Deputy Premier John Barilaro's ‘brumby bill’ will be debated soon in the NSW Parliament. The bill requires the National Parks and Wildlife Service to protect large herds of feral horses, or brumbies, within Kosciuszko National Park.
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In tabling his bill, Barilaro argued the legislation would give long overdue recognition of brumby culture, while avoiding the cruel slaughter of thousands of horses in culls proposed in the Draft Wild Horse Management Plan for Kosciuszko National Park.
But many things in Barilaro's speech are questionable. For example, he overstated the supposed cruelty of culling horses and the cultural importance of keeping horses in Kosciuszko National Park.
Barilaro told Parliament that "culling is cruel and barbaric", citing statistics from Guy Fawkes National Park. But an independent report found that cull was well run and carried out in a humane way. The horses in Guy Fawkes National Park were short of food after fires and some had starved to death. Rapid culling was humane compared with prolonged suffering from starvation.
By removing the capacity to humanely manage horse numbers with culling in Kosciuszko, the "brumby bill" will leave a growing horse population that is increasingly vulnerable to cruel mass starvation events.
Barilaro also told Parliament that brumbies from the Snowy Mountains had an "integral role" in the Australian Light Horse campaign during World War I. However, the cultural heritage report prepared for the NPWS finds no definitive evidence this was the case, simply that it was "possible" some went into active service.
It is not surprising that brumbies from Kosciuszko were not a key source of horses for World War I. Brumbies were of poor quality and viewed as only useful for meat exports. Horses that went to support the war effort, the "Walers", were bred in the thousands across Australia to support colonial expansion and export trades.
Today, the Waler breed is secured. Two Waler societies established stud lines in the 1980s. In comparison to Walers, brumbies in Kosciuszko are not genetically distinct from most other feral horse populations or domestic horses.
Barilaro asserted that reducing horses to 600 in the park "aims for the extinction of wild horses". With the brumbies in Koscuisko found to be the same genetic stock as most other horses in Australia, and with 400,000 feral horses around Australia, this concern is unfounded.
In comparison, there is a real risk of statewide or global extinction of unique animals and plants, as expanding horse populations destroy their habitat. Species like the southern corroboree frog and the Guthega skink are already threatened with extinction and are vulnerable to impacts of horses.
Barilaro also said brumbies would not have been used at the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games if they were not considered to be part of “the Australia of today”. In fact, the horses at the Sydney Olympics were Australian stock horses, a breed largely established from 15 founding horses selected in the 1970s. They were not brumbies.
The cultural ties that people from the Snowy Mountains and more broadly in Australia have with brumbies are real and important to celebrate. However, the cultural aspects of brumbies in the Snowy region can be maintained with, for example, brumby herds held on private property. This was the solution to brumby management for South Australia's Coffin Bay National Park.
Before deciding to legislate to protect feral animals in national parks, members of the NSW Parliament should look beyond the Deputy Premier for information on the brumby's history and management options.
Professor Don Driscoll is president of the Ecological Society of Australia and director of the Centre for Integrative Ecology at Deakin University.
