U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: Opportunities Remain to Improve Oversight and Management of Oil and Gas Activities on National Wildlife Refuges

The mission of the Department of the Interior's (DOI) Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) includes administering a national network of refuges for the conservation, management, and, where appropriate, restoration of fish, wildlife, and plant resources and their habitats within the United States for the benefit of present and future generations. The refuges are unique in that they are the only federal lands managed primarily for the benefit of wildlife. The refuge system's 95 million acres, which represent more than 14 percent of all federal lands and are found in every state, include land that has always been federally owned and land that has been acquired from others. While the federal government owns almost all of the surface lands in the system, in many cases it does not own the subsurface mineral rights. Subject to some restrictions, owners of subsurface mineral rights have the legal authority to explore for mineral resources such as oil and gas and to extract resources that are found. In August 2003, we reported that oil and gas activities were occurring on many wildlife refuges and that little was known about the effects of those activities on refuge resources. We also reported that FWS oversight of oil and gas activities needed improvement, in part because of uncertainties related to FWS's authority to require oil and gas operators to obtain access permits before conducting exploration and production activities. In addition, we reported that FWS guidance regarding land acquisition was unclear and potentially exposed the federal government to situations where it could unknowingly acquire contaminated land. To address these deficiencies, we made a number of recommendations that, if implemented, we believed would improve FWS's ability to protect refuge resources. On May 3, 2007, we briefed House Committee on Natural Resources staff on the extent to which FWS had taken corrective measures to address the problems that we previously identified. We reported that FWS has taken steps to implement some of our recommendations, but we believe that more action is needed. We consider all but one of the recommendations from our 2003 report to be open. This document provides further details about the findings and recommendations in our 2003 report and the status of FWS actions to implement those recommendations.