{"id":43651,"date":"2026-07-03T10:39:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T10:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/43651\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T10:39:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T10:39:14","slug":"police-investigate-shooting-deaths-of-two-horses-in-kosciuszko-national-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/43651\/","title":{"rendered":"Police investigate shooting deaths of two horses in Kosciuszko National Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

NSW Police is investigating the discovery of two wild horse carcasses in Kosciuszko National Park.<\/p>\n

Reports that they were found shot dead in the park, close to the Snowy Mountains Highway, emerged this week.<\/p>\n

Snowy Mountains photographer Michelle Brown said her husband, Ian, found the horses on Wednesday afternoon, after a friend of theirs spotted them last weekend.<\/p>\n

“I was devastated,” she said.<\/p>\n

“All our brumbies mean the world to us \u2026 they live their lives in the mountains, they should be left in peace.”<\/p>\n

A spokesperson from the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) said the horses were not shot by its staff and did not form part of any authorised NPWS control program.<\/p>\n

“The carcasses were found outside the designated area for NPWS control of feral animals, including deer, horses and pigs,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

\"two<\/p>\n

Michelle and Ian Brown have been photographing horses in the park for years, including this encounter in 2024. (Supplied: Michelle and Ian Brown)<\/p>\n

Under investigation<\/p>\n

The Browns have been photographing wild horses in the park for over a decade<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ms Brown said one of the horses shot was known as Matagi, and the other was its offspring.<\/p>\n

Ms Brown said Matagi will be “terribly missed”.<\/p>\n

“We’ve been photographing him pretty much every time we’ve been up the mountains,” she said.<\/p>\n

“He’s a very solitary stallion \u2026 he usually sticks up high away from the road.”<\/p>\n

The NSW NPWS referred reports of the two dead horses to NSW Police.<\/p>\n

Officers from the Monaro Police District are now investigating.<\/p>\n

Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

The wild horse population in Kosciuszko National Park is subject to a management program.\u00a0 (ABC South East NSW: Adriane Reardon)<\/p>\n

Aerial shooting is currently underway<\/a> in Kosciuszko National Park as part of a management program to control feral animals, including wild horses.<\/p>\n

The NSW government is required to reduce the number of horses to 3,000 by mid-2027<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The latest peer-reviewed survey of the animals found between 6,000 and 16,000 horses remain in the park, marking an increase from 12 months prior.<\/p>\n

The population increase prompted the state government to announce the resumption of aerial shooting as one available control to reach the 3,000 target.<\/p>\n

Civil proceedings were launched this month in the Supreme Court of NSW against the NSW Minister for the Environment by brumby advocate Roxanne Phoenix, in a bid to stop aerial shooting of feral horses.<\/p>\n

However, today the proceedings were discontinued due to “jurisdiction,” with the case expected to be filed in the NSW Land and Environment Court at a later date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NSW Police is investigating the discovery of two wild horse carcasses in Kosciuszko National Park. Reports that they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,21,16100,16099,4860,33754,33752,4838,16102,33751,4376,33755,1047,22590,33753,16098],"class_list":["post-43651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-brumbies","tag-brumby","tag-dead","tag-feral","tag-horses","tag-investigation","tag-kosciuszko-national-park","tag-matagi","tag-national-parks","tag-nsw-parks-and-wildlife-service","tag-police","tag-shot","tag-wild","tag-wild-horses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}