Land managers say they can only sustain one wild horse per thousand acres (27,000 animals on 27 million acres).
The Allotment Information Report at RAS provides acreage. management status and active AUMs for BLM allotments in ten western states.
Here is an overview of the dataset.
Public lands in Arizona support livestock equivalent to 53,662 wild horses.
In California, they sustain livestock equivalent to 26,409 wild horses.
The total across all ten states is 1,023,481 wild horses.
On a per acre basis, Montana was highest and Nevada was lowest.
Overall, public lands in the western U.S. are supporting livestock equivalent to seven wild horses per thousand public acres.
Given that the HMAs are a subset of the allotments, with a few exceptions, they should be able to support an average of 1 + 7 = 8 wild horses per thousand public acres, eight times higher than the bureaucrats admit.
That works out to a capacity of 8 × 27,000,000 ÷ 1,000 = 216,000 wild horses, enough to empty all of the off-range corrals and long-term pastures several times over, at great savings to American taxpayers.
The loss in grazing fees would be negligible.
As it is, for every wild horse allowed on public lands in the western U.S., seven have been consigned to off-range holding because of permitted grazing.
NOTE ON METHODOLOGY: The active AUMs were found by adding the values in column Q of each worksheet. The public acres were found by removing rows with duplicate entries in column A and adding the remaining values in column E.
RELATED: Why Are There So Many Wild Horses in Off-Range Holding?
Western Horse Watchers Association 