Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Forest Service's management of its National Wilderness Preservation System lands, focusing on: (1) the extent of resource deterioration in wilderness areas; and (2) Service staffing and funding devoted to wilderness management.
GAO found that the Service: (1) managed about 32.5 million acres of National Wilderness Preservation System lands, including 354 wilderness areas; (2) decentralized wilderness area management to the individual forest and district office levels, with oversight by regional offices and headquarters; (3) did not require wilderness managers to maintain comprehensive information on wilderness area conditions, although managers indicated that there was a considerable amount of unmet trail maintenance and reconstruction needs and campsite deterioration; (4) did not periodically inventory conditions in many wilderness areas and could not determine whether conditions were improving or worsening; (5) had unnecessarily large or highly visible administrative and recreational facilities and structures in several wilderness areas, which did not comply with its policy to maintain low visibility; (6) did not maintain information about funding and staffing it devoted to management of individual wilderness areas; and (7) believes that staffing and funding have been inadequate to achieve its objectives, resulting in its not performing monitoring, data-gathering, trail maintenance, campsite cleanup, and public education tasks it believes necessary to protect the wilderness areas.
