Fish and Wildlife Service

Since the first national wildlife refuge was established in 1903, the nation's wildlife refuge system has grown to include 521 refuges on more than 90 million acres. Members of Congress have raised concerns about whether the Fish and Wildlife Service established refuges with migratory bird funds after Congress denied appropriations from land and water funds for that purpose. GAO found that of the 23 refuges that the Service established between 1994 and 1998, only eight used federal funds--$4 million from the land and water fund. No migratory bird funds were used. The remaining 15 refuges were established with land that was donated, transferred, or exchanged. The Service is not currently required to inform Congress of refuges established through donations or other means outside the appropriations process at the time they are established. As a result, congressional appropriations committees may be unaware of these refuges until the Service later asks for land and water funds to expand them. The Service also need not inform Congress of estimated future operations and maintenance costs when it establishes refuges. When the Service does establish a refuge, however, it estimates the costs of future land acquisitions and of operations and maintenance for that specific refuge. GAO believes that it would be useful for the Service to provide this information to Congress. Although the Service's automated priority-setting system for land and water projects creates a national priority list, the priorities are (1) based on criteria that are too subjective and (2) do not represent a true relative ranking of projects.

GAO noted that: (1) even when FWS establishes refuges without the need for appropriated funds, these actions have usually been followed by requests for appropriations to expand the refuges and have always resulted in the need for future appropriations to operate and maintain them; (2) from fiscal years 1994 through 1998, FWS established 23 refuges, 15 of which were established with land that was donated, transferred, or exchanged; (3) after establishing these refuges, FWS subsequently used $29 million in appropriated funds to acquire more land to expand them and plans to request another $786 million to acquire additional land for them; (4) furthermore, FWS will incur operations and maintenance costs for these refuges, which will be funded through appropriations, but it is unable to estimate how much these costs will be; (5) FWS uses separate and dramatically different priority-setting processes to decide which lands to acquire with its two funding sources; (6) for land and water funds, FWS used the Land Acquisition Priority System (LAPS), which is a centralized, automated system that generates a single national priority list; (7) in contrast, for migratory bird funds, FWS' regional offices develop their own priority lists, based on FWS' criteria for managing waterfowl habitat and on the likelihood of purchasing the land within a year of receiving funds; (8) LAPS has shortcomings that limit its usefulness in deciding which of FWS' land acquisitions to fund; (9) it uses subjective criteria, differentiates little between refuges, and does not provide a true relative ranking; (10) FWS is working to revise LAPS; (11) FWS does not provide Congress with information on its plans to acquire refuge lands with migratory bird funds; and (12) as a result, Congress does not know what these plans are and cannot factor this information into its decisionmaking.