A 90-day comment period began on August 18 for a Draft EIS covering changes to the land use plan administered by the Rock Springs Field Office, according to a BLM news release dated August 17.
The project anticipates changes to the HMAs affected by the RSGA consent decree approved in 2022, cleared for implementation in 2023 and now subject to legal challenges by several advocacy groups.
Go to the placeholder section under Biological Resources (BR) – Wild Horses (4900) on page 2-85 in the EIS (page 155 in the pdf).
The scope of the changes is not accurate, a potential comment on the EIS.
Section 3.9 says the Wild Horse Management EIS will amend the management plan for the Adobe Town, Divide Basin, Salt Wells Creek, and White Mountain HMAs, but there were no changes to White Mountain in the latest iteration.
Section 3.16 indicates there are 304,261 active AUMs within the planning area on 79 grazing allotments covering approximately 5.27 million acres, which works out to 57.7 AUMs per year per thousand acres, equivalent to 4.8 wild horses per thousand acres.
However, public lands in the western U.S. can only support one wild horse per thousand acres according to the bureaucrats (27,000 animals on 27 million acres).
The total number of animals allowed by plan (upper end of AML) is actually 23,866 wild horses and 2,919 wild burros according to the last table in the 2023 HA/HMA Report, so the total forage requirement would be
23,866 × 12 + 2,919 × (12 ÷ 2) = 286,392 + 17,514 = 303,906 AUMs per year
Therefore, livestock in one BLM field office receive roughly the same amount of forage as wild horses and burros in ten western states!
Moreover, the disparity will increase as the Rock Springs HMAs are zeroed out.
Western Horse Watchers Association 