Australia wants to kill 90 percent of these wild horses. Why?
The lives of thousands of wild horses are to be ended within the next ten years by government in Australia, the Daily Mail reports.
Horses in Kosciuszko National Park, New South Wales (NSW), have been involved in 26 car crashes since 2003. However, more major concerns regarding the feral horses, known as brumbies, relate to their impact on habitat.
The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) detailed how the horses are a threat to other wildlife and even to humans as they damage riverbeds, streams, natural bogs, wetlands and soil structure when trampling the ground as they feed or look for water.
Species threatened include the broad-toothed rat, the alpine water skink and the alpine tree frog, while the fouling of waterways by brumbies poses a risk to domestic and industrial water supplies.
In addition, the horses can spread cryptosporidium – an infection of the bowel carried by a parasite – and diseases such as equine influenza, African horse sickness and tick fever, which can have a severe impact on farmers in the area.
Shot, trapped or fertility-controlled
As a result, there are plans to reduce the population by more than half within the next decade, and to get numbers down to just 600 – ten percent of the current population – over 20 years.
The animals will be shot, trapped or subjected to fertility control measures, with the remaining numbers to be kept in three low impact areas. Currently, the horses occupy 48 percent of the park, which is in Australia’s Snowy Mountains around 300 miles from Sydney.
Although the plan includes the possibility of re-homing some animals, take-up rates in similar schemes have tended to be low.
NSW Environment Minister Mark Speakman said: “Wild horse management is an emotive and complex issue. There are diverse opinions in the community. It is clear, however, that the broader community values the unique environmental values of Kosciuszko National Park and looks to NPWS to protect these values.”
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Image credit: Thinkstock
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