FEWER THAN 3,000 HORSES IN KNP

I am an independent equine scientist and horse trainer with over 50 years experience. I have written four books that were approved and published by the British Horse Society, covering all aspects of equine health, care, management and training. I have handled and trained horses and ponies of all sizes and types, including wild horses.

I have spent thousands of hours over four years researching the situation with the wild horses in Kosciuszko National Park, including the surveys, the purported damage and the humaneness of management techniques.

I worked with Claire Galea to put together the proposed alternative count and took part in the meeting with the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Minister’s assistant.

Very early on in my research I became aware that there is a very powerful group of people—both politically and financially—that have, it would seem, “waged war” on the wild horses.

The hypocrisy involved in this is, quite honestly, astounding. It would seem that any amount of damage can be done to the park if it is advantageous to humans or brings in dollars.

That includes tearing up large chunks of habitat of the native fauna. I studied the report from the Independent Technical Reference Group.

They made it clear that there was a severe lack of independent scientific studies done on the effects of the wild horses in these parks.

The recently published research by Dr Berman has been very helpful in this respect and he has also highlighted much of the criticism that I have also made of the research methods that have been previously used.

With regard to the population surveys, I noticed quickly that there were purported annual population increases, particularly in the northern block of Kosciuszko National Park, that were in fact biologically impossible for the species, so I started doing calculations.

The first thing I noticed was that the reported 37 per cent per annum increase between 2014 and 2019 calculated, in fact, as nearer to a 41 per cent increase because no account had been taken of horse removals. I then looked back at other surveys and realised that something seemed to have gone drastically wrong since about 2009.

The estimates were all over the place. Having received documents via GIPAA, I realised that St Andrews University had in fact questioned the biologically impossible results of the surveys.

It’s not just this area of the park.

There was a purported annual increase of 95 per cent per annum in the southern region of the park between 2020 and 2022.

It’s important to understand that there are two completely different surveys that have taken place: one is the official published surveys done by Dr Cairns using distance software that are producing these biologically impossible estimates; the others are annual headcounts undertaken by rangers.

These counts have produced numbers that are much more feasible.

They fly a meandering path and fly to the areas where they know the brumbies are.
They hover over them and count them.

They are large, easily seen animals.

They only cover the open plains area.

However, horses graze, with short breaks, 24 hours of the day.

They would predominantly be on the open plains except for when it’s very hot or there are bad insects.

These times of year are avoided.

The rangers know exactly where the horses are to count them. They can apparently find them and view them sufficiently to shoot them—so they can count them.

So a headcount is perfectly possible and is, of course, the
gold standard for wildlife counting.

We know that the highest percentage of horses are in the northern block and, of those, the highest percentage are mostly on the open plains.

If the count that we proposed was undertaken, we would know fairly exactly the number of horses in that region.

It would be easy to establish then the inaccuracy of the surveys that have been published and used officially.

Would that not be what everyone wants, considering we are told that no-one wants to shoot horses?

Regarding the shooting, both ground shooting and aerial, you have several submissions from very qualified vets, including some that were on the scientific advisory panel, that state categorically that shooting horses anywhere other than in that small spot on the head that achieves instant loss of consciousness is absolutely not humane.

This is also the position of the RSPCA according to their submission to the Senate inquiry.

It is just not possible to shoot free-running horses accurately in this small target area, so they aim for the thorax, either hitting just the lungs or, with aerial shooting, often the spinal column to partially paralyse and disable them.

It’s horrific and cruel and they would suffer enormously.

Blasting them full of bullets may speed up the death, but they would still suffer enormously.