Brumbies – To Cull or not to Cull?
There has been a lot press with regard to the High Country Brumbies of late. However, most of the press has revolved around the politics of who donated to who and give no insight into what the real issues are without political bias. We recently travelled the back tracks from the ACT through the Kosciusko National Park then on to the Alpine National Park in Victoria. We were privileged to get up close and personal with a mob of wild horses in Kosciusko National Park. I discussed the Brumby issue with a few Rangers and some of the locals and have also conducted my own research, the conclusion I came to was very different to what I was hearing in the media.
Damage?
The official reason for calls to cull the horses is to “Combat severe damage to fragile ecosystems in the National Parks” by an estimated 8,500 Brumbies across 1.5 million Hectares of National Park in NSW and Victoria (only one horse for every 175 ha). In truth, the damage that is being contributed to the Brumby, pales into insignificance when compared to the real carnage being caused by other wild inhabitants of the Parks, primarily feral deer and pigs, rabbits, dogs, cats and foxes. The Victorian Government estimates there are between 200,000 and 400,000 deer in the Alpine National Park alone. Unlike the horse, the deer do not coexist with native animals, their numbers have exploded and along with the feral pigs they transmit foot and mouth disease. The damage rabbits, cats and foxes do is also well documented. I’ll leave the wild dog problems for another time. Although generally well behaved, we found notable evidence of damage caused by humans as well!
The Argument?
Both sides of this debate are relying on the same argument, ‘Preservation of Flora and Fauna’. The difference being, ‘should the wild horses be preserved?’ The brumbies have coexisted within the environment for a couple of hundred years with very little evidence their existence represents a population explosion. The vast majority of people I spoke to, considered the Brumbies to be an iconic part of the Australian High Country and should be preserved. Nobody gave a damn about the politics the media have so heavily relied upon. Furthermore, they are part of Australian Folklore, immortalised in prose and songs. Who can forget ‘The Man from Snowy River’.
To be clear, no one is proposing to make the Brumby a protected species. Should a real threat to the environment caused solely by them be recognised (which I doubt), control should be by means of capture and should not involve culling or euthanizing these magnificent animals, many being distantly related to our valiant war horses that never returned home and no one wants a repeat, of the inhumane culling we saw of the brumbies on Fraser Island. I’m with the wild bush horses on this one, don’t let this proposed culling go down as another bad call.
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