Australia to Begin Mass Aerial Slaughter of Wild Horses from Helicopter Gunships

A mass shooting of thousands of wild horses from helicopter gunships in the Snowy Mountains of Australia is set to start this week as protesters cry for an end to the practice that delivers death from above in a bid to protect “indigenous plants.”

Commonly called “brumbies” in the land Down Under, the wild horses, along with feral donkeys, pigs and buffalo, are regularly hunted and the terrified animals destroyed from the air by marksmen.

Many fatally wounded mares leave dependent foals who then starve to death while injured horses are left to suffer in pain for days or weeks before succumbing to their injuries.

Shooters will target the brumbies in a major cull across Kosciuszko National Park in the state of New South Wales, where officials say soaring numbers are causing extensive environmental damage.

The cull forms part of a government plan to slash the wild horse population from an estimated 6,000 to 16,000 animals to just 3,000 by the middle of next year, the Daily Mail reports.

Courts have approved the shooting of brumbies from helicopter gunships.

Anti-cull campaigners decry the aerial shooting program as “completely barbaric” and launched petitions calling for it to be halted with around 220,000 signatures already registered on social media.

Brumbies have roamed the rugged alpine landscape of Kosciuszko National Park for more than 200 years and despite the vocal opposition, CEO of the Invasive Species Council, Jack Gough, welcomes the return of aerial culling.

“We’ve seen a big spike in the numbers of feral horses,” he told the ABC.

Gough said he was “disappointed” that retention areas, where horses are allowed to remain in 32 percent of the park, still existed.

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