The boundaries of the Palomino Buttes and Weaver Lake allotments coincide almost perfectly with the boundary of the HMA, except for a small wiggle on the southern edge and a minor indentation on the western edge.
Therefore, the forage assigned to livestock in these allotments represents horses displaced from the HMA by permitted grazing. No per-acre calculations are required.
Palomino Buttes offers 2,806 AUMs per year on 48,100 public acres and Weaver Lake offers 1,396 AUMs per year on 23,548 public acres, according to the Allotment Master Report.
The combined resource, 4,202 AUMs per year, would support 350 wild horses.
The True AML would be 64 + 350 = 414, to be achieved by confining the ranchers to their multi-million-dollar base properties and expecting them to pay the going rate to feed their animals.
The HMA covers 72,359 public acres, so the stocking rate at the new AML would be 5.7 wild horses per thousand public acres.
The Virginia Range was carrying ten before the advocates got involved.
The pre-gather population is thought to be 254.
You don’t have a wild horse problem, you have a resource management problem.
RELATED: Palomino Buttes, Stinkingwater Roundups Announced.
Western Horse Watchers Association 