Why should anyone who cares about the environment care that the government is shooting Kosciuszko’s wild brumbies?
Fair question. We love this park, and we accept its horse numbers need managing. But here’s what should give you pause.
First, the numbers don’t add up. The official count supposedly leapt from around 3,000 to over 16,000 in a year – but horses can’t biologically breed faster than 15–20 per cent a year, and the government’s own reviewers called a key survey result ‘almost certainly wrong.’
The science being used to justify the shooting is far from sure.
Second, the same government culling horses ‘to protect the environment’ is the one that approved, exempted from the rules, and now holds the offset money for the largest source of permanent damage to this park.
Snowy 2.0 has bulldozed an eight-kilometre transmission scar – 70-metre towers, the first in a NSW National Park in 50 years. It’s been exempted from the ban on spreading invasive fish between waterways. Its pollution fines total around $105,000 against a project costing billions.
The horses are an easy target: blameable at no cost. The bulldozers are the permanent damage – and no offset can undo it.
We’re not against renewables. We want the horses trapped and re-homed alive, in whatever numbers the park genuinely needs.
They can be removed without being shot. The bulldozer’s damage can’t be undone.
Jenni Cole, Tarcutta, NSW
Umbango South (wild brumby preserve)
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
