The video was full of bullshit. It's not illegal to remove Brumbies from National Parks in NSW, it is illegal to remove animals from National Parks in NSW. That part of the NPW act has some unexpected consequences, but it does not exist to frustrate the people who produced that video.
What else needs to go on the manifesto..I reckon it will be easier to get folk to engage if we give them something to say. At the very least what deserves a like and what deserves a disagree.
To put things in perspective, so you want to save a brumby. There are too many horses in Australia for people to care for. The conservative figure for unwanted horse slaughterhouse deaths to dog food cans is 10000 per year ( 1 and a bit horse / hour every hour ) to double that figure by emotive figures.
are you talking about the article that was in the sunday age or the magazine that comes with it i forget the name? was an interesting read particularly about the native cod that apparently are better sporting fish than trout anyway.
More for the Manifesto.. I guess it should start with these two..Modify or correct as you see fit 1) any attempt at conservation of feral horses within NPWS lands is contrary to the. act. 2) herbivore and environmental degradation caused by feral horses should be listed as a key threatening process under the TSA
Saddling up your steed and riding it cross country in the park is still contrary to the Act. Note that the feral horse chasers in the video even say they release many of the ones they rope (I have 'Rawhide' in my head). So it's really 'sport roping', like C&R fishing and sweet fanny adams to do with removal. It's just people who like getting out on the open country chasing shit on horses. I get that, I like fishing and have plenty of mates who hunt. But it's a very different argument to the one they are presenting. NPWS can manage animal removal under the Act quite well. Foxes get baited, pigs and dogs shot, cats shot or baited or trapped, all the time. No-one is crying about animal welfare for this (well, ok, some people are, but not 'cause they want to take all the wild dogs home and give them to disabled kids). NPWS currently manage a program of feral horse removal via trapping in the park. It's just that on a $/horse basis it's really expensive and isn't able to outstrip current natural growth rates. In addition, while the rope riders talk about how wonderful these horses are, NPWS can't give away the ones they do trap, and more than half end up going to the knackery (or figures in that range). There's no massive market for them. Horses are expensive to keep and there's no ready receival market for a few hundred, or a thousand, year in and year out. The trapping budget isn't making a major dent on population increase rates either.
The KNP is losing, the brumbies aren't being controlled, the numbers are increasing. Volunteers, took out the feral goats in the Flinders Rangers NP in Sth Aust. over the years these volunteers, at no cost to the taxpayer have reduced significantly the numbers of goats since 1994, Sth Aust. N.P. also used aerial shooting as well. There are programs out there to reduce numbers of feral animals, it's just a matter where your prejudice lies.
Was wandering around Bondo St Forest which is adjacent to northern KNP on the weekend with a mate looking for deer we saw a heap of Brumbies must be thousands of them in the park.
Just aside, I hope we can all agree the wild brumby schnapps is a positive thing to have in the park.
Holy &%#+. Starving brumbies are turning to cannibalism to survive. https://theconversation.com/the-grim-story-of-the-snowy-mountains-cannibal-horses-31691
Well in the end I always try to side with peer reviewed articles by people with qualifications in the field. At the moment I'm leaning towards the ecology & environment professors from ANU. I see you've given up on following federal politics. edit: shauno were you serious or were you sarcastically talking about the literal pile of crap in the videos? I can't even tell anymore.
Wasn't there a film about Killer Sheep in NZ? Now come on all you horse experts, got any ideas. I'll wait to hear from the the mountain horsemen to explain this behaviour???
In the comments there was an explanation that the horses might not be interested in the meat of the dead horse, they were ripping open the intestines to try and get to the partially digested food inside. ...still completely shocking.
A little bit of genetic tinkering, maybe some steroids, and our feral cat problem, could be a solution!
Thank you sbm, the horses were after the partially digested fodder in the intestines, after foxes, dogs, cats and crows had their fill. It's so called documentaries such as this amateur dribble that the less intelligent believe to be true. I don't suppose the horse was taken down by a Drop bear, or a Kosciusko feral chook or maybe a teenage snow boarder.
Imagine if they did legalize hunting in national parks in the end. Tour northern KNP with your own traditional Nordic hunter and personalised Japanese horse sashimi chef. There's a genuine tourism opportunity! And they could hold one hell of an Australian biathlon championship!
some weird stuff happens when you agree/disagree the numbers seem pretty random. are they running an algorithm or something.
some background reading http://invasives.org.au/feral-animal-control/80000-feral-horses-for-australian-alps/
RUS that Pete The Possum man isnot involved in relocating Vic horses across the border into Nthn KNP....
There was an article in the New York Times that the USA is having the same problems as us. There is an unsustainable number of wild horses in areas of the west but politically it is just about impossible to kill them. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/u..._th_20141001&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=62390419
None of the feral horses in the park are descendents of horses used by the AIF, as none of those horses came back to Australia. Once no longer required overseas all horses were disposed off, either by sale to locals or shot and skinned. Quarantine regulations made it completly impractical to return thousands of horses to Australia (even in 1956 it was still impractical to bring in large numbers of horses hence why the equestrian events were held in Stockholm and not Melbourne for the Olympics)
The waler claim is full of holes too. As is the recognition of brumby as a discreet breed. The conservation of neither the waler or brumby genetics are well served by a feral population. It is analogous to dingo and 'wild dog". Too many contaminants. The horsie folk are readily split on this. There argument is consistent with saying bunnies need conservation because they represent a heritage breed. I encourage the conservation of heritage breeds in all sorts of things.Wild exotic populations however do more harm than good though and is not the way to do it.
Sorry skinavy one horse did return from WW1, "Sandy" you can read about it from the Aust. War Memorial http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/horses/sandy/
Ok one out of several thousand came home, doubt that horse produced any antecendents of today's ferals.
I have just revisited the NPWS Conversation pages. It is a huge. The whole consultation process is massive and long. So massive it is just too hard to make a contribution. If the time, effort and money spent on the consultation was spent on removing the feral animals including horses from the Parks the job would be close to done. NPWS 0 Ferral Animals 1
the politics in this is big. Influential folk that are pro horse. The process seems to me to be about trying to collect data on public perception. For mine the starting place should be consideration by the Scientific committee for horses to be a threatening process under the TSA. What is applicable for KNP is applicable state wide. A lot of the argument should be part of this process. Once a determination is made then the actions required become a separate consultation but, one with pretty clear boundaries, definitions and objectives... as it is, i figure folk have to get on board and play the game that has been set. The misinformation in there is almost bear pit standard. at a minimum folk should agree/disagree or suggest future topic suggestions in Do you have a topic you would like to discuss on Protecting the Snowies? and contribute &/or agree/disagree with statements in Why are the Snowy Mountains important to you?
The misinformation in there is almost bear pit standard. I refrained from saying this in my rant above, I was thinking it but held off mentioning it. The bullshit presented about a range of issues is so overwhelming I gave up contributing more. I did read a bucket load of it to try and understand the pro arguments but there is so little truth (such as but not limited to repeated statements that horses do not cause much damage, any damage is caused by other animals) and logic (such as but limited to because horses have been in an environment (that is 1000's of years old) for 100 or so years they have a right to stay in that environment) that it is a lot of as opposed to a sensible conversation where issues are clarified and confirmed and positions adjusted to suit.
in one of the closed topics you can read where a bunch of ANU (i think) enviro science students blitz the topic and get well and truly trolled... not particularly edifying. The pro horsies strategy is pretty clear and consistent, classic denialist modus operandi. They are weakest on reason's why they should stay, they are strongest in disputing the environmental evidence.
Here's the thing. Are NPWS so poorly staffed with people who do not know what they are to do that they have to ask all and sundry? This I cannot believe. I am sure NPWS is staffed by well trained, intelligent people with lots of experience. So why run a referendum on what to do in a very basic situation? Where does it stop? Will we have a 2 year public consultation on what colour the NPWS uniforms should be? Or the paint colours in the public dunnies ? Or if we should leave the foxes alone?
I follow NPWS on flickr. They certainly have no illusions about damage by brumbies. About 3 1/2 years ago they had a whole string of photos of streams and bogs destroyed by horses.
