Summary: In response to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the programs that the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Forest Service and the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) use to plan, negotiate, and implement land exchanges.
GAO found that the land exchange process is working well, since both BLM and the Forest Service: (1) have established and followed procedures governing land exchanges; and (2) notify and negotiate with state and local governments about exchange proposals early in the exchange process to avoid disagreements. GAO also found that: (1) both agencies need to consistently record the costs of processing exchange proposals to ensure the best budgeting and planning decisions; (2) both agencies follow practices, such as adjusting appraised values to reach equal value, which the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) does not allow, since the government receives lands that are not equal to those it conveys; and (3) although pooling increased the agencies' effectiveness in disposing of scattered tracts of federal land for a desirable parcel, neither agency has evaluated pooling to determine whether its use is in the interest of the government and the public.
