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About Us

We were founded by far sighted individuals sick of seeing wave after wave of weeds, feral animals and other pests destroying the natural places they loved.

Our Story

In 2002 eight people were drawn together by a shared concern that the Australian landscape was being radically altered by the invasion of weed and pest species and decided to do something about it.

The result was the creation of the Invasive Species Council.

Although these people came from a diverse range of backgrounds, they all shared a passion for the Australian bush and a desire to protect it from damaging invasive species.

Together, they formed the Invasive Species Council’s Foundation Committee:

  • Dr Barry Traill, zoologist and conservation advocate.
  • Tim Low, environmental consultant and author.
  • Amanda Martin, fundraiser and conservation advocate.
  • Steve Mathews, environmental consultant and conservation advocate.
  • Paola Parigi, resource economist.
  • Lucy Vaughan, planning and environment lawyer.
  • Paul Baddeley, financial analyst.
  • Kate Blood, horticulturist and weed expert.

Although they are one of the top three threats facing Australia’s natural environment invasive species are all too often neglected as a conservation issue.

It was this realisation in 2002 that spurred a number of committed environmentalists to create the Invasive Species Council.

Founding members include research zoologist Dr Barry Traill and biologist and writer Tim Low, who worked for the Invasive Species Council for several years as a project officer.

Writing in the first edition of Feral Herald, ISC’s quarterly newsletter, Barry summed up the rationale for establishing a group to focus on invasive species this way:

“Back in 1999 I read Feral Future by Tim Low. It made a big impact on me. For the first time I grasped properly what a number of biologists, especially weed experts, had been saying for years. Invasive species of all types and descriptions are a huge problem in Australia. A huge, systematic problem that needs an appropriately huge, systematic response.”

We now know that invasives are one of the greatest threats facing native species and nature on Earth, and certainly in Australia.

Read what The Age newspaper reported about the formation of the Invasive Species Council.

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]