If Wild Horses Had Principal Use of Deeth and Pole Creek

The permits on these allotments, located in northeastern Nevada, are up for renewal.

Together, they offer 21,055 active AUMs on 130,698 public acres, according to the Allotment Master Report.

The AMLs are zero.  The nearest HA is Spruce-Pequop.

How many wild horses could the allotments support?

Using the principle of forage interchangeability, the True AML would be 21,055 ÷ 12 = 1,755, the number of horses the land could support if it was managed principally for them as specified in the original statute.

The stocking rate would be 1,755 ÷ 130,698 × 1,000 = 13.4 wild horses per thousand public acres.

Why is this important?

The bureaucrats and ranchers claim that public lands in the western U.S. can only support one wild horse per thousand acres (27,000 animals on 27 million acres).

The advocates, defeated a long time ago, bolster the narrative with their darting programs.

If the allotments were an HMA, the AML would be 130 and 1,625 horses would be consigned to off-range holding because of permitted grazing.

BLM allotments in Nevada carry livestock equivalent to 173,144 wild horses on 40,194,360 public acres, or 4.3 wild horses per thousand public acres.

Wild horses can be placed on public lands not identified for their use by acquiring base properties associated with grazing allotments and flipping the preference to horses, as American Prairie did for bison in Montana.

RELATED: The Allotments Tell the Story: They’re Lying, All of Them.