Cassandra adopted a brumby. What happens when you rehome a feral horse?

Cassandra Steppacher has welcomed the newest member of her family: a two-year-old black brumby.

The horse lover spent 10 days on a camp in northern NSW learning how to handle the wild filly from Queensland, before bringing her home to south-west Sydney last week.

“Everyone, when I told them that I was bringing a brumby home, laughed at me and said, ‘Yeah sure, you’re not going to be able to get a brumby in a float after 10 days of a camp’, but she was the best horse I’ve ever loaded,” Steppacher said. “We made one stop at the halfway point, and she was fine to get back on again.”

Steppacher owns other horses, but this was her first brumby, and she is “astounded” at how well it has gone so far.

The NSW government has stepped up its control program in Kosciuszko National Park, shooting 4791 feral horses from helicopters since October. About 3000 of those are in the past month since it temporarily closed parts of the park.

Brumby advocates remain opposed to the killing and argue that rehoming should be a frontline method of population control for feral horses instead.

Images of dead horses on social media are confronting, and rehomed brumbies are also prized by horse lovers as hardy and naturally socialised. Some people breed them, describing the resulting foal as a brumby or touting its heritage bloodlines.

Yet, the reality of rehoming is hard work. Rescue organisations are stretched, while a feral horse population has a natural growth rate of 18 per cent a year.

In a further complication, the NSW government suspended its rehoming program in late April, after radio host Ray Hadley alleged 250 rehomed horses went to a person linked to an alleged illegal knackery near Wagga Wagga. The NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water hired an external investigator to report by mid-June.

In Victoria, a few dozen horses are rehomed each year, mostly from the Murray River and the high country. In NSW, more than 400 wild horses a year are captured and rehomed from Kosciuszko alone. Queensland also rehomes horses “where possible”.

Animal Justice Party MP Emma Hurst, who is chairing a NSW upper house inquiry into aerial shooting, said an upcoming hearing would consider how national park staff vetted rehoming organisations and if they were aware that horses may have been killed.

Hurst said stopping all rehoming was “not fair on rehomers who are doing the right thing, and are looking to save some of these animals from a brutal bloodbath”.

Animal welfare charity RSPCA wrote in its submission to the NSW inquiry that rehoming was not always the kinder option, as the trapping and transport was stressful and the less attractive animals were often sent to a knackery.

In a submission to a Senate inquiry last year, Save the Brumbies Inc advocated rehoming and fertility control, but said it no longer accepted horses from Kosciuszko after a group arrived “severely stressed” with serious injuries after the long journey in 2021.

There were 21 registered rehoming organisations in NSW before the suspension, though not all were active.

Australian Brumby Alliance president Jill Pickering said a good operator could generally take about 50 horses a year, and it took three to six months before the horses could be adopted. She said they deserved government funding.

Pickering said her members sell the horses for between $800 and $1500 each and were selective about who bought them.

“The risks are that the person who takes the brumby doesn’t fully appreciate that they’ve got a newly handled wild horse … if they raise their voice and get angry, the brumby will immediately become defensive, and if boxed into a corner will fight,” Pickering said.

If the owner can’t cope, it might result in a crisis rehoming, a premature trip to the knackery or a release back to the wild, though Pickering said this would be rare.

Steppacher attended a camp run by the Brumby Project. For $2550, the adoptive owners undertake the early training of the brumby themselves, guided by founder Anna Uhrig.

“It’s a beautiful thing to take on a brumby, but the realities are sometimes a little more tricky,” Uhrig said.

Uhrig has run camps in Queensland for several years, and has just finished her first in NSW, near Grafton on the north coast, on the property of Rachael Delaney, who already owned several brumbies.

In Delaney’s experience, older brumbies could be fiercely independent and prickly; the stallions want to fight other males and the mares bite for self-protection. Still, she adopted a 10-year-old mare on the recent camp. “She wanted to bite me at first, but now she’s such a sweetheart,” Delaney said.

Uhrig is realistic that rehoming is only a small part of the solution and humans must protect native species as well.

“There comes a point where the market is going to be saturated with brumbies and suitable homes, so what happens then?” Uhrig said.

A NSW department spokesperson said demand for rehoming was limited, and “some rehomers want only horses of a particular size, build, age, gender, colour or temperament”.

Pickering said rehomers could collectively take about 500 horses a year, and this could be used to manage the Kosciuszko population once it is reduced to 3000, along with fertility darts. She claimed national parks had allowed the numbers build up to justify shooting.

Invasive Species Council advocacy director Jack Gough said fewer animals would need to be killed if the government had made the hard decisions earlier.

“Rehoming is just tinkering at the sidelines,” Gough said.

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