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Issues >
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Public lands constitute a large percentage of the western United States and often surround or break up parcels of private land. Therefore, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) frequently swap public and private holdings in an effort to even out borders and protect important natural resource values. However, the review process agencies use to conduct the swaps is often misguided and inadequate. Green
Scissors Proposal Current Status Recent
land exchanges have created a furor over the appraisal and environmental
review processes conducted by federal agencies. In June 2000,
the General Accounting Office (GAO) released a report charging
that the USFS and the BLM have undervalued federal land and overvalued
land the government has obtained in trade from private interests.
The report concluded that, too often, these land exchanges benefit
private business interests at the public's expense. The GAO recommendations
include implementing a moratorium on land exchanges until the
programs are fixed. A GAO report released in June 2000 concluded that the BLM and Forest Service's land exchange programs has shortchanged federal taxpayers by millions of dollars by often undervaluing public land and overvaluing private land. The report concluded that, as the program is rife with problems and abuses, Congress should consider discontinuing the land exchange program. In July 2001, just a year after the release of the GAO report, yet another land exchange audit conducted by the Interior Department's Inspector General found that the BLM's chief appraiser had circumvented federal appraisal standards in his oversight of land exchanges in southern Utah. In several land trades completed between 1996 and 1999, the chief appraiser had improperly consulted with private parties to the transactions regarding the value of their lands and increased the appraised value according to their wishes, which resulted in substantial taxpayer losses. Even before the Utah audit, however, the chief appraiser had already been implicated in 3 previous audits of exchanges he oversaw in Nevada in the 1990s. In these trades, his "creative" approach to land valuation lost taxpayers at least $12 million. In November 2001, the Western Land Exchange Project and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility called for the chief appraiser's resignation. Land swaps subsidize industry, since they allow companies to trade lands they can no longer use for relatively untouched lands from which they can reap a profit. Recent beneficiaries have included Weyerhaeuser, Big Sky Lumber, and Crown Pacific. When
companies exchange their exploited lands back to the federal
government, they avoid cleanup obligations, thus sticking taxpayers
with the cost of decommissioning logging roads and implementing
restoration on damaged lands. The public often receives inadequate information regarding the environmental impacts of land swaps. In one exchange near Bend, Oregon, the USFS revealed it had underestimated by 58 percent the amount of old growth forest to be traded to Crown Pacific after the public comment period had expired. Legislated land swaps are often exempt from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that establishes environmental review of the land and habitat and allows for public comment and review. Sometimes, the private parties involved will pay half the cost of implementing an exchange, which may include the Environmental Impact Statement, wildlife surveys, and salaries of staff. This practice can create an incentive to complete exchanges no matter the outcome of the NEPA review. Land
swaps can trade away important habitat, such as areas inhabited
by the threatened spotted owl and Endangered Species Act candidate
Canada lynx. Contacts
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