The creatures, Australia's high country equivalent of the wild mustangs that roamed the plains of North America in the wake of the conquistadors, were then further romanticised in the Silver Brumby series of books loved by generations of children, written by Elyne Mitchell.

Paterson's poem can be blamed for a couple of Australian films and Mitchell's books were later used as the basis for a film and an animated children's television series. The horses even lent their name to a popular Subaru ute in the 1980s.

An unfortunate consequence of this iconic status is that every time a government department or a jurisdiction decides to treat the creatures in the same way it would any other feral pest species, it runs headlong into a tidal wave of opposition from romantics who think this is an "un-Australian" way to protect this country's natural heritage.

That heritage includes dozens of species of flora and fauna which predate the arrival of the horses by hundreds of thousands, and in some cases, millions of years, and which are restricted to one of the most fragile ecosystems on earth.

That environment, in and around Australia's alpine areas and high country national parks, is already under intense pressure as a result of land clearing, climate change, and, most recently, devastating bushfires.

Because NSW, thanks in part to the efforts of its colourful koala nemesis and deputy premier, John Barilaro, has not been able to get its act together on its own wild brumby problem, there are now serious fears for the ACT's already fire-ravaged Namadgi National Park.

The concern is that many of the tens of thousands of wild horses running rampant across the Victorian, NSW, and ACT high country, will end up in the park during what is a critical time for its recovery.

This is why the ACT's latest feral horse management plan has reaffirmed the territory's determination to control, if not eradicate, a pest species that is just as much out of place here as the cane toad, the rabbit, the fox, free-roaming feral and domestic cats, wild dogs, and the prickly pear.

Given the reduction in numbers will require such unpopular measures as aerial and ground shooting, and "passive trapping", it is inevitable a public outcry will ensue. The inconvenient truth is if we want to leave at least some of this country in a state similar to how we found it then hard choices have to be made.

Horses are not a threatened species. Nobody can argue that they are on the brink of extinction. That is not the case for many of the creatures and plants whose natural habitat they are trampling into the ground.

While the pro-brumby lobby has previously tried to delay extreme action by advocating trapping and re-homing nobody is putting their hands up to fund such an expensive undertaking.

A more recent attempt to block the removal of the animals through an action in the NSW Land and Environment Court was knocked on the head when the court ruled the Kosciusko National Park had been so badly damaged by the bushfires the horses would "impact the environmental recovery of the physical landscape".

Enough said. While the ACT government is going to have to weather a lot of flak over this, it is better to be right than to be popular on this occasion.