WILD HORSES in the Barmah National Park are viewed by some as a cultural flashpoint between the heritage of European settlement in this country and the traditional management of the land that existed before then.
The wholesale eradication of the horses from the forest is seen by some as an attempt to return the park to a condition akin to pre-European settlement, however in that process, the eradication of the brumbies is seen as a denial or damnation of the European history which introduced them.
Barmah Brumby Preservation Group (BBPG) president, Julie Pridmore, takes umbrage at the Parks Victoria/Yorta Yorta Nation plan to eradicate all wild horses from the park, believing the plan to be a slap in the face to generations of local history.
“We’re not just a bunch of emotional horse rescuers, this is deeper than that. It’s about our heritage,” she said last week on the edge of the 36,000-hectare forest.
“We strongly agree that it should have an input from the Indigenous people – we don’t dispute that and never have – but this is everybody’s culture, it’s not just one group of people’s culture.
“This is part of who we are as local people.”
For Parks Victoria, primarily a conservation organisation, the issue of the horses and the impact their population has on the forest is a scientific one – they need to go for the benefit of the native flora and fauna. However, this approach largely ignores the attachment to horses that people have.
The BBPG believes in managing numbers of wild horses in the park down to between 100-120.
Recent efforts by the group to develop a 300-acre property nearby to rehome up to 100 brumbies have stalled, with the mammoth project requiring resources and labour unachievable by a volunteer organisation.
