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'Brumbies Bill' an attack on all we hold dear

Mountain pygmy-possum | © Australian Alps collection – Parks Australia | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The NSW Government’s decision to ignore scientific evidence and years of public consultation to protect feral horses in Kosciuszko National Park under a so-called ‘Brumbies Bill’ sets a dangerous precedent for Australia’s threatened species and for what we stand for as conservationists.
Deputy Premier and National Party leader John Barilaro introduced the Bill into the NSW Parliament today to protect the ‘heritage value’ of the brumby in Kosciuszko National Park and to override the conservation needs of one of Australia’s most important national parks. Under the ‘Brumbies Bill’ large areas of Kosciuszko will be set aside where feral horses can roam free.
This legislation will entrench damaging feral horses in the national park and flies in the face of all scientific understanding of what is needed to protect our natural areas from the ravages of non-native species, including feral horses, pigs, deer, goats, cats and foxes.
The use of lethal control options will be banned, and horses will either be relocated to other areas of the national park or rehomed, measures that are impractical, inhumane and fail to stop the explosion in damaging horse numbers.

Can you help us act now to stop this madness?

Send NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian an urgent message asking her to Stand up for Kosciuszko National Park by withdrawing her support for a Bill that will entrench feral horses in one of Australia’s most loved national parks.
The Bill, the Kosciuszko Wild Horse Heritage Bill 2018, could be law by June. Join us and call on NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and her environment minister Gabrielle Upton to kill this anti-science, anti-national park, anti-welfare and anti-environment Bill.

Update 29 May 2018: NSW Labor announced it would oppose the Brumbies Bill in the NSW Parliament and, if passed, would repeal the bill in government and adopt the widely-supported 2016 Kosciuszko National Park Draft Wild Horse Management Plan.  You can thank the Labor Opposition Leader Luke Foley for his party’s strong position.

The Brumbies Bill contradicts the NSW Government’s own Threatened Species Scientific Committee, which just last month released a preliminary decision to list habitat degradation and loss by feral horses as a key threatening process (seeking comments now). It also sets the park on a path to degradation last seen when thousands of cattle grazed the high country in the 1960s.
Four years ago it was estimated that about 6000 feral horses roam Kosciuszko National Park, and their numbers are growing and their range is expanding.
Feral horses negatively impact native species, creeks and ecosystems through:

  • Habitat damage in streams, wetlands and adjacent riparian systems through trampling, track creation, pugging (soil compaction), wallowing, sphagnum bog and wetland destruction.
  • Altering the structure and composition of vegetation through ringbarking of trees and overgrazing, spreading weeds, trampling and eliminating plants.
  • Competition with native animals, displacing and starving wombats, wallabies and other species.

Their habitat destruction could impact listed threatened species including:

  • Northern corroboree frog, critically endangered.
  • Southern corroboree frog, critically endangered.
  • Guthega skink, endangered.
  • Anemone buttercups, vulnerable.
  • Monaro golden daisy, vulnerable.
  • Alpine she-oak skink, endangered.
  • Alpine spiny crayfish, endangered.
  • Mountain pygmy possum, endangered.
  • Glycine latrobeana (a plant), critically endangered.
  • Broad-toothed rat, vulnerable.
  • and many more…

The Invasive Species Council has joined a broad coalition of forces incensed by the decision to allow feral horses to overrun Kosciuszko National Park and is calling on NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian to reign in her deputy premier, John Barilaro, and kill his anti-science, anti-national park, anti-welfare and anti-environment Bill.
If you have any time to spare, please urgently phone or email the NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and NSW Environment Minister Gabrielle Upton.

More info

Related Content

Counting horses in Kosciuszko: a critique of the ‘independent’ survey
‘Brumbies Bill’ an attack on all we hold dear
Feral cat illustration
Biosecurity Bill – six years in the making

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Join thousands of Australians who are standing up for Kosciuszko National Park!

The NSW government is one step away from allowing aerial control of feral horses in Kosciuszko National Park. This is huge news and a crucial step for our threatened native wildlife and the fragile alpine ecosystems they call home.

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Invasives Species Council
The Invasive Species Council was formed in 2002 to seek stronger laws, policies and programs to protect nature from harmful pests, weeds and diseases.
The Invasive Species Council acknowledges the Traditional Custodians throughout Australia and their connections to land and sea. We pay our respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.

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Invasives Species Council
The Invasive Species Council was formed in 2002 to seek stronger laws, policies and programs to protect nature from harmful pests, weeds and diseases.

The Invasive Species Council acknowledges the Traditional Custodians throughout Australia and their connections to land and sea. We pay our respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. The Invasive Species Council supports voting ‘YES’ for a Voice to Parliament.

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Dear Project Team,

[YOUR PERSONALISED MESSAGE WILL APPEAR HERE.] 

I support the amendment to the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan to allow our incredible National Parks staff to use aerial shooting as one method to rapidly reduce feral horse numbers. I want to see feral horse numbers urgently reduced in order to save the national park and our native wildlife that live there.

The current approach is not solving the problem. Feral horse numbers have rapidly increased in Kosciuszko National Park to around 18,000, a 30% jump in just the past 2 years. With the population so high, thousands of feral horses need to be removed annually to reduce numbers and stop our National Park becoming a horse paddock. Aerial shooting, undertaken humanely and safely by professionals using standard protocols, is the only way this can happen.

The government’s own management plan for feral horses states that ‘if undertaken in accordance with best practice, aerial shooting can have the lowest negative animal welfare impacts of all lethal control methods’.

This humane and effective practice is already used across Australia to manage hundreds of thousands of feral animals like horses, deer, pigs, and goats.

Trapping and rehoming of feral horses has been used in Kosciuszko National Park for well over a decade but has consistently failed to reduce the population, has delayed meaningful action and is expensive. There are too many feral horses in the Alps and not enough demand for rehoming for it to be relied upon for the reduction of the population.

Fertility control as a management tool is only effective for a small, geographically isolated, and accessible population of feral horses where the management outcome sought is to maintain the population at its current size. It is not a viable option to reduce the large and growing feral horse population in the vast and rugged terrain of Kosciuszko National Park.

Feral horses are trashing and trampling our sensitive alpine ecosystems and streams, causing the decline and extinction of native animals. The federal government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has stated that feral horses ‘may be the crucial factor that causes final extinction’ for 12 alpine species.

I recognise the sad reality that urgent and humane measures are necessary to urgently remove the horses or they will destroy the Snowies and the native wildlife that call the mountains home. I support a healthy national park where native species like the Corroboree Frog and Mountain Pygmy Possum can thrive.

Kind regards,
[Your name]
[Your email address]
[Your postcode]


Dear Project Team,

[YOUR PERSONALISED MESSAGE WILL APPEAR HERE.] 

I support the amendment to the Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan to allow our incredible National Parks staff to use aerial shooting as one method to rapidly reduce feral horse numbers. I want to see feral horse numbers urgently reduced in order to save the national park and our native wildlife that live there.

The current approach is not solving the problem. Feral horse numbers have rapidly increased in Kosciuszko National Park to around 18,000, a 30% jump in just the past 2 years. With the population so high, thousands of feral horses need to be removed annually to reduce numbers and stop our National Park becoming a horse paddock. Aerial shooting, undertaken humanely and safely by professionals using standard protocols, is the only way this can happen.

The government’s own management plan for feral horses states that ‘if undertaken in accordance with best practice, aerial shooting can have the lowest negative animal welfare impacts of all lethal control methods’.

This humane and effective practice is already used across Australia to manage hundreds of thousands of feral animals like horses, deer, pigs, and goats.

Trapping and rehoming of feral horses has been used in Kosciuszko National Park for well over a decade but has consistently failed to reduce the population, has delayed meaningful action and is expensive. There are too many feral horses in the Alps and not enough demand for rehoming for it to be relied upon for the reduction of the population.

Fertility control as a management tool is only effective for a small, geographically isolated, and accessible population of feral horses where the management outcome sought is to maintain the population at its current size. It is not a viable option to reduce the large and growing feral horse population in the vast and rugged terrain of Kosciuszko National Park.

Feral horses are trashing and trampling our sensitive alpine ecosystems and streams, causing the decline and extinction of native animals. The federal government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has stated that feral horses ‘may be the crucial factor that causes final extinction’ for 12 alpine species.

I recognise the sad reality that urgent and humane measures are necessary to urgently remove the horses or they will destroy the Snowies and the native wildlife that call the mountains home. I support a healthy national park where native species like the Corroboree Frog and Mountain Pygmy Possum can thrive.

Kind regards,
[Your name]
[Your email address]
[Your postcode]