Department of the Interior's Management of Land Boundaries

Publisher Marketing: The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Cadastral Survey program has been missing the opportunity to identify and perform surveys on high risk lands where significant potential revenues could be collected by the Department or Indian tribes. The Department has outdated and unreliable survey information on more than 1 million boundary miles. This encompasses almost 90 percent of the 385 million acres of federal and Indian lands that DOI is responsible for in the western United States (excluding Alaska). Proper survey and management of high risk lands with antiquated surveys has the potential to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from lands with valuable surface and subsurface resources. This revenue could result from the collection of fees or royalties from identifying (a) unauthorized uses including rights-of-way violations and (b) the improper removal of oil, gas, timber, or other resources from federal or Indian lands. The Cadastral Survey program, however, has not developed an adequate system to identify high risk lands or attributes in need of survey. Although project prioritization systems for both the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and BLM exist, neither system is properly designed or utilized.