From time to time I get asked to help campaigns to stop the culling of brumbies.
I've found education and on the ground action, ahead of overtly emotional activism is the best place for our focus. We need to find solutions out side of mainstream thinking and stop beating the same emotional, reactionary drum.
As the debate gains energy - I always refer people to the decades long work of Allan Savory and The Savory Institute about the process of grazing and landscape.
In his TEDx talk Allan talks about the scientific and government decision early in his career to cull thousands of elephants to stop environmental degradation. It did not work.
I see a future where virtual fencing technology, reproductive limitation, or mandatory grazing migration of all feral grazing animals in landscape as a possibility. If people care enough - they'll fund such ventures.
It breaks my heart to see beautiful horses shot - and it breaks my heart further to know that privileged white folk don't make an effort to use their carcasses in any way. It's a waste of a life and of biodegradable proteins that can be used to cycle energy for more life.
It was this comment that had me slammed as making 'abhorrent' suggestions that we eat horses. I simply won't engage in negativity on social media.... so let's instead think of creative and kind ways to not only solve the issue... but to communicate with one another productively also.
Here's a photo of a younger me riding through brumby landscape in regional Victoria a couple of decades ago on a young mare I bred, Marigold. (Good pony eh, Rod!) The debate about Brumbies was raging then... as it is now. It's just louder now we all have opinions flying around the ether electronically.
The problem won't go away until we manage it differently. So I suggest, study, learn, listen, experience the landscape you're talking about and wave the work of Allan Savory under the noses of all the bureaucrats and government decision makers.
He, like me, interacts with landscape, plants and animals daily. They hold the answers when we observe and listen quietly.
Above all I LOVE horses. I never want to see them shot needlessly.
