Paul Hardey has seen the fight over the high country's horses turn feral.
"When the threats go from, 'I want to punch your head in,' to, 'I know where your kids go to school and they're going to get it.' It's not right," Hardey says.
As horse numbers explode, divisions over what is worth protecting in Kosciuszko National Park are deepening.
Hardey — who worked as a park ranger in Kosciuszko for 40 years — says mountain communities are being torn apart.
"To suddenly see this degenerate into almost madness… friends, neighbours threatening each other or not speaking up, being afraid to be involved in a debate," he says.
"You've gone from a situation of protecting a unique park to almost anarchy.
"What the hell has happened here?"
Scientists, ecologists and rangers say large numbers of horses must be removed quickly to protect vulnerable native plants and animals.
Despite clear, consistent and peer-reviewed evidence, a formidable opposition has for years used its political clout to effectively prevent any significant reduction in Kosciuszko's horse numbers.
They dispute evidence of environmental damage, reject census counts that show the horse population is surging, and attack experts as "liars" and "corrupt". They also oppose a government plan to remove more than 11,000 horses from Kosciuszko because they claim there are only 3,000 horses in the park, a fraction of the official estimate of 14,000.
Advocates of horse removal are subjected to vicious online abuse, vandalism and even death threats, and aggressive behaviour towards National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) staff has led the service to upgrade security and offer counselling to its staff.
'Shut up or you will be shut up'
Former NPWS staff Paul Hardey and Pam O'Brien are speaking out about what their former colleagues are going through.
O'Brien was a NPWS area manager at Kosciuszko until late last year.
"We have had staff threatened at work, and it's made it very difficult. I know that a lot of staff don't like walking around town in their uniforms," she says.
"There's been procedures put in place in the office to protect them from a lot of that passion or threats from the pro-brumby community."
Internal NPWS documents obtained under Freedom of Information laws describe a "history of direct threats and intimidation" and list some of the messages sent to parks staff:
- "Do the right thing or suffer the consequences"
- "What goes around… comes around"
- "You'll be shamed – not a nice legacy for your family"
- "The whole lot of you will be locked up for life"
Even horse lovers have become targets of the brumby advocates.
Animal welfare vet Andrea Harvey volunteers her time to geld Kosciuszko horses that have been taken out of the park and has personally rehomed 40 horses on her own property.
But because she's advised the state government on the most humane way to remove and cull horses, she's been subjected to vicious online attacks.
"It's kind of flabbergasting that it happens from brumby people, because I'm putting my life into trying to save as many brumbies as I can and give them the best welfare that I can," she says.
"When people accuse you of things related to being a killer or causing cruelty, it's really hurtful."
Snowy Mountains river guide and outspoken environmental campaigner Richard Swain is also a target of horse activists.
His vehicles have been vandalised, his business has been publicly maligned on community noticeboards, and he and his family have been repeatedly threatened.
Some of the attacks are barely-veiled death threats:
- "… how about we hunt you and your family down to be shot"
- "Let's cull Swain be done with it! If only that easy"
- "Can someone not take him into the forest for a walk and not come back out with him"
- "Shut up or you will be shut up permantely [sic]"
Another exchange among horse supporters advocated giving Swain, who is Indigenous, the "colonial experience".
"Growing up around here, the colonial crowd feel that they are the mountain men and women and they have a monopoly over what this place is," Swain says.
"I guess I'm a threat. I've got a leg to stand on. I am a river guide in the parks. I am born and bred here. I am of Aboriginal heritage. They see that as a real threat to their argument."
Brumbies 'prove we existed'
Culture and identity are central to the motivations of some of the most vocal horse supporters.
Leisa Caldwell is a tireless brumby campaigner who has written an extensive report on the cultural connections between the horses and the stockmen and women who worked in the mountains.
"They demonstrate the connection of our past and our identity. And they're the last connection," Caldwell says.
"There's a few mountain huts that still exist but if it wasn't for the horses, there's nothing left to prove that we existed. They're the last piece."
Caldwell says some the abuse and threats on social media come from people on both sides who don't understand the deep cultural history of horses in Kosciuszko.
She's incensed by the poor treatment of locals over the past 70 years and cites the flooding of the original towns of Jindabyne and Adaminaby to create dams for the Snowy Mountains Scheme, and the banning of cattle grazing to protect the scheme's water catchment.
"They were being kicked out, their history was being removed with their homes, and yet the ski resorts were moving in," she says.
She has a personal connection too. Her husband's family lost their right to graze cattle on the Kosciuszko high plains each summer.
That loss of grazing may have been decades ago, but for the Caldwells and other pastoralists like former NSW National MP Peter Cochran, it still stings.
"I'm going to speak out on their behalf and if I need to do that to protect the lifestyle and the cultural identity of these people that live around the mountains, I'll do it," Cochran says.
"Whatever life I've got left in me, I'll fight for them."
Cochran fought hard for the so-called "Brumby Bill" – a 2018 law passed by the NSW parliament that recognises the "heritage value" of horses in Kosciuszko.
For the first time in Australia, a feral animal was protected in a national park.
He keeps up the fight online, identifying the enemies of brumby supporters.
"The Invasive Species Council is an invasive species. Therefore should be immediately eradicated" he wrote in one post.
"Time for gloves off Brumby Supporters," another post says.
"You know where your enemies are. ALP, Greens and SFF [Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party]. Shooters kill brumbies."
He distances himself from the worst excesses of brumby supporters, like vandalism and online abuse, but insists governments and the NPWS are to blame for the vitriol swirling around this issue.
"If they don't listen to the people, then anger will develop. And if a leader emerges and I'm the leader, I'll take the consequences of it," he says.
"Don't let anybody lay blame on me for the anger of people, which has been spread over several generations in their attitude towards National Parks and Wildlife Service."
Science vs 'romantic bullshit'
Like the Cochrans and Caldwells, the family of Monaro grazier Charlie Massy also lost its Kosciuszko grazing lease.
Unlike them, Massy believes the removal of hard-hooved animals was essential to protect the national park.
"For many of the mountain families, it was a lifestyle, it was an identity which The Man From Snowy River popularised, and is still popularised in some of our key political figures, the way they dress and carry on," he says.
"I'm a lover of the mountains, I love horses too, but for the preservation of that ecology, good science rather than romantic bullshit should be listened to."
He's astonished that the presence of horses in Kosciuszko is now protected by legislation.
"It's absolutely gobsmacking that a wild horse, so-called Heritage Act can be railroaded in on top of 50, 60 years of thorough research, deliberate legislation to create one of the world's great national parks," he says.
"And then crass National Party politics can totally prostitute that process and railroad in an Act that suits a very small minority in a totally damaging way to the ecology in favour of a feral species."
The plan
The new management plan for Kosciuszko National Park says the estimated population of more than 14,000 horses will be reduced to 3,000 animals by June 2027 and divides the park up into areas where horses will stay, be removed, or prevented from entering.
Ecologist Don Fletcher estimates the horse population is growing at around 2-3,000 foals per year, and that means more than 20,000 horses would need to be removed over five years.
The animals will have to be killed in the park or trapped and trucked out.
Horses taken out will either be rehomed, or more likely — given a shortage of people willing and able to rehome them — taken to an abattoir.
The management plan pleases neither side.
Brumby advocates say there are no more than 3,000 horses in the park, so there's no need to remove significant numbers of animals.
They warn any major effort to remove horses will be bitterly resisted.
"The brumby advocates won't give up," Peter Cochran says, "As far as we are concerned, the brumbies will remain in the mountains."
Watch the full Four Corners investigation on ABC iview.
