Australia: Thousands of wild horses to be killed

To protect native species, the number of so-called brumbies in Kosciuszko National Park is to be reduced from around 19’000 to 3,000 by 2027, the state's environment minister Penny Sharpe announced on Friday.

She defended the controversial measure by stating that other methods had achieved little success.

Threat to the ecosystem

It had not been an easy decision, said Sharpe. “Nobody wants to kill wild horses.” But the brumbies threatened “native species and the entire ecosystem” by their sheer numbers alone. “We have to act.”

Kosciuszko National Park is one of Australia's largest nature reserves. There, authorities had already deployed helicopters to shoot wild horses in 2000, killing more than 600 animals within three days. However, following fierce public protests, this method was banned.

Number of brumbies has risen sharply

Since then, park rangers have been trying to limit the number of horses using traps, relocations and conventional hunting — with little success, as Minister Sharpe emphasised: in the past two years alone, their numbers increased by a further third.

Brumbies are originally domesticated horses that were brought to Australia from Europe during the colonisation of the continent in the 18th century, but were then released by settlers when they no longer needed them – or simply escaped. According to opponents of the cull, the wild horses are today part of Australia's history.

Conservationists, however, tend to view the animals as a pest, as they reproduce far too rapidly, damage the ecosystem and destroy the habitat of rare native animals. According to the environmental organisation Invasive Species Council, up to 400’000 brumbies live in Australia today.

The non-governmental organization welcomed the decision by the New South Wales authorities. According to its spokesperson Jack Gough, the number of wild horses in that state alone grows by 15 to 18 percent annually.