Wild Horses Damaging Australian Alps

Stephanie Peatling in Sydney
for National Geographic News

January 31, 2005

The Man From Snowy River—the poem penned by Australia's
celebrated bard, A.B. "Banjo" Paterson—immortalized the efforts
of early white settlers and their steeds to tame the southeastern
mountains known as the Australian Alps.

The horses enjoy exalted status in the nation's history. But herds large and small are running roughshod over the alps' fragile alpine environment, say authorities who are trying to remove the beloved steeds from national parks.

Seeds of the struggle were sown decades ago. Areas of the alps still show signs of environmental damage wrought by decades of cattle grazing, even though grazing stopped more than 60 years ago.

Much of the land in question is now part of the country's national park system. Today's custodians of the alps—the New South Wales, Victoria, and Australian Capitol Territory governments—are working to reverse and prevent the environmental damage caused by wild horses.

To that end, two fences have been erected in Namadgi National Park outside Canberra, Australia's capital.

The fences are part of the Australian Capitol Territory (ACT) government's attempt to protect bogs that filter the headwaters of the Cotter River. The river is the main source of water for Canberra and surrounding towns, as well as for 11 nationally significant wetlands.

Watershed Protection

Bushfires two years ago elevated the urgency of the task for park managers: The flames ravaged sensitive alpine areas and all but wiped out the endangered Corroboree frog that once lived in the bogs.

Authorities eradicated a population of several hundred wild horses from Namadgi National Park in 1987. But casual sightings in recent years indicate that a herd of seven horses was living in the park last year. This, at a time when the most critically damaged areas of the park were beginning to recover from the fires.

Brett McNamara, the manager of Namadgi, bemoans the traveling horses' lack of respect for state borders and their impact on the upper reaches of the watershed catchments.

"The bog is critical for Corroboree frog habitat," McNamara said. "There is already a [frog] breeding program at [nearby] Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. There's little point raising tadpoles if there's no habitat for them."

As well as providing habitat for endangered species, the bogs also act as natural filters and store water during drought. The spongelike bogs can store up to ten times their weight in water and release it to areas as needed.

When the bogs are damaged, as they were by wild horses and the 2003 brushfires, water flows straight through, harming what McNamara calls "the liver of the Cotter catchment."

To Shoot or Trap?

Wild horses also pose a problem in another beloved Australian national park, Kosciuszko, which is managed by the New South Wales government.

While the easiest solution would be to shoot the horses, that is not an option any Australian state government is likely to adopt. A huge public outcry erupted after authorities approved aerial shooting of wild horses in the Guy Fawkes River National Park in northern New South Wales in 2000.

Rather than risk a repeat of that saga, the ACT government erected two 300-metre-long (985-foot-long) fences where horses are most likely to cross into the park.

Pests of all kinds that infest Kosciuszko, the largest park in New South Wales, occupy much of the time of Alistair Henchman. He serves as the acting director of the National Parks and Wildlife Service's southern directorate.

Henchman says the relatively small number of horses—somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500—receive more attention than the damage they cause might warrant.

"We have got a whole lot of pest animal species that we need to manage—wild dogs, pigs, rabbits—and we have got to prioritize our management," Henchman said.

"Putting aside any cultural debate about the value of horses, we simply don't think that we'd ever be able to eliminate them totally from the park. … We need to manage that population so there aren't unacceptable impacts occurring, and then we need to move on to focus on other pest species that are causing more damage," he said.

Governments are now investigating hiring contract riders to trap the unwelcome horses as a more publicly palatable way of getting them out of alpine areas. Seventy horses in Kosciuszko were caught and relocated last year around this time.

Trapping is the best method "in a social and political sense," Henchman said. "While people might criticize us for not using more dramatic methods like shooting, we're in a situation where we need to have a technique, which we can keep doing."

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