By Greg Buckman
This article was originally published by the National Parks Association ACT in its June 2026 Bulletin (volume 63, number 2).
Love them or loathe them but brumbies, particularly brumbies in national parks, evoke strong emotions. Supporters see them as beautiful animals infused with the spirit of The Man from Snowy River (based on Banjo Patterson’s 1890 poem) and the World War One Light Horse Brigades. Opponents see them as destroyers of pristine waterways, delicate soil and small mammal habitats. One thing all sides might agree on though is that there are a lot of them in Australia: over 400,000, the largest feral horse population in the world. Of these up to about 25,000 have inhabited the Australian Alps National Parks (three-quarters of them in Kosciuszko).
John Barilaro, National Party member for the NSW lower-house seat of Monaro between 2011 and 2021, and one-time state party leader, was firmly in the brumby supporters’ camp. After encouragement from a former Monaro National Party representative and brumby tour operator, Peter Cochran, he had a special piece of legislation passed in June 2018. The Kosciuszko Wild Horse Heritage Bill 2018 guaranteed a significant number of feral horses could indefinitely remain in NSW’s premier alpine national park. The legislation ignited a passionate, high-profile campaign to have it repealed, a campaign that finally succeeded in November last year, some seven years after the legislation was passed. This is the story of that campaign, a campaign the National Parks Association supported from the get-go.
Brumby legislation and implementation
The Kosciuszko Wild Horse Heritage Act was controversial even before it was enacted. Opponents argued it gave a special status to an introduced species, one that no other introduced species had. They also said that the delicate alpine environment of Kosciuszko National Park simply could not sustain a feral horse population; the horses were putting more and more pressure on the park. In 2000, there were about 5,000 there but by 2022, the official estimate was in the range of 14,501 to 23,535. Under Barilaro’s bill, the NSW government determined that 3,000 of those could stay. Even that number would have a huge impact.
The first major action of the campaign against the bill – Save Kosciuszko – was an ambitious 36-day walk from Sydney to Kosciuszko’s summit in late 2018 as a protest against the legislation and to raise awareness ahead of the March 2019 NSW election. The walk covered 560 km and had 500 participants with five people trekking the entire distance. The walk featured a large protest outside Barilaro’s Queanbeyan office and, later, a helicopter circled as brightly coloured protestors reached the Kosciuszko summit. At the time of the walk, the first of three petitions against the legislation secured 12,300 signatures: grassroots support ensuring the issue would not go away. Ultimately, the Save Kosciuszko campaign evolved into the Reclaim Kosci campaign led by the Invasive Species Council.
After the legislation was passed, more than three years went by before the first Kosciuszko National Park Wild Horse Heritage Management Plan was published in November 2021. The plan stated that about a third of the park – mainly the Long Plain, Tantangara and Byadbo areas – would be feral horse ‘retention’ areas with the other two-thirds being ‘prevention’ or ‘removal’ areas. The plan set a maximum feral horse population of 3,000 to be achieved by June 2027. Crucially, it ruled out aerial culling arguing that ‘there is a significant risk that the implementation of an aerial shooting program will result in a loss of the social licence to remove wild horses from the national park’. This, a blow to reducing feral horse numbers, was largely a carryover from an aerial culling campaign in Guy Fawkes National Park in 2000, which, while misrepresented in the media, sparked a community backlash. The fallout meant that brumbies could only be removed through trapping and ground shooting, creating scant confidence that the 3,000 target would ever be reached.
Senate inquiry, start of aerial culling
A major influence in changing the attitude towards aerial culling in Kosciuszko was a 2023 inquiry by the national parliament’s Senate – Impacts and management of feral horses in the Australian Alps. The Senate Committee made 14 recommendations, including that the NSW Government allow aerial shooting as a feral horse control method. The Committee said that extensive fragile ecosystem damage was being caused by the hard-hoofed feral horses and that 12 species were at risk of extinction as a result. It even stated that the NSW brumby legislation ‘directly contradicts’ the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and may be unconstitutional. The inquiry put pressure on the NSW Labor Environment Minister, Penny Sharpe, who announced in August 2023 that she was considering permitting aerial culling. During this time a second petition was organised by the Reclaim Kosci campaign, this one gathering 15,300 signatures. Finally, on 27 October 2023, just weeks after the Senate Committee released its report, Sharpe gave the go-ahead to aerial culling in Kosciuszko National Park saying there were ‘simply too many’ feral horses in the park.
Throughout some of 2024, parts of Kosciuszko National Park were closed so that the aerial culling could be rolled out. This aerial culling, as well as later aerial culling in 2026, induced the sharpest reactions by pro-brumby advocates. In 2024, a pro-brumby group, the Snowy Mountains Bush Users Group, sought an injunction against the culling in the NSW Supreme Court arguing the environment minister had been wrongly informed about its impact. However, in August 2024, the court dismissed the action, determining that ‘the information provided to the minister was not inadequate or misleading’. And again, in mid 2026, when a second aerial cull was ordered by the environment minster following new census data showing that by 2025 brumby numbers had climbed to between 6,476 and 16,411, there was a new wave of pro-brumby protest, much of which was expressed through social media. This brought on a fresh attempted injunction by pro-brumby advocates (in July 2026) which, like the 2024 one, failed. At times the advocacy of people sympathetic to brumbies was very strident but rarely seemed to have the same organisational and strategic capacity that the Reclaim Kosci campaign had. Their failed Supreme Court actions were the closest they went to seriously challenging the campaign to overturn the wild horse legislation.
Repeal of the bill
By July 2024, almost 9,000 feral horses had been removed from the park and, for the first time, the NSW Government became confident the 3,000 target was within reach. Pleasing though this was, brumbies were still going to have a major impact on Kosciuszko’s environment, and they were still being afforded protection that no other introduced species had. So, a third petition was initiated by the Reclaim Kosci campaign, one aimed squarely at overturning the 2018 legislation. This petition was organised by campaign coordinator, Linda Groom, who criss-crossed NSW seeking signatures with help from lots of volunteers. Over a 12-month period, 11,300 signatures were obtained with more than 400 gleaned on a single day, Australia Day 2025, at Rawsons Pass below the Kosciuszko summit. The aim was to reach 10,000 signatures, which would entitle the petition to be formally presented and debated in the NSW lower house.
In May 2025, about 100 Reclaim Kosci supporters attended the parliamentary debate on the petition at which Labor, Liberal, Greens and independent MPs spoke in support of the repeal. However, the government’s lower house environment spokesperson stunned the campaigners by saying that, although the government was sympathetic to the repeal, it was ‘not a priority at this time’. What did this mean the campaigners wondered? Did it mean the government would never really support the repeal (even though Labor had attempted its own repeal when in opposition in 2019) or that it would support the repeal at a later time? Turned out, it meant the latter. The independent lower house member for Wagga Wagga, Joe McGirr, whose electorate takes in part of Kosciuszko National Park, sponsored a private member’s bill that would finally overturn the legislation. To beef up support for it, Reclaim Kosci volunteers phoned many supporters urging them to lobby their local NSW MP.
Support from the Liberal Party would be key to success. Without it, passage of the repeal bill through the upper house was far from assured. And, happily, after many discussions with Jack Gough, CEO of the Invasive Species Council, the Liberals came on board even though it meant breaking with their National Party coalition partners. Then leader, Mark Speakman, said Kosciuszko ‘is one of the most important natural environments we have in this country, and we have to preserve it. That means this heritage bill needs to go’. McGirr’s bill passed the lower house in October last year. Then, after a lot of procedural intrigue, it passed the upper house the following month. Environment Minister, Penny Sharpe, said ‘this bill will ensure horses are treated the same way as other invasive species in NSW national parks’. There are still further steps involved in ridding Kosciuszko of brumbies, including adoption of a new Wild Horses management plan (the 2021 one being in force until 2027), but people power and the environment won out. The Reclaim Kosci campaign showed it’s one thing to have passion, it’s another to have strategy. At the end of the day, it had that vital ingredient in spades and the Kosciuszko National Park can finally look forward to a brumby free future.