THE FIGHT FOR THE LIVES OF THE AUSTRALIAN BRUMBIES

The fight to save the wild horses in Australia has been waging for many years. Previously horses have been removed from the national parks at up to more than 600 horses per year/per Park and despite the efforts of local rehoming organisations, most of these horses have ended up at slaughterhouses. Pregnant mares, stallions and foals have been trucked away from their homes on a long and dangerous journey to be slaughtered for their meat. For Brumbies in NSW and Victoria, that previously meant, a trip to Queensland crammed into a truck without food or water for well over 20 hours which is at the very least terrifying and at the worst, results in injuries and even death on arrival at the facility. One well known abattoir, Meramist in Queensland, which was recently investigated for extreme cruelty after an undercover investigation, regularly received Brumbies from all over Australia. Horses slaughtered here were destined for the overseas human consumption market and their meat fetched a premium price per kilo in comparison to the price per kilo that they would otherwise have fetched at a much closer local knackery, where the meat will end up as pet food. It is clear that there was no consideration given for the welfare of the horses and the unnecessarily long stressful journey to their death was overlooked in favour of profit. Due to massive public pressure, currently those Brumbies removed that are not rehomed, are now being taken to a closer knackery but they still experience a grim ending of course!

The video below shows the barbaric cruelty inflicted on the horses that find themselves discarded at this facility

Meramist Abattoir video

Brumby support groups and locals have been attempting to stop the removal of Brumbies from the parks for a long time and in 2018, legislation was passed in NSW, to recognise the heritage value of these horses and this was supposed to help protect them. This was a very unpopular piece of legislation with the powerful anti-Brumby lobby, who have since been attempting to repeal this legislation. They are not happy to have any Brumbies remaining in the Parks.

The devastation by the fires in Australia in 2019-20 meant that the anti-Brumby lobbyist groups claimed that Brumbies would hamper the recovery of the area from fire damage. This claim has been made, in spite of them also claiming that the Brumbies do not frequent the worst fire hit areas and they claim therefore, that very few perished in the fires. A complete contradiction.

In Kosciuszko National Park, senior advisors recommended the immediate removal of up to 4000 Brumbies as quickly as possible (this was the estimation of the amount of horses that are supposedly in 3 areas in the north of the Park but there are actually nowhere near this amount of horses in the area). In 2020-2021 and 2022 to date, Brumbies have been removed at a massive rate! In 2020-2021 a total of 787 horses were removed. In 2022, 859 horses were removed in one year! And in 2023, 2546 Brumbies were removed or shot!!!
From November 2021 to the beginning of March 2024:-
A total of 4152 Brumbies have been removed or shot!!
Thanks to the massive efforts of the sanctuaries and rehomers, 916 have been rehomed, BUT
640 healthy Brumbies have been sent to the knackery!
1,336 Brumbies have been shot from a helicopter!
1,029 Brumbies have been shot from the ground!>br? 109 have been shot in yards
70 have been tranquilised and then shot with a bolt gun
37 euthanised
15 died during trapping The rehomers are doing their absolute best to try and rehome as many as they can and as quickly as they can but it has proved impossible to keep up with the speed of removals! No help is given (financially or otherwise) to these people, by the local government. Brumbies have therefore been shot in the Park either by ground shooting or aerial shooting!
For further details on the exact situation in NSW (Kosciuszko National Park), please click here -

In Victoria Alpine National Park and Barmah National Forest, ground shooting has been approved as the most effective method of control and in 2020 legal action was successful in stalling the commencement of the cull in the ANP until the new management plan was published. The draft plan was published and opened for submissions, but in spite of very very many submissions sent in against any lethal control, the new management plan has been published with no changes! The plan was to remove at least 530 Brumbies in the first year! According to Parks Victoria, they are on course to achieve their goal. In spite of already very high numbers already coming out of Kosciuszko National Park and other National Forests and Parks, there were initially over 300 enquiries about rehoming. But for some reason Parks Victoria seem to want to make no effort at all to rehome Brumbies and so they managed to whittle this down to offers of rehoming for approx 30 Brumbies! Traps have to be set up and maintained, trapping horses has to follow welfare regulations, then the Brumbies have to be put into transport boxes or trailers to be transported to the rehomers. But they then have homes for life of course. In Kosciuszko National Park, they set up a holding facility to house the trapped Brumbies temporarily while they wait for the rehomers to collect them. Many people have begged Parks Victoria to do a similar thing to make it easier to get opportunities for Brumbies to be rehomed. To no avail!! They refuse to set up such a facility which would save countless lives! So they HAVE BEEN SHOOTING these 530 Brumbies!! There are approved rehomers available to take horses but they prefer to shoot them because it's easier!! Ground shooting is the first proposal, but as they well know that it will be impossible to reach their targets quickly enough with this (as they would only achieve shooting one or two horses in a group before they all gallop off), they are then planning to use aerial shooting. It's a foregone conclusion that this will be the method used. Every attempt is being made to lobby MPs and local councillors, submit petitions and emails to try to prevent this happening! A Change.org petition was presented to the minister with nearly 180,000 signatures from people who support the Brumbies! Attempts are also being made to get legislation similar to that in NSW for heritage recognition. For further details on the situation in the Victorian ANP please click here-

The anti-Brumby lobby are not only trying to get the 2018 Koskiuszko Wild Horse Heritage Act repealed, but they have also lobbied successfully for aerial shooting of the horses for a speedy total elimination! Some of us still remember the horrendous slaughter of wild horses by aerial shooting in the Guy Fawkes National Park in the year 2000. Heartbreaking video footage and photographs of this incident, can never be forgotten! Men in helicopters with rifles chasing and shooting at wild horses who were galloping flat-out terrified for their lives. Horses were shot multiple times resulting in horrific injuries and many died a long and painful death. The aerial cull was conducted by National Parks and Wildlife Service. The results of this cull provoked such public outrage, that aerial shooting of Brumbies (Wild Horses) in NSW was banned - until recently when this ban was overturned! The RSPCA brought charges against NPWS alleging cruelty to animals; however these charges were dropped, in favour of a guilty plea by NPWS. This is also in the new management plan for the Alpine National Park in Victoria!

Guy Fawkes Video
Further details of aerial culling

The anti Brumby lobby in Australia is well established and extremely well funded. And in fact the discrimination applies to all non-native animals, who are literally considered an invasive species and are all condemned to death on this basis. The vindictive nature of these people seems to, certainly where the Brumbies are concerned, have become a real hatred. Probably because of the amount of public support that the Brumbies have. Mass slaughter of all non-native animals in the national parks seems to be a major agenda, in spite of the massive destruction in these parks by humans, building ski resorts, roads and dams and allowing four-wheel-drive vehicles and quad bikes to cause massive damage.

Wild horses are mostly referred to as feral horses by those who wish to see them gone, because the word 'feral' makes them sound more worthless. They are blamed for the destruction of the habitat of some of the native species and destroying important moss areas and banks of the streams. It is crucial to remember that these parks are also home to a massive population of wild deer, boar and rabbits who are shown to be devastating contributors to the environmental damage which is systematically blamed on the Brumbies.They have become the scapegoat because they are an easier target. For further details please see the page - The Blame Game

Interesting studies throughout Europe have been successful in using horses for rewilding, resulting in a much enriched environment and in many countries horses are now considered a keystone species. In recent research, they were found to be effective in conserving the permafrost therefore staving off global warming. These important reports and studies by environmentalists and ecologists that have been produced in support of the wild horses continue to be dismissed. For further details please see the page - Brumbies and the Environment

Another extremely important issue is the argument over the population of horses in the Parks. Population estimates are made using computer software, rather than 'head counts'. This method of estimation has produced ludicrous figures of population increases that are more than twice the scientific accepted maximum population increase for wild horses. When calculations are done using figures from earlier surveys, with a realistic maximum increase and accounting for the large amount of removals done annually the figures are drastically different. For full details please see the page - The population and numbers issue

© Brumbies Forever 2024