Steve -- all good comments on your side. I'm not in complete agreement on raising quotas but I think the numbers can be fiddled with to see what you get. There's no question that education of hikers and their adoption of minimum impact makes it possible for more people to be there.

But you're also spot-on opposing equating one horse with one person. I've read those sections several times and am not sure what they mean (being able to substitute a horse for a person to a maximum). It's poorly written. There's no question that it's an absurd notion. This is the so-called "hearbeats" approach to management. Limiting the numbers, no matter whether person or horse, by their absolute number rather than their relative impact. Conservative estimates by ecologists put a horse at 10X the impact of a human. Several others (Derlet) put it at 50X.

In addition, the document clearly says that humans will be regulated primarily by their social impacts and stock by their ecological impacts. So making the two 1:1 makes no sense. AND, 'cause I'm on a roll..., it's the humans who are the ones we want to visit and enjoy wilderness. The horses have no intrinsic right to be there other than how they further the human wilderness experience.

Anyway, hope to post my brilliant section on meadows a little later.

thanks,

g.

None of the views expressed here in any way represent those of the unidentified agency that I work for or, often, reality. It's just me, fired up by coffee and powerful prose.