The advisory panels “discussed aerial shooting,which is still legal for use in NSW”,one document noted,adding it “removes many animal welfare impacts of other methods” to control numbers.
A separate document by the scientific panel,dated February 2020,said that while so-called passive trapping and re-homing of horses “should be the preferred option when circumstances are suitable” it was “almost certainly” inadequate for the number of animals that need to be removed.
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Especially after the 2019-20 bushfires on the park,the “only advised methods” were likely to be trapping horses and shooting them,or transferring them live to a nearby knackery and culling them there.
“Long distance transport to abattoirs (where independent animal welfare audits are not feasible) as has previously commonly occurred,has the worst welfare impacts on horses and the[scientific panel] recommends discontinuing the practice,” the document shows.
In the same document,the panel also noted there “the almost complete absence so far of any consideration of the effect of horses or horse management on the widespread and significant Aboriginal heritage values of[the park]“.
The Berejiklian governmentpassed its Wild Horse Heritage Bill in 2018,citing the animal’s links to European settlement and provision of horses to wars as reasons to protect the introduced herbivore.