Pride Alpine Brumby
Pride Alpine Brumby
Heritage brumbies Australia’s wild living horse face threat of mass execution by cruel aerial shooting
Australia’s Heritage brumbies renowned as descendants of famous war horses face their own bloody battle in their homelands”
NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA, April 5, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- New South Wales Labor Minister for Environment, Penny Sharpe, has ordered closure of the northern end of Kosciouszko National Park for mass aerial shooting of brumbies from helicopters, for a period of six months starting 4 April 2024.— Marilyn Nuske
Previously aerial shooting was banned for 20 years in NSW because it was found to be cruel. Sharpe has however orchestrated a lifting of the ban to undertake mass aerial shooting.
Brumbies were declared protected by Legislation in NSW in 2018, which recognises their Heritage value and sets out how that value is to be protected.
A management plan sets aside four retention zones within the Park where 3,000 brumbies must live in order to retain sustainably managed bands of Heritage brumbies and to address any environmental issues.
Sharpe’s order to shoot is to commence in retention zones where generations of brumbies with significant cultural value have been living for 200 years.
Forebear of one band of brumbies living in retention zones is attributed to being the inspiration for author Banjo Patterson, who wrote the famous Man From Snowy River and another area where Ellyne Mitchell lived and penned her books The Silver Brumby series.
To reintroduce aerial shooting to NSW, National Parks Wildlife Services as managers, undertook a trial after obtaining an animal ethics licence from Macquarie University.
In support of the trial NPWS introduced standard operating procedures that varied considerably from those of national regulator Pestsmart.
The NPWS 2023 SOPs allow a thoracic or chest shot followed by multiple body shots to try to make sure fleeing horses are dead.
Pestsmart SOPs support only a head shot for a quick death, it does not support aerial shooting as a clear view of horses cannot be achieved from a a moving platform, their SOPs state.
Pestsmart also oppose multiple body shots, and shooting in foaling season to avoid foals being left to starve, in event of a lactating mare being killed or shot and maimed.
Ms Nuske, founder of Brumby Action Group Inc today stated : “We believe it is a barbaric plan, as wild living horses, foals, mares in foal and stallions will be shot from fast moving helicopters as bands try to flee bullets. Mares in foal taking single gut shots will involuntarily abort, and brave stallions will try to fight helicopters”
NPWS and RSPCA report of the trial aerial shooting stated 7 to 15 body shots were delivered to each brumby including foals to ensure a kill.
Evidence given by The Shooters and Fishers Party at a recent parliamentary Inquiry into aerial shooting, was that delivering a death to any animal with up to 15 body shots was cruel and indicated a death was not quick or pain free.
Ms Nuske further stated : “If death is not quick, and a horse has taken gut or thoracic shots and hides under tree canopies, it is likely it will bleed to death slowly. “
Community outrage from brumby advocates and the public has been loud, with one petition having received 200,000 signatures to stop the shooting.
Sharpe raises arguments of “overpopulation” to justify her plan yet government population counts were proven to be flawed and grossly overstated by a biostatistician’s analysis in 2023.
Sharpe has refused to recount populations in retention zones, but relies on an outdated report of the whole of the Park proven to be flawed by an Australian biostatistician.
Rehomers from Victoria and NSW are ready willing and able to take in any number of brumbies over the prescribed 3,000.
Brumbies in battle today are bloodline descendants of Australia’s famous war horses who carried soldiers at Beersheba and in the Great War. Now recognised in bronze statues across the states of Australia, in England, and by Legislation.
The descendants today fight for their own lives in a bloody battle to be played out not on enemies shores, but in their own homeland, in the pristine mountain ranges of Australia to be darkened with a cruel cultural and environmental travesty, and simply just for being.
Marilyn Nuske
Brumby Action Group Inc
+61 400 784 754
email us here
