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Game and Feral Animal LegislationAmendment (Conservation Hunting) Bill

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The NSW Parliament should reject the Game and Feral Animal Legislation Amendment
(Conservation Hunting) Bill 2025 for the following reasons:

  1. The ‘Conservation’ Hunting Bill is based on a misleading premise that recreational hunting is
    effective for controlling invasive vertebrates. Recreational hunting is not effective, so does
    not count as conservation.
  2. The Hunting Bill provides mechanisms and resources for recreational hunters to undermine
    effective control of invasive vertebrates, particularly on public lands.
  3. The Hunting Bill carries significant governance and reputational risks for the NSW
    Government.

    If recreational hunting was an effective way of managing invasive vertebrates, the Invasive Species
    Council would welcome this bill. To understand why we oppose the bill, it is important to
    understand the differences between recreational hunting and volunteer shooting in coordinated
    control programs:

    ● recreational hunting – an ad hoc activity focused on the pursuit of ‘game’ animals for reasons
    such as obtaining meat or trophies, the thrill of the chase, or being outdoors
    ● volunteer shooting – a directed activity to help achieve specified conservation outcomes as
    part of a coordinated control program.
    The Hunting Bill concerns the first category and is not necessary or helpful for supporting the
    integrated use of skilled volunteer shooters in coordinated control programs.
    It is also important to understand the history of the shooting lobby in NSW, and in other states, in
    undermining effective control of invasive species over at least the past two decades, including by:
    ● opposing the listing of deer as a pest animal in NSW, continuing to oppose pest declarations
    in Victoria and Tasmania, and opposing the SA deer eradication program
    ● through the Game Council and political advocacy, undermining effective control by
    government agencies of feral deer in NSW, allowing them to spread out of control
    ● seeking to undermine the social license for aerial shooting and baiting programs
    ● influencing the management of most state forests in NSW to restrict feral animal control, so
    that they effectively function as game parks for recreational hunters.

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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]