Government auditors discovered millions of taxpayer dollars have been squandered by a federal program that was supposed to improve natural wilderness areas by swapping public land for more-desirable private tracts, the Washington Post reports.
Timber companies, real-estate developers and other business interests are benefiting from real estate deals that are so complex they can't be adequately tracked by land-exchange officials, the General Accounting Office (GAO) states in its report.
The problems are so pervasive the GAO suggests Congress eliminate the land trades effort, the Post reports.
In one case, a private buyer bought federal land for $763,000, then turned around and sold the tract for $4.6 million that same day. The same person also bought 40 acres for $504,000 and again sold it that day for $1 million.
In another example, the U.S. Forest Service traded Weyerhaeuser Co. a mature Douglas fir forest in exchange for land near Seattle that was mostly clear-cut, the Washington Post reports.
The Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have traded 2 million acres of public land for an estimated 3 million acres of mostly private land.
Exchange regulations require land that is traded to be of equal market value, and any transaction must benefit the environment and public.
However, the BLM appears to have violated the law by selling parcels of land and keeping the money, rather than returning it to the federal treasury, the newspaper reports.
Jim Lyons, the agriculture undersecretary who oversees the Forest Service, claims the findings are "ludicrous" and "overstated," the Post reports.
But the Western Land Exchange Project, a Seattle-based environmental group, says a moratorium should be put in place for this program and extended to land exchanges approved by Congregation at the request of private land owners, because such trades may bypass required public and environmental review processes, the newspaper reports.
The "BLM and the Forest Service: Land Exchanges Need to Reflect Appropriate Value and Serve the Public Interest" report is available online, but the free Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view the report.
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