The project, situated in the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, would renew grazing permits for another ten years on the Link Spring and Last Chance allotments of northwestern Arizona.
There are no wild horses and burros on those pastures.
The Western Watersheds map shows the arrangement.
Table 2.1 in the Draft EA, currently out for public review, provides active AUMs and Table 3.3 provides acreage. The Allotment Master Report provides management status.
Link Spring
- 27,589 public acres
- 1,094 active AUMs
- Improve category
- 39.7 AUMs per year per thousand acres forage production
Last Chance
- 9,084 public acres
- 609 active AUMs
- Maintain category
- 67.0 AUMs per year per thousand acre forage production
Both allotments are making progress toward meeting the Arizona BLM Standards for Rangeland Health, according to Section 1.1 of the EA, suggesting that substandard conditions exist, so how did Last Chance qualify for Maintain status?
The average forage production across both allotments is 46.4 AUMs per year per thousand acres, enough to support 3.9 wild horses per thousand acres.
The BLM has stated repeatedly, with the concurrence of the advocates, that public lands in the American west can only sustain one wild horse per thousand acres (27,000 animals on 27 million acres).
The latter figure corresponds to a shifting of resources from wild horses to privately owned livestock.
That’s what the bureaucrats, ranchers and advocates are trying to protect.
Western Horse Watchers Association 