  Muon counting is an effective strategy for discriminating between gamma and
hadron-initiated air showers. However, their detection, which requires shielded
detectors, is highly costly and almost impossible to implement in large ${\rm
km^2}$ environmentally sensitive areas. This work shows that the gamma/hadron
discriminators, based on the new $LCm$ variable and the number of muons, have
equivalent proton rejection levels at the PeV energies. It is, therefore,
possible to build, at an affordable cost, a large, high-performant, wide
field-of-view gamma-ray observatory.
