Brumby battle: The culture war over Australia’s wild horses, Kosciuszko National Park | Four Corners

at the northern end of kosciuszko national park fog settles on the karango plain shrouding one of the dramatic sites of the high country [Music] these horses to the people of the mountains are part of the culture of the mountains and the people surrounding them have a great passion for them the presence of these charismatic animals in this otherworldly place has inspired poets artists filmmakers and passionate lobbyists who have the wild horse as their totem they demonstrate the connection of our past and our identity i guess but when the fog lifts the spell breaks revealing a landscape colonised by horses trampling this fragile environment the problem is astronomical now to the point where the number of forces are really threatening the integrity of the park there is nothing remotely poetic about the conflict swirling around these animals from my point of view of my lover of the mountains i love horses too but for the preservation of that ecology good science rather than romantic should be should be listened to this isn't a story just about horses this is about people and emotion and a debate about what it means to be australian i feel that all our problems are cultural and this is a culture war this is where they want to dominate what what they think australia is and i want australians to love this land and our species and become custodians and carers of that well i can say there's the brumby advocates won't give up and as far as we're concerned the brumbies will remain in the mountains tonight on four corners the fight for australia's high country it's a battle over what we celebrate and preserve disagreement has descended into disdain abuse and threats as combatants forge an environment where the landscape is diminished where native animals and horses suffer and where people are intimidated when they do their jobs or speak their minds [Music] in an isolated valley deep in the snowy mountains a group of tourists settle in for an alpine experience [Music] their guide is high country heavyweight peter cochran who runs a horse trek business that draws on the myth of the man from snowy river there was movement at the station for the word had passed around that the cult from all regretted got away they joined the wild bush horses he was worth a thousand pounds so all the cracks had gathered to the fray all the time you read that poem the man frustrated though it is fictional to a degree but it expresses a great bonding and a great spiritual connection between these people and this culture that's in the mountains when i was 10 years old i got given a box of books called the silver brumby so i was 10 years old and i first read those books i still have them now and i'm 53 so i've this has been a dream a long time in the making even in summer on these high mountain planes the nights are cold and clear [Music] the next morning time to saddle up all aboard folks bound up let's go [Music] these are familiar trails to former nationals mp peter cochran he was raised on a nearby property each summer his family grazed their cattle on these planes well at the times we were mustering as a child we used to come up into the park and spend time in the huts camping out in the bush so i became a part of the the cultural experience of coming up here and living with the people in the hutts and the mountains you know during the during the summer and it's all do it today cattle grazing was banned in the park decades ago creating bitter divisions between environmentalists and grazias the fight over brumbies is the latest frontier for these mountain communities i'm going to speak out on their behalf and if i need to do that to protect the lifestyle and the the cultural identity of these people that live around the mountains i'll do it and whatever life i've got left in me i'll fight for them just a few kilometers from the horse riding camp is current go homestead a former grazing property that's now tourist accommodation first day was great went to the blue water holes melbourne lawyer ian dunn has been coming here for 50 years my being has been uh greatly affected by current go karen go has been a feature of my life since at least the early 70s ian dunn is among a group of volunteers who help look after the property chasing trout in carringo creek is one of his great joys but his secret fishing spot has been transformed by horses there's no grass is that the grass is an inch high piles of manure every 20 meters the banks of carrango creek completely trodden down the creek is twice as wide as it used to be half as deep the water is instead of being gin clear you can't even see the bottom the erosion caused by the horses is just dramatic he's witnessed a population explosion look to your left you can see horses right in front of you you can see a hundred up to your right you can see another 50 or 100. many of them with infants with them so they're breeding quickly and i suppose that's one of the differences in the last two years population will have increased by about 40 percent these are not banjo-patterson's elusive wild bush horses some so tame they graze on the front lawn at currango how can you do this in a national park it's not a national park with scenes like we're seeing now have the decency not to call it a national park call it the carango horse park pam o'brien was an area manager for the national parks and wildlife service until she retired just a few months ago she's passionate about horses and native animals like the broad-toothed rat which was once common here broad tooth rats this gorgeous little rat-like creature that doesn't bite and doesn't smell it's really cute and they make these little grass runways and we could always go along this certain part of the park in the southern part and and show people the runways and how they lived and everything well we were there for nearly two days and we did not find one runway all we saw was horse damage with decades on the ground in kosciuszko former rangers like pam o'brien and paul hardy remember what this country was like with fewer horses we've got a a creek environment here which normally would be covered up with vegetation it's been trampled and there's no vegetation whatsoever on the creek environment and in contrast yeah we've got um we've got the sphagnum bog on this side which you can see in some places where it's already been starting to be opened up by horses that's what it should look like there should be you know thick sphagnum bog covering the creek yeah right up there and there's a couple of the culprits just around the corner there there is there's usually a few horses up here and if we were to go up there you'd see this is the same all the way up that that cover on the creek has been destroyed it's disheartening it's totally disheartening something's gone so badly wrong that all our efforts seem to be now relegated to being second to a to a feral horse it's really sad especially when in you know my career when you work to look after the park and all the species in the park and you know i've left and it's in a much worse condition than when i started in some places the damage is so bad rangers are building enclosures to protect endangered native animals this fence line guards the last place of refuge of a native fish species the stocky galaxias the staff are identifying areas that need to be fenced they're really critical areas that having a lot of impact it's like a zoo having little enclosures that people could come to if you want to see a broad tooth rat well in kosciuszko national park we have these little remote zoos that you can come and have a look at these animals in it's ridiculous exactly how many horses are in the park is hotly contested between the opposing sides i'm talking about north of the simon's highway i'd say probably in the vicinity of less than two thousand my view is that their uh give or take probably three to four thousand horses in total of the park so right now there's probably 16 17 000 horses it'll be more like 20 000 by the time we get around to doing anything about it it's easy to drive or walk across vast areas and not see a horse and that doesn't mean that they're not there okay coming up to get a more accurate estimate of the horse population you must take to the air beautiful beautiful planes amazing you can already see the mobs of horses yeah easily yep have a look through here look at what you know the bulbs we've got running through this area yeah any census of the park must somehow tally the horses you don't see a complex method called distant sampling is used the number of horses counted by aerial spotters is multiplied using a formula that takes into account animals hidden by trees and terrain it's not a haphazard method it's a proven method they've used it for many many years not to just count horses but to count feral pigs feral goats and it works based on a 2020 aerial survey national parks estimate a population of more than 14 000 horses scientists say numbers are growing by up to 20 percent a year people to believe these counts do have to rely a little bit on the fact that the people conducting them are qualified are professionals they're getting their work peer reviewed by people internationally who are you know independent scientists who are saying yep this is correct so we should trust and a little bit of time these numbers are completely rejected by horse advocates the fact is that the horse has been substantially reduced in number any claim of 14 000 horses is absolute nonsense one of the problems is that those who are producing these figures don't get up there like we do out right and amongst them all the time and know the horses individually by name yeah we don't trust the science and science has been corrupted by politics in a whole range of fields and that's one of them the figure of 14 000 has been accepted by the new south wales government it has signed off on a plan to reduce the number of horses to 3 000 within the next five years animals will either be trapped and re-homed shot in the park or sent to the abattoir the quickest method of controlling numbers shooting from a helicopter has been ruled out i see it from the perspective of the country and they're not meant to be there they're a hard-hoofed invasive species they're not endangered you know there's 90 of australia you can have a horse on though there's no no need to have one in the national park that's for sure there's no reason why we have to destroy our natural and indigenous heritage in order to keep a few feral horses up in the mountains [Music] this is the spectacular lower snowy river it's a vast wilderness that stretches all the way to victoria and beyond it's where parts of the man from snowy river palm and the silver brumby books were set and for that reason it has great emotional power to horse supporters and it's valued for its pristine environmental state for plants and animals that are found nowhere else and for the fact that there isn't a resonance as far as you can see nobody lives here but it is contested territory [Music] this group of environmentalists is about to set off on the lower snowy river [Applause] i'm really excited because it's my first time in this upper part of the river and in this by ed by wilderness area which is really special now you need it sort of skinny up this end for some on the trip this is more than a holiday professor jamie pittock is an environmental scientist at the anu also on the journey is andrew cox the head of the environmental activist group the invasive species council i really want to get down the snow river and be a better person to go with than richard swain richard swain is a veteran river guide and environmental campaigner i can see by the way they pack their boats this is a good crew already that's promising they filmed their journey it begins with an eight-hour scramble past unnavigable rapids [Music] this is real man from snow river country this is the pine clad ridges the rugged mountains this is the snowy river the men and women that came in here with the stock they are fantastic horsemen fantastic stockman it's a rich history but it wasn't great for country it's destroyed this land and it's changed it and to continue with leaving just feral horses on the land this land cannot recover from that era they are dismayed by what they see the damage the plants that are missing the erosion the seed heads chewed off everything the silt in the water the lack of native animals it's a sad sad picture that you see if when you know what you're looking for i'm particularly worried by the feral horses systematically eating out particular plants that are so important for the ecology of this place one example is the common reed or phragmites that grows along the edge of the river i've just spent five days floating down the snowy river and the only places these reeds grow are where the horses cannot reach yeah they're grazers so they're removing grasses and bushes selectively and many of these are the homes to animals which are only found in these places things like the northern and southern corroboree frog the alpine shield skink richard swain andrew cox and jamie pittock part of the reclaimed quasi-environmental campaign are among the loudest voices calling for the removal of horses as quickly as possible they believe the management plan doesn't go far enough we need to accept aerial culling if we lose that as a tool in the box then we're buggered and at the moment the best weapon we have to reduce these feral herbivores is aerial culling and it's the it's the most humane method and we need to clean australia up of feral plants and animals [Music] their unequivocal stances put them in the sights of horse advocates on pro-brumby facebook pages some with tens of thousands of supporters swain pittock and cox are the enemy some of the attacks posted by members of these groups are vulgar others are barely veiled death threats i would like to use a double-barreled shotgun on them and then load these evil morons into a truck and dump them i am very wicked lol now to take these cretins out would be my dream if i has the money i would put a price on their heads hope someone might do it for free the only exterminations should be the reclaimed cozy mob any ideas richard swain in particular gets under the skin of some horse supporters violent threats extend to his wife and children can someone not take him into the forest for a walk and not come back out with him let's cull swain be done with it if only that easy how about we hunt you and your family down to be shot shut up or you will be shut up permanently growing up around here the colonial crowd feel that they are the mountain men and women and they have a monopoly over what this place is i guess i'm a threat i've got a leg to stand on i i i am a river guide in the parks i am born and bred here i am of aboriginal heritage so they see that as a real a threat to to their argument some attacks by members of online community groups focus on swain's business richard swain owner of alpine river adventures only agenda is to cull every single brumby to drive his business agenda spread the word now on all various local pages can i nominate richard swain for the jindy notice board's of the month [Music] our business has been targeted we can't brand our vehicles anymore because they have been vandalized and they will be vandalised so the horse track mobs they can drive around with the signage all over their vehicles and advertise themselves but i i certainly couldn't i might our cars do get you know flat tyres and stickers put all over them save the brumby stickers and and and that was getting worse after the second lot of flat tyres it was pretty obvious that things could get worse and dangerous we sold one of our vehicles and we've unbranded all the rest to suddenly see this degenerate into almost madness you know where the argument is gets to the point of threatening people in the community and people that people know you know friends neighbours and not you know threatening each other or not speaking up been afraid to sort of be involved in a debate you've gone from a situation of protecting a unique park to almost any you know all of a sudden it's what the hell has happened here it's become quite divisive we have had staff threatened at work and it's made it very difficult and i know that a lot of the staff don't like walking around town in their uniforms and there's been procedures put in place in the office to protect them from a lot of that passion or threats from the pro-brumby community i think that the pro horse lobby are our modern day environmental terrorists they're terrorising the environment by promoting the the horses remaining and destroying it and they're terrorising the people who care for the environment such as the national park staff [Music] the new south wales national parks and wildlife service keeps a log of threatening phone calls and emails sent to staff [Music] in internal memos the park service has assured staff it is taking action to enhance the security of its local work sites and safety of staff while at work but that interactions with new south wales police in seeking intervention in the matters have been difficult and relatively unsuccessful parks management has recommended risk assessments and counselling to protect staff i suppose worst examples are threats on facebook mostly and and threats to people's kids at school is probably the worst and you know that can have a big impact on the staff that are working there they're just trying to do their job and in trying to look after the park and and not feeling safe they are brutal about how they deal with people they intimidate they threat threaten and they care more about the horses than everything including people it's clear this stouch is about much more than horses if national parks and wildlife service feel as though they've been threatened well look at it from the other side the people who their whole lifestyle has been changed by the stone mountain the scheme the ski industry the the invasion of people into their areas all the time as tourists and some people see that as being an offense to them so think about the people who have been affected by government policy all the time where you see a massive snowy mountains development wrecking the land all over the place at the same time as they're trying to remove a few brumbies out of the park these are the things that develop the anger it's not me that's developing the anger i'm identifying it [Music] peter cochran uses facebook to call for action against his opponents the invasive species council is an invasive species therefore should be immediately eradicated time for gloves off brumby supporters you know where your enemies are alp greens and shooters fishers and farmers shooters kill brumbies reclaim cozzy park organization are a bunch of frauds let's expose their backgrounds one at a time [Music] peter cochran has a direct line to favored media outlets and hasn't held back in his attacks the fact is that andrew cox and the reclaimed quasi advocates are telling bare-faced lies there were never 20 000 horses there were never 10 000. there was never 14 thousand there's absolute bare-faced lie and they know it [Music] this has become such a toxic debate that people in parks are frightened to do their jobs and people are certainly frightened to speak their minds about this issue do you accept any responsibility for the level of anger and resentment that is swirls around this issue of horses in the park no i accept no responsibility for it because the the the the reason that the conflict exists is the intransigence of the national parks and wildlife service and the government to listen to the people and if they don't listen to the people then anger or anger will develop and if a leader emerges and i'm the leader i'll take the consequences of it and don't anybody let anybody lay blame on me for the anger of people which has been spread over several generations in their attitude towards national parks and wildlife service this presentation we put together is taking us a couple weeks and at this meeting in the town of kuma peter cochrane and his allies planned their ongoing strategy to preserve both horse riding and brumbies in the park we rule out aerial shooting entirely and with regards to ground shooting totally ruled out this ex-national party mp has had remarkable success in influencing government policy the thing that they left out it was the no mention of of the recreational horse riding within the park and i think we acknowledged that you know horse riders actually have a significant part to play in the park in 2018 years of lobbying culminated in the passing of an unprecedented piece of legislation by the new south wales parliament the so-called brumby bill for the first time in australia a feral animal was protected in a national park i spent a lot of time lobbying both sides of the house including the the cross benches because i'd been a former member i i knew what the you know the way to go about it and i use my skills uh with my knowledge of the the parliament and everything else to try and persuade them to support the bill uh we went through the house with support you told one of your followers that you drafted it i know drafted the notes yeah yeah i i did and and and that was a i missed a misstep on my part there's no question i shouldn't put the word legislation i've put or should put notes by drafting notes it's absolutely gobsmacking that a wild horse so-called heritage act can be railroaded in on top of 50-60 years of thorough research deliberate legislation to create one of the world's great national parks and then crass national party politics can totally prostitute that process and railroad in an act that suits a very small minority in a totally damaging way to the ecology in favor of a feral species it's just absolutely gobsmacking and it's cynical uh abrogation of all good government process alongside peter cochran activist lisa caldwell has been a key figure in the fight to protect horses [Music] lisa caldwell grew up in sydney but moved here after falling in love with the mountains and the mountain man with the passion of a convert she's embraced the horse-centric world mythologised in the man from snowy river i think the movie said it right when they said it was paradise one minute and next minute hell trying to kill you she's become a custodian of high country history and culture symbolized by the horses they demonstrate the connection of our past and our identity i guess and they're the last connection there's a few mountain huts that still exist but um you know if it wasn't for the horses there's nothing left to prove that we existed they're the last piece like many she believes successive governments have destroyed the mountain way of life for lisa caldwell it's personal her husband's family was among those stripped of cattle grazing leases in kosciuszko i think that's a lot of the frustration when their livelihoods and their history was removed from the mountains at the same time as the towns were being flooded for the snowy scheme being gin devine and adam miniby they were being kicked out their history was being removed from with their homes etc and yet the ski resorts were moving in in high country towns like kumar and jinderbein and adam enniby there's not much public mention of the enormous national park that everyone's here to visit what's celebrated is the taming of the wilderness the horse and horsemen the gold prospectors even the trout introduced into local rivers from the moment you enter the region the man from snowy river and the wild bush horses are front and center they are an essential part of the local character and knocking an icon off its plinth is deeply unpopular if you speak out and you're threatening a strongly healed beliefs some people are going to react and i'm expecting that here and i know others that have been fighting this for a while have copped some really nasty stuff and um which isn't any way to win an argument yeah and kneeling down when you do along though charlie massey's connection to the past is embedded in kosciuszko in the hills north of the cayandra goldfields i'd say four or five it's where his father grazed cattle each summer sharing his lease with the caldwell family i'm envious i'd love to have been around in those days but when the leases were taken off in the late 50s 60s my father was quite open about look the time had come the stock were doing damage we started to realize and also you know drove him for two weeks with increasing tourist traffic and stuff you know this time as far as he was concerned and he wasn't bitter at all about losing the leases he realised it was time charlie massey remembers what a big deal this was for mountain families particularly closer to the mountains a lot of the old monero families and newcomers as well there's still a lot of bitter feelings one of the uh leading ecologists whose work led to formation of kosciuszko national park i know after the leases were taken away in the 50s he was beaten up in pubs and his children victimised at school and those feelings still run on i mean it was a threat to identity and to livelihood massey is as local as they come he's a lifelong grazia who runs around 3 000 head of sheep on a property near kumar and who was awarded an oam for his services to the wool industry he has a phd for his research into regenerative methods of farming to his expert eye the damage done by horses is clear to then see some of australia's rarest species and endangered species at huge risk now being compromised for this false view about these heroic animals that they've portrayed when really they're just a feral animal doing huge damage [Applause] he questions the motivation of some horse supporters for some it's driven by pecuniary interests whether it's horse riding or whatever camping trips for others their sense of heroic image is is embedded in the uh the man from snowy river rugged bushman hard riding hard drinking sort of thing but none of it has any relevance to do with the ecology my lover of the mountains i love horses too but for the preservation of that ecology you know good science rather than romantic should be um should be listened to in kosciuszko national park traps are being set to capture brumbies for removal or killing horses are lured with baits into enclosures like this when the horses enter the traps they go chasing the either the molasses or the salt or some of those they hit the tripwire which releases these gates the gates fly back and the horses are locked in and gone for all time horse activists like alan lanyon remain utterly opposed to the removal of any brumbies so we say at this point in time that there is no substance to the national parks and wildlife services claim for need for a trapping program traps have been tampered with in the past and horses set free and alan lanyon expects that to continue part of me says that we should be doing it part of me says that we should have people on the ground here every time they set these traps we'll come in and set them off we'll come over the hill and set the traps off until such time as the environment minister and national parks and wildlife service want to sit down and talk not with a with a put up um committee but with a committee that has the interests of hey the national parks and be the horses at heart will you be part of that ellen will you come in and open the traps and help pull them down uh at this point in time i couldn't say what my intentions would be that means though to the plan that it's been so long in the making they've spread so much contention about it but if if a group like yours stops horses being trapped the plan won't work at all will it no but it might force some action into making the plan work [Applause] few fortunate horses like this kosciuszko stallion will find a new home he's come to the property of animal welfare vet andrea harvey he's coming here for a bit of handling and to be gelded and then once he's recovered he'll go to his new owner on a big property and be reunited with the rest of his herd she doesn't charge for this work she's trying to save as many as possible it's a lot of work for one horse yeah it is and especially for the stallions because i guess that's why they sort of draw the short straw most of the time and it's usually the oldest stallions that end up going to neckeries [Music] she has already taken 40 brumbies onto her own property but most kosciuszko horses won't be this lucky horses that have never been handled before require space and expert attention but there are too few people like andrea harvey with the time and skill to care for them i think it would be a struggle to re-home a lot larger numbers ultimately it's going to be saturated at some point not every horse is going to be rehomed if the plan is implemented the vast majority of the horses in kosciuszko national park will be killed andrea harvey has advised the new south wales government on the most humane ways of removal and culling obviously the trapping itself is a stress and the transport itself is a stress and each of those steps there's the potential for negative impacts on the horse so if the horses are going to be killed we want to make sure that there are as few welfare impacts as possible so theoretically killing them in the park um would have fewer impacts we're avoiding that process of of transport when we think about how the horses are going to be killed in the park if that's what's happening we have to again make sure that that can be done in a way that causes minimal distress and minimal pain her position has made her a target of some of the most extreme horse supporters it's kind of flabbergasting that it happens from brumby people because i guess i'm putting my life really into trying to save as many brumbies as i can and give them the best welfare that i can and so when people accuse you of um things related to um you know being a killer or um causing cruelty like that's yeah it's really hurtful really hurtful [Music] the bitter stouch over brumby's in kosciuszko fuelled by old grievances and entrenched cultural positions has led to a compromised plan that has satisfied neither side an agonisingly slow removal process in the face of unrelenting resistance seems inevitable what happens next peter the plan has become a reality horses will start to be removed the rehoming market is saturated some horses are going to have to be killed what's the next well again i can say this the brumby applicants won't give up um and as far as we're concerned the brumbies will remain in the mountains if horses are allowed to persist in these really sensitive areas they're going to destroy them the park is under significant threat from lots of different angles there's all these pressures on kosciuszko national park and addition of horses is is just too much so the integrity of the park will suffer and we'll lose species and ecosystems and we won't get them back a national park should be something we're proud of and it should be a joyous thing for all australians and the rangers should be looking after it and caring for it as it should be but for one group of people who got hung up on some books on a poem and a movie and like wearing a certain costume we're all suffering this entire community is suffering because of that [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 252,434

Keywords: brumby, brumbies, Kosciuszko, national park, Snowy Mountains, Australia, wild horses, horses, cull, activists, advocates, thousands, Greens, National Party, Nats, death threats, kill, national parks, feral, pest, environmental damage, ecologocial, science, scientists, mountain, high country, longform journalism, documentary, documentaries, four corners, fight, social media, abc news, australia, Jindabyne, skiing, hiking, Kosciuszko National Park, culture, culture wars, colonial, aboriginal, vet, grazier, abc

Id: CMd2TUSoZto

Length: 44min 25sec (2665 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 21 2022