The HMA lies within the Buffalo Hills Allotment, overlapping 27.6% of the parcel according to Table 5 of the Final EA for pest control and resource enforcement in the Smoke Creek Complex.
The 314 horses allowed by plan require 3,768 AUMs per year.
The allotment offers 4,114 active AUMs on 440,982 public acres.
If the resource is evenly distributed across the allotment, livestock inside the HMA, the lawful home of wild horses, receive an estimated .276 × 4,114 = 1,135 AUMs per year, enough to support 94 wild horses.
Therefore, the True AML would be 314 + 94 = 408, to be achieved by confining the ranchers to their base properties in a year-round off season.
The HMA covers 125,207 public acres so the stocking rate at the new AML would be 408 ÷ 125,207 × 1,000 = 3.3 wild horses per thousand public acres.
This brings more embarrassment to the bureaucrats and ranchers, who claim that public lands in the western U.S. can only sustain one wild horse per thousand public acres (27,000 animals on 27 million acres).
RELATED: Buffalo Hills Wild Horses Better Off Than Permittees.
Western Horse Watchers Association 