How Bad Are Things in Antelope Hills?

The allotment overlaps about 51% of the HMA according to Table 6 in the new EA for rancher protection in the Red Desert Complex.

The allotment master report puts it in the Improve category, with 47.7% of the permitted use in the suspended column.

The 8,365 active AUMs support livestock equivalent to 697 wild horses on 178,253 public acres, or 3.9 wild horses per thousand public acres.

The management plan allows 0.5 wild horses per thousand public acres in the HMA.

Keeping the population below that limit means healthy horses on healthy rangelands, according to your faithful public servants, while they allow eight times that many in the allotment.

If the suspended AUMs were restored, for a total of 15,993 in the active column, the allotment would support livestock equivalent to 1,333 wild horses, or 7.5 wild horses per thousand public acres.

That may be an unstated goal of the new HMAP, which the advocates will endorse regardless of what’s in it (because they’re hooked on HMAPs), and would explain the management actions therein.

If every wild horse was removed from the area where the HMA and allotment intersect, the land would still be at 8X AML because of livestock.

RELATED: Red Desert EA Out for Review.