Your faithful public servants claim that public lands in the western U.S. can only support one wild horse per thousand acres (25,600 animals on 25.6 million acres according to the last page in the 2025 population dataset).
A simple way to apply this rule is to round the acreage to the nearest thousand and drop the last three digits.
For example, Thirty Mile Spring, an allotment in eastern Nevada, covers 178,716 public acres.
If it was an HMA, the AML would be 179.
- Acreage rounded to the nearest thousand = 179,000
- Remainder after dropping the last three digits = 179
The permittee receives 8,405 active AUMs (per year), equivalent to 700 wild horses.
Thus, the horse population would be held to approximately 25% of carrying capacity, with 75% devoted to livestock, which means 700 – 179 = 521 wild horses would be consigned to off-range holding because of permitted grazing.
The advocates like the arrangement and want it enforced with ovary-killing pesticides, not low-flying helicopters.
RELATED: AMLs Don’t Indicate Genetic Diversity or Carrying Capacity.
Western Horse Watchers Association 