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New homes: Between 100 and 150 brumbies will be relocated. (ABC TV)
Map: Thredbo Village 2625
A plan has been finalised for the trapping and relocation of some of the 1,700 wild brumbies living in the Kosciuszko National Park.
The New South Wales Parks and Wildlife Service received more than 60 submissions on the contentious issue last year.
The service's Steve Horsley says between 100 and 150 brumbies are likely to be given to new homes around the state in a bid to reduce damage to sensitive alpine areas.
But he says the plan will not go ahead until it receives State Government approval.
"The horses are foaling in the park so we wouldn't be looking at doing too much in terms of removing horses, probably not until next Autumn or early winter..." he said.
"We've had pretty good response through the exhibition period with people wanting to take horses."
Mr Horsley says the plan will not involve any shooting.
"Through the exhibition period there was a range of views that we would be shooting them and we shouldn't be doing anything with managing horses in the park," he said.
"But we've actually proposed in the plan that we use a trapping approach where we lure the horses into yards and remove them off park, and we've discounted any plans where we might do shooting."
While we keep warm in our houses this Winter, blocking ourselves away from the world, the wild Brumbies of Australia will face an endless turmoil of fear and torture.
Carnarvon Gorge's wild horses to be culled
By Brian Williams
May 07, 2008 03:17am
A SECOND cull of feral horses at Queensland's Carnarvon Gorge National Park will start today with 4000 to 6000 to be shot.
About 4000 were shot in August last year after they over-ran the park.
Two sharpshooters will operate from helicopters in remote and steep sections of the park in a plan reluctantly approved by the RSPCA.
The second shooter's sole job is to ensure all animals die as quickly as possible.
The high numbers of horses were destroying freshwater springs, causing erosion, damaging Aboriginal cultural sites and destroying habitat for native creatures, Sustainability Minister Andrew McNamara said yesterday.
So he had no choice but to order the shoot to go ahead.
The shoot has been opposed by Save the Brumbies Foundation spokeswoman Jan Carter, who argues aerial shooting does not give clean kills.
A place should be found for brumbies in national parks and the animals had bred up into such high numbers only because the State Government had not managed the situation, she said.
Mr McNamara said he was committed to cutting the impact of feral animals in all parks, including wild dogs, goats and pigs.
"The RSPCA is on board the same as last time," Mr McNamara said.
"There's an audit of the plan, trained marksmen are used in two choppers. We're doing this as humanely as possible, recognising the fact that it is not possible to get in and muster horses in such remote areas."
Wildlife Preservation Society spokesman Des Boyland described the feral animal problem as a crisis.
While some people had romantic notions about brumbies, in reality they did enormous damage to parks and surrounding properties, he said.
"These animals are shockers. The Government has got to keep going on this," Mr Boyland said.
"Parks are acquired to protect native flora and fauna and these animals destroy it."
RSPCA spokesman Michael Beatty said his organisation would rather there be no culls but believed it was being done as humanely as possible.
He urged the Government to look for alternative ways of dealing with the problem such as immuno-sterilisation.
Brumby cull under way, up to 6000 horses in sights
May 8, 2008
Between 4000 and 6000 wild horses are likely to be shot in far north Queensland in coming weeks in a campaign decried by the Save the Brumbies charity.
It follows a cull last August and September in which up to 4000 brumbies in the park were shot.
Authorities say there are too many horses in the park and they are damaging the wilderness, as well as aboriginal cultural sites.
"It's the Australian mentality," said Save the Brumbies president Jan Carter. "Fix everything at the end of a bullet.
"We are absolutely powerless to stop it."
The cull is reported to be under way in Carnarvon Gorge National Park, near the state's northern tip.
The shooting will be done from helicopter, with another following to ensure the horses are humanely killed.
Carter said aerial shooting of horses was anything but humane, and the practice was already banned in New South Wales, where she lives.
She said the ongoing culls were directly due to the failure of the federal government to implement any kind of national long-term management policy for the control, preservation and protection of the horses.
No funding was available to charities in Australian states to help in trapping and rehoming the animals.
Proposals of interest for trapping and rehoming of brumbies were sought by authorities from time to time, she said, but they were set up to fail. Without funding for trucks, yards, and staff, it wasn't viable for existing charities to undertake the work. The remoteness of some of the locations would add even further to the costs.
A recent national brumby seminar resulted in the setting up of the Australian Brumby Alliance to help provide administrative and other support to the charities in each state.
"What we are saying to the government is, we don't deny there are a lot of horses. But it is due simply to mismanagement."
"We do care about the environment," she said, but added that damage need not happen if proper brumby management was put in place.
The group proposed trapping and rehoming horses, together with fertility management through use of darts, as used in parts of the United States with some success. She said a team of experts from the US was available to come over and help set up the fertility management programme if funding was available.
Brumbies, she said, are an Australian national icon recognised internationally.
During the last Carnarvon Gorge cull, she fielded calls from media all over the world, including the BBC, Los Angeles Times, and London Times, and even from Brazil and Sweden.
Yet, she said, the cull got relatively little coverage in Australia. "It is shocking. It is just awful what they are doing."
Anger at Brumbies cull
RENEWED calls for a cull of wild brumbies in Kosciuszko National Park have prompted a former National Party MP to act as a human shield by riding among the herds.
But the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service yesterday said no cull was being considered, and that horses in the park could be effectively managed by trapping and moving some of them.
The former federal National Party member for Monaro Peter Cochran, who owns a commercial horseriding operation in the area, said he would do whatever it took to stop horses being taken away.
"If it means that we get in amongst the brumbies to make sure they don't go in to the traps, then we'll do that. If it means we have to get in the way of aerial shooting, we'll do that," Mr Cochran told ABC radio.
The brumbies are blamed for trampling native vegetation and destroying waterways in the park, and the National Parks Association of NSW yesterday called for a resumption of aerial shooting, which was banned six years ago after a public outcry.
The Parks and Wildlife Service has prepared a draft plan for trapping and managing the horses. It will be considered by the Government. If approved, it will be adopted in March, and trapping would then resume.
Ben Cubby
Brumby Update!
Jan 08
LOSE 1,000 HORSES A YEAR???
Kill all wild horses in Australian national park: environmentalists
SYDNEY (AFP) — Environmentalists called Wednesday for hundreds of wild horses to be shot dead to prevent a unique Australian national park becoming a "horse paddock," with little room for native species.
Around 1,700 feral horses -- known in Australia as 'brumbies' -- have caused havoc in the Kosciuszko National Park, according to the National Parks Association of New South Wales state.
They are increasing in numbers by as much as 300 a year, the conservation group said, but the state has banned shooting of the animals from helicopters, widely considered the most effective way of controlling them.
The park, located near the country's highest peak Mount Kosciuszko, covers 675,000 hectares (1.67 million acres) and is a UNESCO-recognised biosphere reserve.
It contains the only alpine lake in mainland Australia, as well as plant species found nowhere else in the world and the rare mountain pygmy possum and corroboree frog.
"It is very undisturbed. It is a very intact ecosystem," association official Andrew Cox told AFP. "I don't want to see a park with 7,000 horses in 10 years time. It is going to be quite scary."
Asked if they should be eliminated totally, he added: "That is our ideal goal -- to eradicate the horses."
"They are very possessive. When they pass through you can see."
The association suggests culling more than 1,000 horses in the first year, with most of those left killed in the second year to stop the population growing again through breeding.
It says current plans to deal with the problem by trapping the horses are ineffective, accusing the state national parks authorities of caving in to sentimentalism. The association itself is a non-government body and is not directly involved with the running of the parks.
The area has entered Australian folklore as the location of the Snowy River, which is associated in many Australians' minds with wild horses.
The state National Parks and Wildlife Service admits aerial shooting is an easy option.
But there is a moratorium on the practice after community anger at a botched cull of horses in another of the state's national parks in 2000.
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