Interior counts its co-stewardship deals. GAO read the agreements

In November 2021, the Interior and Agriculture secretaries signed Joint Secretarial Order 3403, committing their departments -- joined a year later by Commerce -- to give Tribes substantive input into managing the federal lands and waters that were once their territories.▸ Interior's own December 2024 tally⧉ shows the count of agreements climbing fast: more than 69 signed that year alone, pushing the cumulative total since the order to nearly 150. A GAO review released in January 2026⧉ looked past the count and asked a different question -- are the agreements themselves built to last -- and found real gaps: two of the three departments lack a legal authority Interior already has, none of the departments' policies fully capture what GAO found makes an agreement durable, and none have measured what 2025's workforce cuts did to their capacity to keep making these deals.

Interior's own report describes co-stewardship broadly -- operations and maintenance contracts, interpretive services, conservation agreements, management plans, harvest agreements, wildlife reintroduction efforts, youth education programs, and incorporation of Indigenous Knowledge all count.▸ Under that definition, Interior reported more than 69 new agreements in 2024, bringing its total since the order to nearly 150. The department also says it trained nearly 400 senior staff at seven regional workshops that year, with Forest Service and NOAA leadership attending too.

GAO identified 11 features it found important to a durable shared decision-making agreement -- among them a commitment to seeking consensus, a clear dispute-resolution process, defined communication protocols, and explicit agreement limitations.▸ Signatories to the agreements GAO reviewed in depth said each feature mattered in practice: a Glacier Bay National Park signatory pointed to plain-language limitations as a way to head off future conflict, and a Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument signatory said the agreement's lack of defined communication protocols led to inconsistent information-sharing. GAO found that Agriculture, Commerce, and Interior policies touch on some of these features but generally don't capture all of them -- notably missing language on seeking consensus or on clearly defined ways to implement goals.

A deeper gap showed up in legal authority.▸ Interior agencies can let eligible Tribes take over administration of certain programs through self-governance agreements under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act. The Forest Service and NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries manage similar resources but have no comparable authority -- a structural reason their agreements can't go as far as Interior's, regardless of goodwill on either side. GAO recommended Congress consider giving both agencies a path to that authority.

The legal-authority gap also showed up in how slowly agencies got their own staff up to speed.▸ Agriculture and Interior issued reports in 2022 identifying the legal authorities available for these agreements. NOAA didn't finalize its own version until December 2024 -- about two years after Commerce signed on to the order -- leaving NOAA field staff without that guidance in the interim.

GAO also found something no one had measured: what 2025's federal workforce reductions did to agencies' ability to keep making these agreements at all.▸ A Forest Service district ranger in southeast Alaska said staff losses left tribal cultural ambassadors primarily responsible for keeping a visitor center open. In June 2025, a coalition of tribal organizations wrote to the Secretaries of Commerce and the Interior warning that the cuts were already ending long-term relationships between Tribes and agency staff and delaying agency responses. As of GAO's review, none of the five agencies involved -- BLM, FWS, NPS, the Forest Service, or NOAA -- had assessed their staffing capacity to develop these agreements in light of the cuts; some said they were waiting for the changes to finish first, others had no plans to look at all.

GAO made eight recommendations -- two each to Agriculture and Commerce, four to Interior -- to fold the 11 features into policy and assess staffing capacity.▸ The responses varied in how clearly they committed to anything. Interior said by email, not in writing, that it generally agreed with its four recommendations. NOAA agreed in writing with its one staffing-capacity recommendation but didn't say how it would act on it. Commerce gave no written response to its policy recommendation, only saying during the review that it would consider the 11 features in an upcoming policy revision. The Forest Service, writing on Agriculture's behalf, said it generally agreed with the report -- without saying whether it agreed with either of its own two recommendations.