BLM said today that that approximately 125 wild horses will be gathered from the Range Creek HMA in Carbon County, UT, starting July 1.  The operation will be carried out with helicopters and will be open to public observation.

The HMA covers 55,023 acres and has an AML of 125, for an aimed-at stocking rate of 2.3 wild horses per thousand acres.

The HMA intersects one grazing allotment, with 3,267 AUMs per year authorized across eight pastures.  The amount of land falling within the HMA was not given in the EA.

Captured animals will be taken to the off-range corrals in Axtell.

Gather stats and daily reports will be posted to this page.

A roundup occurred on the HMA last September, with 154 wild horses removed.

The current population is thought to be 184, plus this year’s foal crop, according to the news release.

On June 16, County Commissioners approved a resolution opposing helicopter gathers of wild horses and burros within the borders of Nye County, NV, according to a story posted this morning by the Pahrump Valley Times.

The motion passed with all in favor.

The Stone Cabin, Reveille, Hot Creek, Saulsbury and Bullfrog HMAs can be found in Nye County, along with the Nevada WHR.

RELATED: Public Meeting This Week for Aerial Roundups in Nevada.

The executive director of the Public Lands Council said earlier this week that public-lands ranching should be viewed as “a land-management tool to reduce fine fuels that lead to intense wildfires, as well as a tool to cultivate native grasses and reduce invasive species,” according to a report by Capital Press of Salem, OR.

She also claimed that “herd management areas are overstocked” and stakeholders in the west are very interested in additional funding for the WHB program.

No looting and burning expected, just some yard signs over the July 4th weekend, according to a story published this morning by The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, VA.

Wild horse tourism is a large part of Corolla’s economy.  “People come specifically to see the horses.  Visitors stay in rental houses and eat and shop locally.”

The horses roam on marshes and beaches north of town, near the Virginia border.

The barrier that keeps the horses away from town was damaged last September by Hurricane Dorian.

BLM announced yesterday the beginning of a 30-day comment period on a draft environmental assessment for the removal of wild horses in and around the Moriah Herd Area in eastern Nevada.

The HA covers 55,300 acres on the Utah border and has no AML.  Horses were found there in 1971 but the land is no longer managed for them.

The HA intersects five grazing allotments according to Section 3.2.9.1 of the EA, with cattle and sheep present most of the year.

Note 13 on page seven of the BLM map says “Unsuitable habitat – (unproductive land – inadequate forage),” yet the area can provide an estimated 4,034 AUMs per year to privately owned livestock, based on data in Table 4, enough to support 336 horses.

The current population in and around the HA is thought to be 714, including this year’s foal crop.  The animals routinely move outside the HA in search of food and water.

All of the horses have been designated ‘excess’ and therefore subject to removal.

The Moriah HMA lost its HMA status in the 2008 Ely District Record of Decision and Approved Resource Management Plan.

The roundup, when it occurs, will likely capture only 75% to 85% of the horses and follow-up actions may be necessary over the next ten years to achieve management objectives, according to section 2.2 of the EA.

Comments must be submitted by email or sent by US Mail to the Ely District Office.

An online form was not provided with the project documents.

A search of the Federal Register yielded no results for 2020.  The last meeting of the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board was in October of 2019.

RELATED: WHBAB Rubber-Stamps ‘Path Forward?’

On the Montgomery Pass WHT with K. E. Borrelli.  Outing hosted by Rock Creek Pack Station.  For a description of the WHT, go to page 629 in the final EIS for the Inyo National Forest Management Plan update.  The Forest Service shows it on its map but does not provide a link for it.

How many wild horses in long-term holding can be explained by the ‘rule of four?’

All of them.  A quick estimate of the number of horses cheated out of spot on their home range by privately owned livestock is

27,000 × 4 = 108,000

If you removed domestic livestock from half of the HMAs, you could empty all of the off-range corrals and pastures.

But why stop there?  Cattle and sheep belong on private land, not wild horses.

Yesterday we discovered a quick way to estimate the number of wild horses an HMA can support.  Another simple relationship that falls out of the post about forage supply and demand is for horses displaced by privately owned livestock.

Here’s how they fit together:

New AML = Old AML + Horses Denied = 5 × Old AML

Solve for Horses Denied:

Horses Denied = 4 × Old AML

A simple estimate of the number of horses displaced by other mandated uses of public lands is to multiply the current AML by four.

This corresponds to the four missing horses in the original post!

Returning to the Jackson Mountains example, the number of horses denied a place on their home range should be about 4 × 217 = 868.

This compares favorably to 846, the number of horses denied, computed the hard way.

RELATED: How to Compute Horses Denied.

Yesterday’s post about forage supply and demand suggests that HMAs subject to permitted livestock grazing (which is most of them) can support five times more wild horses than currently allowed by plan.

For example, the Jackson Mountains HMA, considered on these pages a few days ago, has an AML of 217.  The number of horses the area can support is 217 × 5 = 1,085.

That’s a lot easier than digging through the environmental assessment and computing a new AML, which turned out to be 1,063.  But it’s pretty darn close.

So if you can’t find the AUM data, there’s your rule of thumb.

It’s not ironclad, just an estimate.

The HMAs should be able to support 135,000 wild horses, not 27,000, and the current population of 90,000 is well within the carrying capacity of the land—if it wasn’t for privately owned livestock.

The problem is not overpopulation, it is public-lands ranching.

The cycle of life repeats on the Virginia Range, despite those who would try to break it.

The topic of forage demand comes up frequently on these pages.  We know that one AUM will sustain one wild horse, one cow/calf pair, two wild burros or five domestic sheep for one month.  The forage demand of one wild horse is 12 AUMs per year.

The land use plan for an HMA must allocate 2,184 AUMs per year if the AML is 182.

But you can’t write the forage budget until you know how much forage is available.

In some of the environmental assessments for wild horse management actions, forage supply varies from 12 to 18 acres per AUM per year.

Let’s pick the midpoint.  A wild horse would need access to at least 12 × 15 = 180 acres to survive.  Round the result to 200 acres.

Therefore, a stocking rate of five wild horses per thousand acres should be sustainable.

Why does the government limit wild horse herds to one animal per thousand acres?

What happened to the other four horses (80% of the carrying capacity of the land)?

Take a guess.

No, it’s not a roundup, not on the Virginia Range.