Two goals of resource management:
1. Keep wild horses at or below AML.
2. Keep livestock at or below permitted limits.
The first criterion corresponds to 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 second criterion is equivalent to seven wild horses per thousand acres.
These two figures suggest that public lands in the western U.S. can support many more wild horses than the government admits.
The advocates, long on zeal but short on truth, want you to focus on #1, an arbitrary value that feeds the overpopulation narrative and maximizes rancher prosperity while supplying a rationale for their darting programs.
If the goal was rangeland health, most acreage grazed by livestock, which includes areas identified for wild horses, would be in the Maintain category.
In reality, not even a third meets the requirements.
RELATED: Double Standard for Rangeland Health?
► Get the truth about wild horses and the wild horse advocates at westernhorsewatchers.com.
Western Horse Watchers Association 