Table 3-4 in the 2017 Final EA for resource enforcement actions in the HMA provides acreage, grazing seasons and forage allocations for three allotments inside the HMA.
The Allotment Master report shows management status, public acres and active AUMs.
If managed grazing is better for the land than free-roaming horses, as the BLM and its retirees claim, why don’t any of the allotments meet standards for rangeland health?
Approximately 62% of the BLM grazing land in Oregon does not meet standards for rangeland health.
There is no category for blaming these conditions on wild horses. Not yet, anyway.
If livestock are confined to certain pastures, which they don’t re-graze according to the retirees, is there anything left for the horses when the animals are rotated to the next area? Is the previous pasture now off limits, “providing opportunity for undisturbed regrowth, reproduction and recovery of desirable forage plants?” How are the horses supposed to survive in this mess?
They can’t. That’s why they’re being removed. Meanwhile, the advocates are screaming “Get rid of them with PZP not helicopters!”
The horses allowed by plan receive 960 AUMs per year, while the plan assigns almost nine times as much to privately owned livestock. Would you say that the HMA is managed principally for wild horses?
The government must be following the law, otherwise you wouldn’t see such a lopsided forage distribution.
The HMA contains about 72,000 acres of public lands according to the EA. Curiously, it can only produce 13 AUMs per thousand acres for wild horses, but if you’re talking about livestock, it can produce 117 AUMs per thousand acres. How is that possible?
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