Indian Programs

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Bureau of Indian Affairs' (BIA) forestry program, focusing on BIA: (1) achievement of its timber harvest goals on commercial Indian timberland; (2) accomplishment of needed forest development; (3) controls over funds disbursement; (4) forestry program staffing since 1977; and (5) efforts to attract Indian foresters.

GAO found that: (1) tribes actively participated in developing multi-year forest management plans, and in planning and approving individual timber sales; (2) BIA experienced problems in keeping forest management plans current due to funding and staffing shortfalls and inability to obtain timely tribal involvement in developing plan components; (3) such factors as market conditions and compliance with relevant federal laws affected the achievement of timber harvest goals; (4) the 1977 backlog of forest development needs was incomplete and imprecise, and failed to include over 300,000 additional acres of needed timber stand improvement; (5) while BIA data indicated that needed forest development had been completed for about one-half of the backlog acreage, data on individual reservation accomplishments were uncertain; (6) dedicated funding failed to address changing development needs because it was still targeted at reducing the 1977 backlog; (7) BIA improved its controls over forest management deduction funds; (8) BIA forestry staff increased significantly since 1978; and (9) BIA had several headquarters and field-level programs to encourage Indians to study and train for the forestry profession.

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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