Cowboy turning Alpine wild horses into pets to save them from being shot in cull
High country cowboy Lewis Benedetti reckons he’s lassoed, tamed and rehomed up to 20 wild horses since “the brumby culling uproar” — stepping up his game since hearing the wild horses were set to be shot and killed in a Parks Victoria cull.
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High country cowboy Lewis Benedetti reckons he’s lassoed, tamed and rehomed up to 20 wild horses since “the brumby culling uproar”.
The 30-year-old Bairnsdale man has made breaking brumbies his business since he was a teenager, but has stepped up his game since news broke late last year the wild horses were set to be shot and killed in a Parks Victoria cull.
While court challenges opposing the cull were waged and battle lines between the State Government, environmentalists and animal lovers drawn, Mr Benedetti chased down the brumbies on his own horse, swinging his lasso.
When he snared a brumby, he would calm it, before slipping on a halter and leading it down the mountain, to a new life as a riding horse or family pet, he said.
At the moment, that hard, high country trek is sometimes made through snow.
Mr Benedetti estimates he’s caught between 15 and 20 brumbies already this year, and has lost count of how many he’s broken-in over the years.
Two brumby foals have recently been rehomed, one to a family on the Mornington Peninsula and another to a racing stable in Winchelsea.
Others – mostly sized between 12 and 14 hands – have been placed with trail riding operators and “middle-aged hobby farmers”, after a breaking-in process which takes six to eight weeks.
Mr Benedetti charges for the horses, to cover the time he’s put in breaking them in to handle and ride.
“I don’t want to see them being shot so I’ve started going up to the high country once a week,” he said.
“If they’re going to shoot the horses, I can’t stop that, that’s well above me, but one thing I can try and do is catch as many as I can, and save a bit of our Australian heritage.
“I just go up there with my horse and … I might come across a gully and see a mob of horses on the flat.
“Then I just sort of gallop after them and get up behind them and lasso one. Then I pull up nice and slowly … and within probably 10 minutes, I’ve got a pretty good idea if the brumby is going to break-in well or not.”
Parks Victoria chief Matthew Jackson said 400 inquiries about rehoming wild horses from the Alpine National Park had been received over the course of its four call-outs for suitable owners between October last year and this month.
The government department has its own brumby rehoming program.
But only eight of those inquiries led to the actual rehoming of horses, with 50 brumbies successfully relocated from the Alpine National Park and Barmah Forest, he said.
Parks Victoria said it had an obligation to control invasive species in Victoria’s national parks, including feral horses.
It’s understood it plans to deploy small teams of ground-based professional shooters into high conservation areas with thermal imaging and noise suppressors to cull the brumbies.
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