Natural Resources

The Military Lands Withdrawal Act of 1986 removes from public use until the year 2001 more than 7 million acres and makes them available to the military for training and weapons and equipment testing. GAO reviewed the experiences at the six sites named in the act, which are located in Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico, and found that resource management results have been mixed. Military operations have not been hampered, but military commanders have changed some training exercises to accommodate concerns for wildlife. Five of the six sites had resource management plans, but only about half of the planned actions had been started as of November 1993. Three sites had access restrictions that made it hard for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to carry out resource management activities. These restrictions and the military presence led BLM to assign a low priority to resource management on military land. At three sites, BLM allocated considerably less money to manage lands used for military training than for other property under its care. All six sites had opportunities to improve resource management by strengthening cooperation between BLM and the military and by beefing up monitoring of progress on planned resource management actions. This report includes photographs of the terrain at the six sites.

GAO found that: (1) the results of resource management at the six military training sites have been mixed; (2) although military operations have not been hampered by Bureau of Land Management (BLM) resource management activities, some training activities have been changed to accommodate wildlife concerns; (3) military officials expressed concern that future training requirements may not be met because of environmental constraints; (4) although military operations have hampered BLM resource management activities, the full impact of military operations on resource conditions is unknown due to the lack of data; (5) BLM resource management activities have been hampered most by land access restrictions and the overall presence of the military; (6) as of 1993, BLM has been able to implement only half of the five resource management plans; (7) BLM has assigned a low priority to resource management on military lands and has allocated considerably less funding for resource management activities at these sites; and (8) the military and BLM can improve resource management at all six sites by working more cooperatively, developing information systems on resource conditions, and strengthening monitoring of planned resource management actions.

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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