In Australia they want to make a massacre of wild horses: 10 thousand specimens at risk of culling

New South Wales plans to eradicate 10 wild horses from protected areas, but that's not enough for scientists

He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him

Australian wild horses - known as brumbies - are on their way to a grim fate. Wildlife officials of the New South Wales they plan to cull and transfer over 10 specimens from protected areas, starting with Kosciuszko National Park. But according to the Australian Academy of Science this would not be enough to protect the native fauna and flora. For this, through an open letter to the Minister of the Environment of New South Wales (NSW), about 70 scientists and scientific organizations have proposed an even more extreme solution: eradicate them all.

Alpine wetlands continue to degrade even with a very small number of wild horses. - reads the letter - Kosciusko National Park cannot begin to recover from drought, vast forest fires and overgrazing if, as currently proposed, 3.000 wild horses remain ”.

The draft plan, in fact, provides the elimination of about 10 thousand specimens by 2027 - through killing and transfers - from Kosciusko National Park, where 3 thousand would remain. However, according to the scientists, 3.000 horses would reproduce fairly quickly and about 1000 would have to be moved and killed almost annually.

The Australian Academy of Science has also published a series of observations in response to the public consultation on the wild horse management plan in the park.

The ongoing management of wild horses in Kosciuszko National Park and the conservation of its ecosystems will require extensive monitoring, scientific observation and research, as well as a strong commitment to the collection and action of such data. It will require active, responsive and well-informed management of herds of wild horses with the aim of completely eradicating them from the park - explains the network of scientists and scientific organizations - Inaction by the NSW government has already allowed the herds to grow and to the detriment of continuing. The draft management plan pretends otherwise and is heavily flawed as a result.

Why are wild horses considered dangerous?

The brumbies live in several protected areas of the Australian territory, in particular in the Kosciuszko National Park, in New South Wales. The growth of the population of these mammals is threatening the habitats of endangered species such as the Galaxias tantangara (Australian freshwater fish), the frog Litoria verreauxii alpinaraganella alpina and the Mastacomys fuscus, rodent of the Muridae family.

furthermore, wild horses damage the vegetation of Australia (which has no native mammals with hard hooves). According to David Watson, an ecologist at Charles Sturt University in Albury-Wodonga, the New South Wales government could not have chosen a worse place to allow wild horses to roam freely, as Australia's so-called alpine environment covers only 1%. of the continent and is home to many endemic and threatened species not found anywhere else in the world.

In short, this area of Australia is too vulnerable to host large herbivores such as wild horses. But it was man who introduced them and made them reproduce in these areas. And now, as often happens, they risk being killed due to a series of wicked and not at all farsighted choices. Animals are once again at the expense of human errors.

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Fonti: Australian Academy of Science/NWS.gov/Nature/