The Rangeland Health Assessment and Evaluation Report for the permit renewal indicates in Section 4.2.1 that the base property tied to the four allotments covered by the project contains 40 acres owned by the state of Nevada.
One of the allotments overlaps a small part of the Wassuk HMA.
A base property is land that has the capability to produce crops or forage that can be used to support authorized livestock for a specified period of the year.
Table 1 in the report suggests that the permittee can access over 88,000 public acres yet during the off season his animals must retreat to just 40 acres?
Perhaps some are moved to rented pastures and others receive supplemental feed.
As for rangeland health, the allotments do not meet these standards according to Section 5.0 of the report, which includes numerous photos of as-found conditions:
- Soils
- Riparian and Wetlands
- Plant and Animal Habitat
- Special Status Species Habitat
The allotments meet this standard:
- Water Quality
If permitted grazing is good for the land why are the allotments is such poor condition?
According to Section 5.2.3, bottom of page 94 in the report, wild horses contribute to spring and stream degradation but they typically do not congregate for an extended period of time like cattle. Wild horses tend to approach a water source to drink then return to the uplands to graze, therefore the time and frequency of damage riparian-wetland areas is generally less than that of livestock at some sites.
That is the usual pattern on the Virginia Range, seen in these trailcam photos.
What’s unusual? No foals, thanks to the Campaign Against America’s Wild Horses, a leader in the wild horse removal business and defender of the public-lands ranchers.
Western Horse Watchers Association 