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Congressional appropriators have ordered a study to determine whether
the Forest Service would be better suited as a component of the
Interior Department.
The Government Accountability Office advised Interior last week that
it is studying what options are available for consolidating the Forest
Service -- currently part of the Agriculture Department -- within
Interior.
Reps. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) and Todd Tiahrt
(R-Kan.), chairman and ranking member of the House Interior
Appropriations Subcommittee, respectively, have both questioned whether
the public would be better served if the agency was moved given the
similar missions of the Forest Service and Interior's Bureau of Land
Management.
The issue is irrefutably attached to the cost
of fighting fires given that large parts of the Forest Service and
Interior's budgets are routinely set aside for wildfires.
During
an oversight hearing on wildfire management before the subcommittee
last month, Tiahrt questioned whether absorption would improve federal
firefighting efforts, but Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey said that
was unlikely.
'It usually goes away'
GAO has explored the question in
previous years, said GAO Natural Resources and Environment Director
Robin Nazzaro. Testimonies and reports from both the agency and Forest
Service officials concluded that past efforts to combine the agencies
have generally failed because of a lack of consensus for change, she
said.
Michael Francis, a public policy expert with the
Wilderness Society, said the combination of the Forest Service and
Interior may offer some benefits, but it would ultimately not work
because the two have different underlying laws that govern them.
Francis
also said it would be a costly endeavor to combine the two, as evident
in the reorganization of federal agencies that led to the Department of
Homeland Security.
"This comes up every couple of years,"
Francis said. "Everybody says this is a good idea but then somebody
says 'Well ...' and it usually goes away."
The Forest
Service was created in 1905, partially using land reserves from
Interior, and placed under USDA by President Theodore Roosevelt in a
move supported by Chief Gifford Pinchot.
Harold Ickes,
Interior secretary under President Franklin Roosevelt, attempted to
consolidate the agencies. More recently, there has been discussion of
combining the Forest Service and BLM, creating a Department of Natural
Resources.
Interior spokesman Chris Paolino said the
department had no official position on absorbing the Forest Service but
would work with GAO to facilitate the study.
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