If Wild Horses Had Principal Use of Mustang

The BLM recently authorized the drilling of a water well in the allotment, which borders the Silver King HMA.

The news release gave few details about the project.

The allotment master report puts it in the Improve category, suggesting that your stewards of the public lands are not taking their responsibilities seriously.

Note that there are more AUMs in the suspended column than active.

The Mustang permittees receive 1,134 active AUMs on 23,877 public acres, equivalent to 95 wild horses or four wild horses per thousand public acres.

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 of the 2025 population dataset).

The advocates support the narrative with their darting programs.

If the allotment was an HMA, the AML would be 24 and 71 wild horses would be consigned to off-range holding because of permitted grazing.

The area would be held to a small fraction of carrying capacity to accommodate large numbers of cattle or sheep, placed there by high-net-worth individuals who pay almost nothing for the resources they consume and the services rendered on their behalf by the government.

BLM allotments in Nevada support 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.