Experts say swift removal of many thousands of horses is required to help the ecosystem recover from grazing pressure and damage caused by their hooves, which threatens the survival of alpine plants and animals including mountain pygmy possums, mountain skinks, northern corroboree frogs, and the sphagnum moss and fens that provide critical ecosystem services for the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers.
Feral horses in the Kosciuszko National Park have increased 31 per cent in two years.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen.
NSW passed a law in 2018, under pressure from then deputy premier John Barilaro, that protected the “heritage values” of the feral horses and discouraged culling. The government has since focused on trapping and rehoming the feral animals, but the process is painstakingly slow.
Figures released by the NSW government last month show wild horse numbers have ballooned by 30 per cent in the past two years to more than 18,000. The state government says heavy rain and flooding and a six-week pause in the feral animal shooting have caused a horse boom.
The NSW government has set itself the challenge of reducing the growing population to 3000 horses by June 30, 2027. Many worry this target is impossible.
Parks Victoria surveys found horse numbers in the alps doubled in the five-year period from 2014 to 2019, from around 2300 to 5000 horses. While up to 200 horses have been removed annually from the Alpine National Park since 2008, numbers have not declined.
Loading
The Invasive Species Council welcomed the Senate inquiry and called on Plibersek to use federal funding to reduce feral horses, warning state governments were not reducing populations quickly enough.
“Plibersek has the power under Commonwealth environmental laws to force state governments to take more extensive and rapid action to protect the National Heritage listed Australian Alps,” the Council’s advocacy manager Jack Gough said.
“This inquiry has the potential to be a game changer by putting a spotlight on the future of Australia’s alpine region and the wildlife threatened by feral horses and other hard-hoofed invasives like feral deer and pigs.”
Former federal environment minister Sussan Ley in June 2021 threatened to override NSW management of the feral horse population in Kosciuszko National Park, after Barilaro dismissed the need for urgent action and claimed Ley had been misled by green activists.
A spokesperson for NSW Environment Minister James Griffin said the state was dealing with brumby populations in line with its Wild Horse Management Plan, which was developed after public consultation and approved in 2021.
The inquiry is set to report by June 9.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.
For more latest Politics News Click Here