By Tess Ikonomou

The federal opposition leader has branded contentious mass culls of feral horses inhumane and unnecessary, demanding responsibility for controlling the animals be handed to locals.

NSW has been undertaking a cull of brumbies in Kosciuszko National Park after a recorded rise in the invasive species’ numbers.

Aerial shooting of the horses resumed earlier in June after being put on hold in March 2025 due to a successful reduction in herds.

But Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said the culls were the work of “bureaucrats in Sydney”.

He called for local communities to be handed control of the animals’ population, saying their management methods from the 1980s were more effective.

“It’s a very personal issue for me,” he told Sky News on Sunday.

“I grew up in the region and I grew up riding in the mountains with the brumbies.

“This is a cull that I think is unnecessary, it’s inhumane.”

Advocates for the animals have suggested they be trapped and rehomed instead of killed, while there has also been an outcry about horses potentially being left to die slowly after being shot from helicopters.

The brumbies risk the park’s fragile ecosystem, threatening wildlife and native plants with trampling.

Mr Taylor’s position is a marked departure from that of his predecessor as Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, who as federal environment minister sought legal measures to force NSW’s then-coalition government to do more to reduce feral horse numbers.

The state is trying to reduce the animals’ population to 3000 by mid-2027.

The latest official estimates, for 2025, pointed to there being at least 6476 and as many as 16,411 brumbies in the national park, near the Victorian border.

In 2022, the number of feral horses in the park was as high as 23,535.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service is also considering a fertility-control trial in a bid to prevent the need for brumbies to be killed.

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