The fight to save the Barmah brumbies may well have been lost.
A dedicated group of volunteers have been campaigning to preserve the distinct breed, but even they now concede that most of the wild horses that have been occupying Barmah National Park have been shot and killed.
Two years ago Parks Victoria would not talk about the control program it set up to destroy the horses, but now, the department says about 600 brumbies have been shot under the program in those two years.
The Barmah Brumby Preservation Group is annoyed that despite many offers to re-home the brumbies, Parks Victoria has failed to hand over many of the horses and has simply chosen to shoot them.
The group believes there may be less than 50 left in the bush.
The sight of wild horses grazing or galloping through the bush in Barmah National Park evokes the iconic Man from Snowy River images.
Invariably bay or chestnut-coloured, the horses and their foals have become part of the Barmah landscape over the past 150 years. Some say they have developed their own distinctive breed characteristics.
Parks Victoria says, like other feral animals, they are damaging the environment by consuming native plants and destroying the habitat of native wildlife, causing pugging and stream-bank collapse which impacts water quality, creating trackways which increases erosion and spread weeds and diseases, trampling and opening bare ground and producing dung piles that suffocate native plants and helps weed dispersal.
Five years ago, the Victorian government plan was to either shoot the brumbies or re-home them, but after unsuccessful attempts to trap the horses, the shooting plan was elevated as a priority.
Parks Victoria said it has re-homed about 40 brumbies in three years, but the Barmah Brumby Protection Group said they have successfully re-homed about 45 brumbies and could have handled a lot more if Parks Victoria had co-operated.
Parks Victoria handed over 17 brumbies, mostly mares, during the 2022 floods for re-homing.
“Our main aim is to keep a viable herd and preserve the Barmah brumby bloodline,” protection group president Julie Pridmore explained.
“We have re-homed 45 horses. Mostly staunch horse people who want to be part of the saving the brumbies and they have taken a foal or young horse to do that.”
Now the proud beasts are meeting an ignoble end, as the shooting plan involves the bodies being left to rot on the forest floor.
About two years ago, Country News attempted to write about the horse control program, but Parks Victoria refused to answer questions.
Country News lodged a Freedom of Information request for documents about the control program.
Some documents were refused, so Country News, appealed to the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner, which released a further number of documents, which revealed the strategies being applied to the brumby horse destruction.
What Parks Victoria didn’t want to reveal is partly uncovered in stories which will be published in the following weeks.