The Snowy Mountains is home to the headwaters of the Snowy, Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers. A new film shows how the delicate alpine ecosystem that supports these vital water sources is being trampled, writes Jim McIlroy.
Kosciuszko National Park
A debate on the impacts of feral horses on Kosciuszko National Park will take place in NSW parliament on August 22, after more than 12,000 people signed a petition to demand the repeal of the Kosciuszko Wild Horse Heritage Act 2018.
Those who want to be able to show their children and grandchildren a little piece of Australia’s natural beauty need to rally, because that beauty is under threat from the Kosciuszko Wild Horse Heritage Act 2018 — a law that turns a feral animal into a heritage icon.
Kosciuszko National Park — a tiny, cold, wet island in an otherwise vast, hot, dry continent — is currently being destroyed. Its unique natural values are being ruined by feral horses, with the support of the New South Wales National Party.
According to Australian Academy of Science secretary for science policy Professor David Day, "feral horses are impacting Kosciuszko’s endangered alpine animals, its wetlands and streams and the headwater catchments of the Murray, Murrumbidgee and Snowy rivers”.
More than 2000 eggs of the Southern Corroboree frog have been released in the high alpine areas of Kosciuszko National Park, by keepers from Taronga Zoo and Zoos Victoria in a bid to save the frog from extinction. The species has been all but wiped out by the deadly chytrid fungus, leaving only about 50 mature individuals in the wild.
It will take six months for the eggs to metamorphose into frogs and then another four years for them to mature.
