The Proposed Action would also increase the grazing season by a factor of two.
Table 1 in the Draft EA, developed with no public input, summarizes the changes.
The project folder also contains an aerial image of the allotment.
The topic of increased forage usually appears in planning documents for wild horse roundups.
The customary response is that it can’t be accomplished through a wild horse gather decision and is only possible if the agency first revises the land-use plan to reallocate forage.
Refer to item 27 in the Lohanton comment summary for an example.
In this case, forage will go up with no changes to the LUP.
The allotment master report puts Granite Springs in the custodial category, condition unknown.
The EA claims the allotment has been underutilized.
The report shows no AUMs in the suspended column so the incremental forage has gone undetected for many years.
If the project is approved, the permittee will receive 383 AUMs on 982 public acres, equivalent to 32.5 wild horses per thousand public acres.
The target stocking rate across all HMAs is one wild horse per thousand acres (25,500 animals on 25.6 million acres).
Western Horse Watchers Association 