BLM should focus more on grazing, not wild horses, report says

This story was updated at 5:13 p.m. EDT.

The Bureau of Land Management is improperly focused on reducing excess wild horses and burros trampling federal rangelands and instead should address the negative effects of livestock grazing, a new report asserts.

The watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, says data it has collected from BLM over the last 25 years or so shows that overgrazing of livestock is causing more damage to rangelands than excess wild horses and burros.

PEER says in a report released Wednesday that based on the bureau’s own data, about 44 million acres of federal grazing allotments are failing basic landscape health standards — primarily due to livestock grazing.