HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.
![handle is hein.gao/gaobabkbp0001 and id is 1 raw text is:
0 .COMPTROLLER GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES
o WASHINGTON, D.C. 20548
B-203506 June 19, 1981
CEDl-188
The Honorable James H. reaver
Chairman, Subcommittee on Forests,
Family Farms, and Energy
Comittee on Agriculture
House of Representatives
Dear Mr. Chaira:
In res._nse to your May 27, 1981, letter we are pro-
viding ourLviews on H.R. 2900, the proposed Vegetation
Management Reform Act of !98], introduced on March 26, 1981.
This bill would, among other things, promote forestry employ-
ment and the safe use of herbicides on public forest lands
managed by the Department of Agriculture's Forest Service
and the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Manage-
ment. The following comments are based primarily on our
review ol the Service'sOand Bureau's~use of herbicides in
their vegetation management programs and our recent report
entitled Better Data Needed To Determine the Extent to
Which Herbicides Should Be Used on Forest Lands (CED-81-
46, Apr. 17, 1981) (copy enclosed). In our review we con-
centrated on the agencies' vegetation management activities
at two forest management stages: site preparation and re-
lease. (The term release refers to promoting the growth of
selected trees by temporarily suppressing competing vegeta-
tion.) It is at these stages in managing a forest when
herbicides are generally Used.
GENERAL COMMENTS
The proposed legislation would require the Service and
the Bureau to institute stricter guidelines on the use of
herbicides in their vegetation management programs and, as
we recommended in our report, would require them to obtain
better information before-deciding on treatment and the
method of treatment. The bill's promotion of forestry employ-
ment woifld be in line with and would strengthen the Forest
Service's own pesticide policy statement.- As noted in our.
report, the Service's current policy statement issued in
October 1979 states in part that in considering alternatives:
0173 7o](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.gao/gaobabkbp0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)