Politicians on their high horses in the high country over looming brumby ‘disaster’
Feral horses are destroying our alps and the native species that live there — and politics is thwarting a solution.
Richard Swain stands near a small mountain spring that is the source of the Murray River, and has two words to say: “It’s disgusting.”
Picking his way between the piles of horse manure, the Snowy Mountains river guide and indigenous ambassador for the Invasive Species Council struggles to find a patch of ground not trampled or eaten by feral horses.
The latest survey of feral horse numbers across the Australian Alps estimates the population has exploded from 9180 in 2014 to 25,318 this year, an increase of 23 per cent a year. In Kosciuszko National Park alone the number is thought to be about 20,000.
Our most famous alpine national park — the subject of conjecture and cultural clashes since the day of its inception — is galloping towards a tipping point, its conservation values fast being trampled under the unchecked hoofs of feral animals.
But if the image of the brumby, running majestic and free in the high country, is built on folklore, then the justification for allowing more than 25,000 of them to propagate on fragile public land now must be recognised similarly as the stuff of fantasy.
“I care for country and these animals don’t belong here,” says Swain.
“They’re sending animals that do call this place home extinct. For every dead horse we’re going to see this summer through starvation, that horse has already eaten the resources that our native animals rely upon.”
NSW Nationals Deputy Premier John Barilaro, who introduced legislation last year to protect feral horses in Kosciuszko National Park, says in a statement: “Wild brumbies have been part of the Australian Alps for almost 200 years and hold a strong cultural significance. There is no doubt, however, that the brumby population in Kosciuszko National Park needs to be reduced to a more sustainable number, using passive trapping and rehoming, as well as mustering and relocation to less sensitive areas of the park.”
Why horse numbers were allowed to explode comes down largely to two reasons: a complex sociopolitical contest for access and control of Kosciuszko National Park — ongoing since the park was gazetted in 1967 — and a controversial aerial cull of feral horses nearly 20 years ago, the fallout of which prevents effective management of horses in NSW national parks.
NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean has clashed with Barilaro over feral horse management, just one of several environmental policy stoushes within the Coalition that Barilaro so far is winning.
Kean went to ground this week, declining an interview and instead releasing a statement saying the government would “take steps to reduce the number of horses in the national park in a humane way, working with the community and scientific advisory committees”.
Not everyone is shocked by the huge increase in horse numbers. David Watson, an ecologist at Charles Sturt University, resigned last year from the NSW Threatened Species Scientific Committee after the introduction of Barilaro’s “brumby bill”.
He says the survey results err on the conservative side. “The annual population rate in horses under ideal conditions is 25 per cent, and that’s pretty much what we’re seeing. They’ve got no parasites, no predators and unrestricted grazing. As summer presses on we’re about to see a welfare disaster. There are going to be ghastly impacts for those horses.”
As argued in February in The Weekend Australian Magazine, this battle is less about horses and more a cultural and political contest for the high country.
As MP for Monaro, Barilaro has sought to stop shedding votes to One Nation and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party by shoring up support from the party’s traditional right, which includes a vocal section of family pastoralists, many of whom do not hold environmental values, despise inner-city “elites”, are against the existence of the national park and would like to see grazing reintroduced and the park opened up to commercial development.
As far back as 2006 a memorandum of understanding was signed between the NSW Liberal-Nationals Coalition and an alliance of NSW horseriding groups that agreed feral horses would be “recognised as part of the cultural heritage of NSW”, that “viable populations” be protected in reserve areas and that shooting not be permitted as a management tool.
Barilaro’s Kosciuszko Wild Horse Heritage Bill was introduced last year as a response to the 2016 Kosciuszko Draft Wild Horse Management Plan, which called for a reduction to 600 horses in the national park across 20 years, mostly through ground shooting. Former Monaro Nationals MP Peter Cochran, owner of a horse-trekking business, boasted he helped draft the bill that would enshrine an untold number of those horses in heritage protection, a claim Barilaro denies.
Tom Bagnet was NSW Parks and Wildlife Service regional director at the time and oversaw the development of the 2016 draft plan. He calls the move to throw it out “one of the greatest acts of political bastardry I have ever witnessed”. He says a simple fix to reduce the horse numbers is to enact the plan.
“We had a plan, we had gone through extensive consultation in developing it, and it’s still a good plan. For the government to refuse to implement it and instead initiate a horse protection bill … it should be renamed the Barilaro protection bill.”
Others see Barilaro’s stated preference for research into immunocontraceptive vaccines as a way to reduce populations through fertility control — as revealed by this paper on Wednesday — as another stalling technique. The proposed fertility control method has been soundly dismissed by experts as unworkable in the Australian Alps context.
Scientists argue the only humane and effective way to significantly reduce the population of feral horses is through aerial culling, which despite being the method of choice of controlling feral horse populations across most of Australia has not been used in NSW since 2000; an infamous horse cull that has been used ever since as justification not to shoot horses from helicopters.
The story goes that a botched aerial cull at Guy Fawkes River National Park, west of Coffs Harbour, by the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service, resulted in scores of horses dying long, agonising deaths. In the wake of huge protests the then Labor government banned aerial culling on public land in NSW.
In a statement this week, Barilaro said, “I don’t want a repeat of the Guy Fawkes massacre.”
Advocates for horse control say the truth about what really happened at Guy Fawkes needs to come out if there’s to be a chance of seriously reducing feral horse numbers in NSW national parks. The cull of 606 horses occurred just after spring bushfires had burnt out 60 to 80 per cent of the park, leaving starving horses.
It was carried out across three days in late October without consultation with the RSPCA or local landholders.
But as the smoke from the bushfires cleared a media firestorm engulfed the government.
The source of the stories of a botched cull was a local land manager, Greg Everingham, who went into the park soon after the cull and took photos. While Everingham said he’d seen only dead horses, a myth began, with tales emerging of horses left wounded, riddled with inaccurate bullets, even being chased off ravines to their deaths.
The NSW RSPCA was quick to pounce, laying multiple aggravated cruelty charges against NPWS, later reduced to one charge that eventually was dismissed by a magistrate, who said all evidence pointed to the cull being carried out professionally and humanely.
An independent report later concluded only one horse had not died immediately. But the government could not withstand the media onslaught and, with a heavy heart, environment minister Bob Debus announced there would be no more aerial culling of feral horses.
Debus says it’s partly the legacy of Guy Fawkes that has led to the situation we are facing now, having lost the tools to control large numbers of feral horses.
“I want the public to know that the Guy Fawkes exercise back in 2000 involved sensible management of the national park and involved humane treatment of starving horses. An irresponsible media campaign by animal welfare interest groups made the government’s approach impossible to sustain. But it was not wrong.”
The RSPCA doesn’t talk in terms of animal cruelty when asked about Guy Fawkes today. Its chief scientist, Bidda Jones, says the two issues with Guy Fawkes were lack of consultation and lack of independent verification of the shooting program in real time. The organisation now supports aerial culling as a far more humane management tool than trapping and transport for slaughter.
Today, the situation at Guy Fawkes is eerily similar to 2000. Bushfires have burnt out much of the park, where feral horses — back up to pre-2000 numbers — have grazed the land to dust. Wilson Harris from the Colong Foundation visited the park in late October and photographed 231 emaciated, dead and dying horses. He’s calling on the government to cull as an act of mercy. “If people were to go down there and see the reality of what’s seen as majestic, romantic horses in the wild … it just doesn’t make sense.”
Stuart Boyd-Law, director of Pest Animal Control and Training and a trainer and assessor of aerial shooters, says aerial culling is by far the most humane method of controlling feral horses. “For cattle producers and conservation land managers all across Australia there’s just no other way of doing it. If you want to manage feral horses you’ve got to aerial-shoot them, and if it’s done properly then it’s not an issue.”
The Independent Technical Reference Group that informed the NSW 2016 draft wild horse plan also rated aerial shooting as more humane than passive trapping, mustering and roping, and far more humane than loading and transporting.
But the practice will never win favour with horse lovers. Jill Pickering, president of the Australian Brumby Alliance, says aerial shooting in Kosciuszko National Park is inhumane because of the inability to achieve a humane kill and because of the rugged nature of the terrain.
“The ABA especially objects to aerial shooting being raised yet again when at this moment, proven, alternative, humane methods are being considered now by the new act’s scientific and community advisory panels, with a new draft due in early 2020,” she says.
NSW opposition environment spokeswoman Kate Washington says Labor has no plans to reintroduce aerial culling. “It was culling on the ground that we had as our policy going into the last election. It’s now up to the minister to determine the means by which numbers will be reduced to stop Kosciuszko National Park being destroyed.”
Swain says the lack of horse management comes down to a lack of courage. “People are not courageous enough to want to hear the truth, that this country is dying beneath the weight of these horses.”
What’s clear is that the public does not have a great appetite for images of dead horses, and any politician who signs off on aerial culling in NSW would risk political annihilation.
But perhaps the last oft-repeated myth that should be dispelled is that aerial culling on public land in NSW is banned. It’s not. Following the Guy Fawkes debacle Debus announced the practice would cease, but no policy was ever put into legislation. Culling doesn’t even get a mention in Barilaro’s “brumby bill”. There’s nothing to stop any environment minister from reintroducing aerial culling into new policy immediately. Except many things.
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