Renewal of the grazing permit is not mandatory. Cancellation is one of the four alternatives evaluated in the revised EA. Refer to Section 2.5 (page 30 in pdf).
Another rancher could acquire the base property and apply for a permit or shift his preference to Alvord from another allotment.
RMP amendments would be needed to permanently transfer the resources from livestock to wild horses. Drafting a new HMAP won’t work.
Writing a new AMP to permanently transfer AUMs to livestock that are currently off limits to everybody, including wildlife and wild horses, probably isn’t valid either but that’s what the BLM appears to be doing at Alvord.
Over the last 49 years, the agency has allowed the permittees to access the resource 18 times, according to Section 1.1 of the EA.
The RMP amendments would confine the ranchers to their base properties, operating their businesses on their own land while paying the going rate to feed their animals.
No more gravy train, no more sucking on the government teat at the expense of America’s wild horses.
American Prairie recently flipped several allotments in Montana from livestock to bison.
The advocates, obsessed with the Montana Solution and the welfare of the ranchers, continue their assault on the horses.
If Alternative D was approved, 7,355 AUMs per year would be liberated.
Four of the Alvord pastures are outside the HMA, according to Map 3 of the EA, North and South Foothills, Pike Creek and Alvord Seeding.
Those pastures cover 18,161 acres, according to Table 1, about 7.9% of the acreage in the allotment.
The forage assigned to Alvord livestock inside the HMA would be (1 – .079) × 7,355 = 6,774 AUMs per year, assuming the resource is evenly distributed across the allotment, enough to support 564 wild horses.
This does not include the suspended AUMs.
If the RMPs were revised as noted above, the AML could be increased from 390 to 954.
The allotment covers about a third of the HMA, so the AML could likely go much higher.
The BLM collects $9,145 per year in grazing fees from ranching activity inside the Alvord portion of the HMA while it spends $1,029,300 per year to care for the horses displaced thereby.
The BLM is not asking us to vote on the four alternatives, but as taxpayers, the option that helps the horses and reduces the burden on us is obvious.
RELATED: Alvord Allotment Confusion?
Western Horse Watchers Association 