the decline occurred for a variety of reasons, and the fund's balance appears to be stabilizing in FY 1997; (3) if the Forest Service's estimates are correct, the Salvage Sale Fund's balance will total about $182 million at the end of FY 1997, a balance the Forest Service believes is sufficient to meet the estimated obligations for FY 1998; (4) several management practices that affect the flow of salvage sale receipts into the Salvage Sale Fund need to be improved; and (5) specifically, these practices include how regions and forests: (a) establish priorities for distributing salvage timber sale receipts; (b) establish estimates of the costs to recovered; (c) review salvage sale plans for completeness and accuracy; and (d) satisfactorily correct deficiencies.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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