The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers more than 245 million acres of public land, more than any other Federal agency. This acreage, much of it located in the West, makes BLM a leader in our Nation's wildland fire management efforts. BLM's fire program is especially critical as record wildland fires annually threaten lives and property throughout the western United States.
In the face of these large-scale challenges, BLM's wildland fire program has demonstrated vulnerabilities to misuse of funds and potential fraud due to inadequate internal controls and inconsistent implementation of existing controls. These issues undermine BLM's ability to, among other things, determine the real cost of fire suppression, account for programmatic purchases, and validate its payroll.
While we are unable to project the full extent of improper charges, BLM officials are taking steps to strengthen their monitoring of program spending and to address many of the control deficiencies we identified.
We identified four internal control areas needing improvement—fire codes, purchase cards, property, and payroll—and made 11 recommendations. We believe that such improvements will benefit program transparency and facilitate better use of taxpayer dollars.