WARNING: Distressing content
The rotting corpses of more than 150 wild horses — known as brumbies — have been counted by nature-loving photographers exploring popular Snowy Mountains hiking trails over several days last week.
The rotting remains are the result of a state requirement to cull the feral animals, but the disturbing manner of execution has left animal-lovers outraged.
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Decomposing brumbies, some “with their heads twisted right back, some with their legs in positions that they are just not supposed to be in,” litter the otherwise pristine natural landscape in footage shared by Ian and Michelle Brown from Snowy Brumby Photography Adventures with Michelle and Ian.
Michelle shared the shocking images alongside breathtaking landscapes on social media on Monday, and wrote: “It’s a nice place, or at least used to be a nice place. I don’t think we will be going there again!”
They were given a “head up” about the foul discoveries they were about to make by other hikers on the Australian Alps Walking Trail.
“If you plan to hike the AAWT through Northern Kosciusko I would leave it for a few months as the place absolutely stinks, and it’s not a pretty sight,” Michelle and Ian warned.
“Ian hiked 19km today, a lot of it was crisscrossing here and there. (He) found another 23 dead brumbies today on his walk, so that takes our tally to 154 in just two days of exploring up there.”
But an estimated 20,000 brumbies face slaughter in the Snowy Mountains as part of a state requirement to bring the number of horses in the wild down to 3000 by June 2027.
They have been proven to negatively impact ecosystems, ecological communities and native species by “trampling fragile sub-alpine ecosystems, eroding waterways and destroying key habitat for threatened species such as the northern corroboree frog and stocky galaxias fish,” the NSW Department of Planning and Environment said on its website.
It said a total of 747 brumbies had been “removed” from the nation park between January and June this year, with a further 859 removed in the ten moths prior, but added: “Operational details about wild horse control will not be publicly released.”
Invasive species council spokesperson Jack Gough previously told 7NEWS: “We’ve got this choice to make between native species and their survival, and the removal of feral horses.”
But witnesses to Michelle and Ian’s evidence of carnage on the ground, including disturbing images of living brumbies walking by rotting carcasses, have called it “the saddest thing ever.”
“Would have been so traumatic to see that,” one person wrote. “For them just to leave the carcasses there makes me even more angry.”
“I am literally crying, it breaks my heart to see what is being done against our beautiful brumbies,” another person wrote.
“Very depressing, especially when people head to the mountains for their mental well-being,” another wrote.
“Absolutely barbaric, I have shared this, so family don’t take their kids there for a hike or a weekend away. This is absolutely appalling,” another wrote.
Michelle and Ian believe NPSW should update their website for hikers “alerting hikers to the hundreds and hundreds of dead brumbies that litter the National Park.”
“I must say that what we found we will never forget.”
7NEWS.com.au has contacted NPWS for comment.