By Brian Carnell

Wednesday, March 20, 2002

Government agencies dealing with the nation's wilderness just cannot catch a break these days as it is information keeps coming out about the agency engaging in some sort of chicanery or another. This time the error is a real whopper.

In 2001, the U.S. Forest Service reported that 920 million people visited national forests in the United States. There was only one problem -- the actual number is only about 20 percent of that figure.

In fact, in 2001 about 209 million people visited national forests. This error was revealed after Congress scrutinized the report.

The USFS claims that the discrepancy occurred when a set of numbers was transposed. Whether or not that is a reasonable explanation is debatable, but either way the USFS comes across as untrustworthy because either it allowed the error to go through hoping to boost funding or it so poorly reviews its reports that it allowed an error of 700 million people to creep in to the report.

Fraud or incompetence -- neither choice is likely to give people much faith in the USFS.

Source:

Forest Service Caught Fudging the Numbers. National Center for Policy Analysis, March 1, 2002.

Discuss (0 Replies) | Printer Friendly