Environment minister says up to 2,500 wild horses are causing ‘significant damage’ to plant and animal species

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The Victorian government has signed off on a plan to remove more than 1,200 feral horses from the Alpine national park, saying the impact of the animals on sensitive ecosystems has reached critical levels.

Two weeks ago the New South Wales government announced a proposal to protect Kosciuszko national park brumbies, which conservation advocates have labelled a “disaster” for Australia’s environmental heritage.

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The Victorian environment minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, has endorsed a plan to remove up to 400 feral horses a year for three years from Victoria’s eastern alps, where as many as 2,500 of the animals are causing “significant damage” to threatened plant and animal species.

A smaller population of 80 to 100 horses in the Bogong high plains will be removed entirely.

The government’s preference is to trap and rehome the animals but where that is not possible, it says they will be humanely euthanised.

D’Ambrosio called on the NSW government and the Turnbull government to support the plan and agree on protecting vulnerable alpine areas, something that has traditionally involved cross-border co-operation through the parks system.

“Feral horses cannot be allowed to run rampant in the Alpine national park – their hard hooves damage the precious environment and destroy the habitats of threatened species,” she said.

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“We have developed a strong plan to protect this treasured part of the world and we call on the NSW and the Turnbull governments to support it.”

She said it was alarming that NSW was moving to legislate protection for feral horses and this would create problems in parklands over the border.

“Feral horses don’t recognise state borders – the proposed NSW bill will allow their population to grow and run wild,” she said.

The federal environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, gave his approval this week to the NSW plan to protect brumbies in the Kosciuszko national park, despite initially describing the animals as “a bit of a pest”.

Advocates for protecting the brumbies in New South Wales have said the cultural significance of the brumbies needs to be recognised.

The final Victorian plan states that its aim is to strike a balance between the need for protection of environmental and Aboriginal cultural heritage, the humane treatment of feral horses, and “social expectations for either a continued heritage connection to the ‘brumby’ or their management”.

It says that a decade of efforts removing up to 200 horses annually from the park had been insufficient and their population numbers had not reduced.

“The impacts of feral horses in the Alpine National Park and other contiguous areas have now reached critical levels, and without intervention horses will continue to cause long-term and severe degradation of wetlands and waterways and prevent the recovery of these areas,” the plan states.

The government’s proposal is to trap the horses in yards using baits such as lucerne to draw them in.

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It would work with organisations, such as horse associations, to re-home them. Horses that it can’t re-home, or that are too old or ill to re-home, would be shot in the yards.

The government says it will not use ground or aerial culling of wild horses because this did not have public support.

Dr Mark Norman is the chief conservation scientist for Parks Victoria. He said one the worst-damaged areas by feral horses was the source of the Murray River.

“It looks like a herd of elephants has been through, with torn up streams and lost vegetation,” he said.

He said the alps “are as special as the Great Barrier Reef and the Amazon rainforest” and had not evolved as places for hard-hoofed animals.

“We hope the NSW government will rejoin us in the long-standing partnership we’ve had in trying to collectively protect these special places.”