“Wild brumbies have been roaming the Australian alps for almost 200 years and are part of the cultural fabric and folklore of the country,” he said.

He forgot to mention, though, that the natural environment is as much a part of that folklore - mountains, gum trees, rushing rivers - as the wild horses that are, when all is said and done, an introduced species.

And it is this natural environment that is being protected by controlled culls in the ACT and Victoria. At a conference this week, ANU scientist Jamie Pittock accused NSW of ignoring the science behind the difficult decision to cull brumbies.

He listed the numerous types of damage being wrought by the hooved animals, on a landscape that has never evolved to cope with hooves of any kind. It’s the hooves that trample the habitat and create new waterways diverting rain to rivers faster than is good for the environment. These extra waterways gather dirt and other contaminants, polluting rivers and streams, and reducing the supply of usable water.

The horses also trample swamps, which act as crucial filters for rainwater. They destroy habitat for various endangered species. The scale of destruction caused by wild horses can, one academic said, be seen from space.

And yet the NSW government is intent on clinging onto some romantic imagery that, while appealing and indeed part of Australian history and folklore, is completely divorced from the reality of environmental degradation.

No one, least of all the highly trained scientists who recommend that these animals be culled, enjoys the notion of killing animals. In Canberra, residents have on the whole accepted the need for a yearly kangaroo cull, to avoid spiralling populations and ongoing damage to the natural environment. And these animals are far closer to our national identity than a wild horse. Kangaroos are on our coat of arms and our national carrier. There is almost no animal that more closely represents Australia in its uniqueness and diversity.

And yet modern life has changed their habitats in urban Canberra, which has put the environment, endangered animals and plants, and the kangaroos themselves at risk.

And so we cull them, in large numbers, to protect their populations in the future, and endure the biological diversity of the bush capital. And the cullings have led to positive, incremental results over the past 10 years.

It is often said that those who place the lives of individual animals over the health of ecosystems are operating on a different value system altogether. No one enjoys the idea of killing animals, particularly systematic culling, in large numbers. But it is difficult to detect any foresight in the decision to reverse a cull of an introduced species, especially when the consequences of their spiralling population is so very evident. Environmental scientists are right to call for a carefully considered, scientifically determined controlled cull of brumbies, folklore be damned.