What is the Bureau of Land Management doing in the
woods? Not much good, says Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility, a national organization of resource management
employees. The watchdog group’s latest project, a Comprehensive
Study of the Public Domain Forestry Program of the Bureau of Land
Management, details what it calls rampant negligence within the
BLM’s forestry division. The six-part report by anonymous BLM
employees accuses the agency of basing timber projects on outdated
and even fictional records, flagrantly disregarding the need to
comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and squandering
millions of tax dollars each year as a result of insufficient
record-keeping, theft and fraud. PEER also charges that common BLM
practices include clearcutting without regeneration efforts,
conducting after-the-fact inventories and misusing the salvage
logging law. “American taxpayers are getting the shaft,” says Jeff
DeBonis, PEER’s executive director. “These forests belong to all
Americans. They have a right to know what Uncle Sam is doing with
them.”
This study is part of PEER’s “White
Paper” publishing project, which puts out a booklet a month. Each
costs $5 and covers a new environmental issue involving government
agencies. For a list of reports, write to Public Employees for
Environmental Responsibility, 2001 S Street, NW, Washington, DC
20009-1125 (202/265-PEER); or P.O. Box 30, Hood River, OR 97031
(541/387-4781).
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A negligent bureau?.
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