The New South Wales government wants to introduce aerial shooting to control feral horses in the Kosciusko National Park. The brumby population has grown by almost a third in the past two years, with 14 to 23 thousand horses estimated to be living across the park. Consultation on the proposed cull opens today, with aerial shooting an option alongside trapping, re-homing, and ground shooting. The invasive species council says inaction on the horse population has led to the destruction of sensitive ecosystems.
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TVTranscript
00:00 There's been a lot of politics which have led to again delay and inaction which have
00:05 seen that population of feral horses increase by just in the last couple of years 30%.
00:10 So we're now at over 18,000 feral horses trashing and trampling the roof of Australia.
00:16 Today the Labor government has said that they are looking at potentially amending the plan
00:20 to allow aerial shooting, which we know for all other vertebrate pests is what's used
00:25 to get on top of those populations.
00:27 And only for some politics has not been allowed in New South Wales in Kosciuszko National
00:31 Park.
00:32 So this I think reflects the fact that public sentiment is shifting.
00:35 All parties went to the last election saying that they wanted to get on top of the feral
00:39 horse issue, they wanted to rapidly reduce those numbers.
00:42 And we know that while people don't like to see animals killed, the sad reality is that
00:47 we've got a choice to make between allowing these feral horse populations to continue
00:51 to grow and seeing our native animal populations decline or getting on top of that, reducing
00:58 their numbers rapidly and seeing a recovery of some of the most sensitive environments
01:02 in Australia.
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