The RMPs in the last paragraph of Section 1.0 in the Draft EA provide a frame of reference not for assessing the environmental consequences of the Proposed Action and its alternatives, but for evaluating the effectiveness of those options relative to the policies and goals therein.
For example, would you expect the No Action Alternative (Section 2.1) to be successful in achieving and maintaining AMLs in the planning area? Would Alternative D do a good job of enforcing the resource allocations of the RMPs?
The total estimated forage assigned to privately owned livestock, based on data from Tables 3 – 6 in Section 3.7, is approximately 43,300 AUMs per year.
The AML for the Complex is 638, according to Table 1, requiring about 7,700 AUMs per year. The forage diverted to livestock would support an additional 3,608 wild horses, for a true AML of 4,246.
If you believe the Complex should be managed primarily for livestock, as it appears to be, then Alternative A (the Proposed Action) is best. It features roundups, fertility control, sex ratio skewing and castration.
Impacts to the horses will be great but those don’t count.
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