Who’s gonna shoot your wild horses?

Australia is a weird place - in an evolutionary sense. It broke off from the continental pack waaaay back (45 million years ago) and proceeded to give rise to lots of wacko animals. I mean they have MARSUPIALS and like the PLATYPUSES. It’s nuts.

So it’s hardly surprising that all our bog standard horses, dogs, cats, rabbits and frogs wreak havoc on their oh-so-different fauna and environment. I mean does anyone remember the rabbits? In the 1950s the Aussies tried to wipe them out with a deadly virus (of course it didn’t really work and became a text book example on the evolution of virulence - really deadly pathogens are less successful because they kill their hosts before they can infect a new individuals). And the cane toads. THE CANE TOADS. Introduced to control a native beetle pest, they quickly became a pest themselves.

I digress. These days they are having mad problems with wild horses, called brumbies Australia (a word that will always make me think of a favorite childhood movie, The Man from Snowy River..rent it). They tear up the ground, cause soil erosion and lots of other enviro problems. Solution? Shoot them, shoot them all.

Yes, from the country that brought you the 3,000-strong kangaroo cull, we now have the “let’s shoot horses from helicopters and let them die in agony” campaign. Nice.

The funny thing about this is that everyone seems to agree that the horses gotta go...it’s the method of dispatch at the center of controversy. Fair enough. Wild horsey contraception is indeed more humane that shooting the horses from the air, which certainly does not guarantee a quick kill. And that’s just not nice. And if someone - aka the government - had just dealt with the brumby problem long ago, this shoot-fest would be unnecessary.

They are certainly right. It’s not like this is Oz’s first brush with invasive species. Yes, they have a particularly bad lot in this respect: isolated for millions of years and then invaded by the English with all their colonial creatures. Also, biological control (using one animal to control another) is notoriously hard to predict. But they should REALLY keep a better eye on crap like this. At least they aren’t introducing lions to kill the horses, or some sort of deadly horse virus. I guess they have made some progress, even if it is still shooting helpless creatures out of window.

Posted by Anna Gosline on November 12, 2007 at 8:46 PM in

5 Comments

Digg

Comments

And goats and cats and foxes and camels and ostriches and and and. I think shooting is OK if done properly, but that’s a pretty big if.

Posted on November 13, 2007 at 8:42 AM by Rob Clack

I want to email the Australian government and suggest the lions idea and see if I get a response. I might even say that they can borrow the Beast of Bodmin Moor to control their brumby problem…

Posted on November 14, 2007 at 7:15 AM by Katie

the other downside of live capture is that sometimes rather than relocating them they live ship them into european meat trade.

Posted on November 16, 2007 at 1:52 PM by Beri

I’m a former resident of Australia and I’d like to note that while there was a large kangaroo cull, the situation isn’t as simple as it seems. While they may seem cute and cuddly, kangaroos are also now considered pests. Since the major decline of the dingo, the roo now has no natural predator, and the continent is overrun by them. It’s no small matter for a vehicle to make impact with a kangaroo (with a red kangaroo, it’s a lot like hitting a full-grown male deer).

The Australian kangaroo population is now estimated to be over 50 million. That’s a near doubling of the population in the past several decades. Unlike the sheep industry in Australia, kangaroos are not herded or raised; they are only hunted. (Kangaroo is still routinely eaten as game in Australia; the hides, bones, and innards are also utilized from the same animals.) This population growth is on a continent with a terribly increasing drought, mind, so the resources available for each roo are consistently scattered across a larger acreage. This leads to each animal covering a wider ground than before to fulfill its needs.

Like bears, deer, coyotes, and other animals in North America, kangaroos will scavenge for food where they can find it—including right up to people, houses, and cars. As a result, many kangaroos get too close; kangaroo attacks (defensive tactics from scared kangas, usually) on humans are not uncommon. And they don’t just live in the outback; they live pretty much all over the entire continent.

Posted on December 01, 2007 at 5:36 PM by

First of all is this horse shooter for real? Don’t wish to be rude but if it’s true what on earth are you Australians playing at. This year the Toads have been given pride of place as it’s year of the Toad. Koalas were near extinct by 1930 due to 2M skins being exported so now they are protected. The kangaroo numbers are NOT increasing otherwise the cull would be higher. It has dropped by some 3m in the last 6 years to its current level of 3,659,129 for this year alone.
Now you have a problem with wild horses! For goodness sake get a grip on yourselves and think about the cruelty you are causing. Oh and on an environmental front (fact).....sheep and cattle are contributing to almost 15% of all Australia’s green house gasses. Kangaroos almost non!

Posted on June 15, 2008 at 12:22 PM by

Commenting is not available in this section entry.