January. February 83O
NE THING WORKING in their favour, however, is that
Australia’s wild horses have proven themselves adaptable
and easy to train. Revered for their stamina, agility and
surefootedness, former brumbies compete in a variety of arenas,
from endurance riding and pony club competition to bush racing
and showjumping. Jill Pickering, ABA president, says they have
been used to support disadvantaged youth, in equine-assisted
learning and even to rehabilitate prisoners.
But the alliance is keen to see the identification of a “viable,
sustainable population number that will not overtax the land-
scape... When brumby numbers are kept in check so that they
don’t overrun the indigenous animals and plants, they help the
land,” she says. “Their manure serves as a fertiliser and their crop-
ping reduces the fire risk.”
People such as Erica Jessup, co-founder of the Guy Fawkes
Heritage Horse Association, report increased demand for brumbies
captured during trapping operations in national parks. “They have
become very fashionable; they are the most versatile animals and
we recently had a truckload go to SA and Gippsland,” she says.
Catherin McMillan, a portrait artist and brumby enthusiast
from the NSW South Coast, prides herself in having owned a
number of these “heritage horses” and currently has one in train-
ing. “Once they bond with you, they will jump through fire for
you,” she says. “They are intelligent and so willing to please, and
very patient with kids. My frail, elderly mother even rode one of
my just-started brumbies. More people are starting to see brumb-
ies as an asset and asking where they can get one.”
Attitudes – but of a very different kind – are also changing in
the central deserts, according to Central Land Council spokesman
Sam Rando. There was a huge outcry when an aerial cull was
first mooted in May 2013 on Tempe Downs station, south-west
of Alice Springs, to protect waterholes and cultural sites from feral
horses. Some 24,000 people signed a petition in opposition.
“People were saying they should be captured and trucked to
the coast and adopted out. They seemed to think that trucking
was a benign option, but a lot of horses are killed or injured in
the yards or during transport,” Sam says. “Indigenous people don’t
like to see horses shot, but they see the degradation of country
and horses starving or dying from a lack of water, and believe that
shooting can be the more humane option, which has been sup-
ported by independent veterinarians. There is a lot of romantic,
wishful thinking; the reality is much more difficult.”
Whichever side of the fence you sit on, wild horses are now
an established part of the Australian landscape, just like feral
donkeys and camels, deer and pigs. Land managers concede that
they could never rid the country of all horses, even if they wanted
to. That suits horse advocates, who regard them as noble emblems
of the toughness and fighting spirit that characterises Australians.
For Antoinette Campbell, whose husband is Banjo Paterson’s
only great-grandson, joining one of Peter Cochran’s riding treks
in the Snowy Mountains in October 2015 was the fulfilment of
a lifelong dream. “To read Banjo’s poetry and then experience
the horses in the High Country, one cannot help but feel an
amazing connection with these magnificent animals and the
rawness of the plains that are their home,” she says.FIND more of Jason Edwards’ images of Australia’s brumbies at:
http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/issue130AGcollected by non-profit organisations that prepare them for
re-homing and domestic life. Member groups of the Australian
Brumby Alliance (ABA), formed in 2009 to lobby the government
for humane management, have found homes for about 960
horses in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and WA during the past
decade. Thousands more have made the trip to an abattoir.
Even so, passive trapping has barely kept pace with annual
reproduction rates.
As authorities struggle to come up with acceptable control
methods, some argue that euthanasing horses mustered into a trap
yard is more humane than carting them up to 2000km to the
nearest abattoir. Others are putting their faith in the current trial
of a drug that renders mares infertile. Certainly aerial culling –
outlawed in NSW after the shooting of 600 horses in Guy Fawkes
River National Park in 2000 – is the most contentious option of
all. Although this method is still used periodically in remote regions,
a public raised with domestic horses largely finds the idea of horses
being pursued and shot from helicopters unpalatable.
But in northern Queensland,
that’s what was being consid-
ered in late 2015 after brumbies
were declared a road hazard.
Along the busy Bruce Highway
that fringes the Clemant State
Forest north of Townsville, two
people died in separate acci-
dents involving horses and the
Queensland government moved to protect public safety.
“Lethal control by specialist and highly trained Queensland
Parks and Wildlife Service marksmen is considered the most
humane and effective solution,” said Steven Miles, Queensland
National Parks minister. Elsewhere in the state, graziers have
another gripe about wild horses, claiming they are competing
with drought-stricken cattle for food and water, and costing the
industry anywhere from $30 million to $60 million a year.
Ecologist Dr Dave Berman, who has studied wild horses around
Australia since 1984, believes they pose one of the greatest land-
management challenges of our time. “They need to be tackled on
a national scale and that approach needs to be holistic,” says Dave,
who readily admits that his first showjumping horse was a brumby.
“We can’t just say that they are a pest. The history and mythology
is important, too. They are a lovely animal but they are causing
damage. There are too many horses breeding too quickly. We need
to work with all the interest groups to find an agreed approach
and consider all the methods available to manage our feral horses,”
he adds. “Done properly, both shooting horses from helicopters
and transporting them long distances can be acceptable. In places
like the Snowy Mountains, with larger populations expanding,
lethal methods of control are now necessary.”
High Country cattleman
Peter Cochran (top) is a
staunch supporter of wild
horses, some of which eke
out an isolated existence in
Central Australia (bottom).“We can’t just say that they
are a pest. The history and
mythology is important, too.”