'It was terrible work': 20 years on, horses' cull still a bitter political issue
It was 20 years ago this week that a bloody incident in the Guy Fawkes River National Park spilled onto Sydney front pages and made the spread of wild horses across the state the centre of a bitter political fight to this day.
A mob of brumbies near Kiandra, one of the sensitive regions in the high plains of the Kosciuszko National Park.Credit:Nick Moir
The then state Labor environment minister Bob Debus says it was the worst incident he dealt with in his eight years in that role. It remains, says NSW Liberal Environment Minister Matt Kean, the most difficult issue he manages, the only one that has prompted death threats against him.
Back in 2000 the little known national park in north eastern NSW had been hit first by drought and then fire. Within its boundaries a herd of 700 brumbies was slowly succumbing to starvation.
“They were gnawing out the roots of plants, they were devastating a fragile environment, and they were still dying,” Mr Debus said.
A regional manager from National Parks and Wildlife made what at the time would have been an unremarkable decision to cull the pests in order to spare their suffering and protect the park.
Working in shifts, two teams of trained shooters in helicopters flew low over the treetops and shot around 600.
“It was terrible work, and nobody wanted to be doing it," one of the marksman later said.
A handful of wounded horses survived, only to die slowly in the days that followed.
In normal circumstances the matter would have ended there, but Channel 9 caught wind of the cull and broke the news on its 6pm bulletin.
“We had no warning it was coming, I didn’t even know the cull had taken place,” Mr Debus said.
Snowgrass and other native plants in the Alps have to be fenced off to survive the trampling of feral horses.Credit:Joe Armao
The outrage at the apparent wanton cruelty was overwhelming and Mr Debus and the National Parks and Wildlife Service were condemned.
Compounding the issue, the RSPCA launched an investigation and what seemed to Mr Debus like a campaign against the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
RSPCA chief executive Steve Coleman was the organisation’s chief inspector at the time. “We were under so much pressure from the media,” he said.
“We were getting calls [about the investigation] not just daily but hourly [from reporters] demanding updates. It might have looked like a campaign, but we were just responding.”
Cruelty charges were brought against NPWS; most were dropped, one was dismissed, none stuck.
Mr Debus banned the shooting of feral horses - at once solving the political problem and depriving the NPWS of a potent pest management tool.
Today the movement has become enmeshed in political culture warfare, making policy action even more difficult. Brumby groups are surging on social media and the NSW Nationals leader John Barilaro has made defence of the brumbies and criticism of the NPWS part of his political identity.
In 2018 Mr Barilaro introduced a bill that prevented the government’s own 2016 feral horse management program from going ahead.
Asked if he regrets banning culling of the horses Mr Debus said: “It had become politically untenable. There was no choice. But I always thought it would be renegotiated.”
Mr Kean, who wants to reduce horse numbers significantly, concedes the dispute has added strain to his sometimes difficult working relationship with the Nationals.
Mr Debus likens the dispute over the horses to that over climate change. On one side, he says, there is science and evidence, on the other political opportunism.
Mr Barilaro responds that Mr Debus should “hang his head in shame” over the cull, which he calls one of the most disturbing acts of animal cruelty in Australia.
Mr Coleman, now chief executive of the RSPCA, said the organisation learned much from the incident.
The RSPCA accepts in some circumstances shooting may be justified but causes less stress to wild horses than the process of trapping, transporting, breaking and rehoming wild animals, as demanded by brumby groups.
“That is the practical, brutal reality. It’s not nice, it’s not palatable, but it is the truth,” Mr Coleman said.
After last year’s counts it was estimated there were 19,000 feral horses in Kosciuszko National Park, around 25,000 across the Alpine region and around 1800 in the Guy Fawkes River Park, with numbers growing around 20 per cent a year
Restricted to trapping and transporting the NPWS removed only 193 from Kosciuszko last year.
Mr Barilaro told talkback radio earlier this year that he thinks those figures are “bullshit” and demanded a post-bushfire recount, under way this week, before new action was taken.
Invasive Species Council chief executive Andrew Cox says the anniversary of the cull and the damage done to parks since should prompt new measures to reduce horse numbers.
So great is the damage to Kosciuszko, he said, that if action isn’t taken the park may as well be returned to graziers.
Mr Coleman agrees.
“Doing nothing is no longer an option.”
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clarification
This artical has been updated to say the anniversary of the Guy Fawkes incident had passed during the week.
Nick O'Malley is National Environment and Climate Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He is also a senior writer and a former US correspondent.